BT Openzone Wifi hotspots – signal range in Belfast Cathedral Quarter
After reading this and agreeing with Matt’s statement that “…Belfast needs a free-to-access Municipal Wi-Fi network” and noting that the “…response we got back was that the area already had BTOpenZone, which, if you investigate is notable for it’s absence in the area”.
A quick search on BT Openzone’s coverage map of the area shows that even they don’t claim to have great coverage in the area. The red spots are BT’s coverage and the black line is the approximate boundary of the Cathedral Quarter.
A spot of wardriving was required to prove or disprove this. There are a number of hotspots around the area but the survey proves that they don’t provide anywhere near like 100% coverage.
The wifi sniffing software used was Vistumbler and the usb GPS device was a Globalsat BU353.
The map data can be downloaded in kml format here or kmz format here.
Tags: belfast, btopenzone, wifi
October 28th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
That’s entirely scandalous and entirely expected – I know the coverage is disastrous!
Suffice to say that BCC’s vision meant a local commercial business didn’t bother donating a heap of Meraki mesh kit to establish a network over Cathedral Quarter