Wi-fi TO

Toronto Hydro Corp. will announce Tuesday that it plans to turn Canada's largest city into one giant wireless hotspot, directly challenging the country's major mobile phone carriers for a chunk of the $8 billion a year wireless market.

With the deployment, which sources say could be available in the downtown core as early as this fall, Toronto joins a growing list of North American cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco, that have announced plans to bring low-cost, broadband wireless access to their citizens and businesses.

Unsurprisingly, the telcos are unhappy. Expect court challenges:

Municipal Wi-Fi projects aren't without controversy. In the United States, major wireless carriers say municipalities have no experience selling consumer services and are abusing their monopoly over taxpayers' funds. They also fear that their own Wi-Fi services, increasingly offered in airports, restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, will be undercut when it comes to price.

Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. To translate from BCE-Rogers to common english: "Hey, WTF? We got billions in taxpayer subsidies over decades, not to mention that we've never been prosecuted for our obvious anti-competitive practices, and now you're actually going to challenge our business with a superior product at a lower price? HOW DARE YOU!!!"

I'm now even happier that I'll be moving back to Toronto in a few short months.

(via HaJo.)