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DROGHEDA WILL BE among the first towns in Ireland to provide blanket free wi-fi, as part of a drive to regenerate the area using new technologies.
Local landlords and businesses pitched in to allow the installation of the service, which it’s hoped will help draw shoppers and businesspeople to the economically troubled town centre.
The initiative is the latest in a series of innovations which have seen Drogheda try and tweet its way out of recession, and get its own iPhone app. The developments are part of a campaign for the RTÉ TV series Local Heroes – A Town Fights Back.
Peter Durnin is the managing director of Image Group, the private company that led the wi-fi effort. “We wanted to give something back,” he said, adding that the idea was “all about bringing vibrancy back into the town.” Durnin continued:
Smart phone usage is on the rise, as is web surfing, social media, and working remotely. It’s difficult to rejuvenate a town unless you can give people a reason to come into it.
He said the town centre-wide wi-fi was the first of its scale in Ireland. “You may get coffee shops and restaurants providing internet access on their premises, but you don’t get free access on a scale like this because initial infrastructure costs are so high.” Durnin estimated the cost of the initiative at €5,000.
Tomorrow also sees the launch of Drogheda’s own iPhone app, called iGuide Drogheda on the Boyne. The free app is designed for both locals and visitors and will include tourism attractions as well as jobs listings.
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Now that’s what I call using your head. Well done Drogheda
Well done Drogheda. Wifi needs to be made freely available throughout Ireland- it’s one of the most rudimentary, easily granted supports for businesses and individuals alike.
Derry City centre has free Wi-Fi. It’s a great service.
It sounds like a proactive council.
Well Done Drogheda… I can imagine the ISP’s and mobile operators complaining , maybe even lobbying ministers to stop this, but hang in there….
Remember this was going to be rolled out in Dublin a few yrs ago, but an ISp put a stop to it..
No, the EU put a stop to it because it would have been illegal as it was taxpayer-funded
As a Drogheda man I have to say that there is fantastic work being done to boost the economy and profile of the town. There is a renewed sense of pride, togetherness and a belief that if the people of Drogheda pull together we can make it a great town again. The Local Heroes initiative has had a fantastic influence.
5000 Euro seems very cheap for a whole town centre, sure it’s Drogheda not London or New York but sounds too cheap to work well. Would love to see technical details on this.
I suspect that the cost is an add on to the investment already incurred by businesses in the normal course of trade.
10 to 20 omnidirectional outdoor antennas @ 100 a pop bouncing the bband around the place = 1000 to 2000 euro. So the figures seem right to me
Those figures are spot on if you use open source solutions rather than expensive vendor solutions.
this is a great idea , something I have been thinking about myself in my own area. I hope more towns follow suit. was in drogheda a couple of fridays ago and the motivation of the town is tangible. it looks like the whole town is working together and there is a definite buzz with some market stalls and the like. great to see as a couple of years ago I visited and couldn’t believe what a shithole it had become. the toll bridge and ruthless parking tolls surely must have played a part In this degeneration which is a shame on local and national government. however I fully support what local people are doing to fix the shambles that policy has left their town. well done people of drogheda and good luck
There are no more ‘scumbags’ (as you eloquently put it) in Drogheda than there are in any other large Irish town.
Kelly why would people be afraid to walk around ? It’s not detrot
Kelly why would people be afraid to walk around ? It’s not detroit
Well done to my town however ye could have used a more up to date picture as this pub is gone and there are much better pictures of drogheda am sure you could have found
Hopefully this will extend up as far as the Laurence Centre
Walking down the street safely should be the priority. There’s no point having a wi-fi signal if people are afraid to walk around.
Kelly your anti-Drogheda rhetoric is boring and unsubstantiated. I have lived there for 6 years and find the town full of character and community spirit. Yes it has it’s problems, but name me a town of similar population in the country that doesn’t? There are none.
Well done Drogheda! And if it works I’m sure the government will stick a tax on it. BIK to everyone entering Drogheda :)
brilliant idea well done comon the drogs
Well done for Drogheda but it’s certainly not the first town in Ireland that has done it. Carlow introduced such a service several years ago and Cork, Clonmel and a number of other Irish towns have been doing the same for some time…
Where in Clonmel can you get completely free wifi other than Mc Donald’s?
Thanks for the link and the info.
I contacted the the “author” and requested details whether the wifi was live and if so, which part of the town was covered. Apparently it is held up and the author says only part of the town is covered. Unfortunately he doesn’t say which part is covered and I certainly don’t known! Certainly free wifi attracts visitors and I make good use of them when on holiday. The only place I know personally of free wifi is Mc Donald’s. thatis a pain There are of course subscription base bitbuz and eircom hotspots. Perhaps the regulator should insist that commercial hotspots such as eircom equiped kiosks provide this service. Perhaps the cost of town wifi would be better put to use by giving eircom a one of payment to open their hotspots to the public in perpetuity, thus giving wifi to the town immediately.
A brilliant leap forward, well done to all. You can count on this Dub driving up to a bit of Christmas shopping to mark the gesture.
Useful when going North to do shopping
Well done Drogheda….hope it is a great success.
Well done to all involved. I think this is a fantastic development and should be a template to all of Irelands towns. I live beside the greedy Dundrum town centre but no community spirit exists that would encourage the same enterprise. In fact Dundrum village should use this template to help it recover from the shopping mall.
Didn’t Carlow roll out a town wide wireless mesh network a number of years back? Thought they were the first town to offer a free town-wide wifi offering?
Didn’t Carl
Is the vodafone call centre based up there ?
Vodaphone have a call-centre in Dundalk.
BT in the UK have a fantastic scheme called BT Fon where as a BT home or business broadband customer you can configure your wifi router with a few clicks to be part of the BT Fon network. This “public” BT customer wifi access uses every bodies home wifi at no cost to the public. Just think there is no national maintenance overhead, it’s secure as your home broadband is separated from public access and you can switch it off at any time – but BT now provide 3million extra wifi hotspots for their customers at no further infrastructure cost. Of course external use of connection should not eat into your allowance.
Now if our ISPs got their act together we (Ireland) could at no extra cost to Joe public provide a national public wifi Internet grid. Obviously security and audit trail etc would have to be accounted for but we have this national asset available to us in most if not every estate / street / business premises in the country!
This post is not a strategy document on how to make this happen it’s a concept on how we as a nation could embrace the great work of Drogheda, Derry and any others that may have started this.
have your say