Chattanooga has unveiled a plan to offer free Wi-Fi across the city.
Workers are in the process of rewiring the existing Wi-Fi in city-owned buildings, and in subsequent phases will open up Wi-Fi in parks and other open spaces, said Lacie Stone, director of communications for the city.
In buildings with Wi-Fi available in some areas, such as the city’s Youth and Family Development centers, workers are expanding the networks to cover the whole structures, Stone said.
Such a plan dates back to 2011, when the administration of former Mayor Ron Littlefield announced that it would conduct a test of free Wi-Fi in selected areas.
The city by then had already partly completed a network of 580 wireless routers across the city, initially designed as a network for police to use for their in-car laptops. But the network, a so-called wireless mesh, was never completed and the plan to offer free citywide Wi-Fi using the mesh network was shelved by the Berke administration.