Wireless Internet cover for the whole of Bucharest

The people of Bucharest could soon connect to wireless Internet, wherever they are in the city.

“The city should be covered by a WiMax-type wireless Internet connection (which is a more advanced version of the current Wi-Fi technology) by the end of next year,” the Communications and Information Technology Minister Zsolt Nagy stated yesterday during the “From chalk to computer” seminar organised by Ziarul Financiar and by IT solutions provider Siveco.

“WiMax is the best technical solution there is to cover large areas such as big cities,” Nagy told Ziarul Financiar. “A commercial operator will probably be the first to take this step in Bucharest”s case.”

This technology, mostly promoted worldwide by Intel, entails the installation of powerful antennas that will provide wireless Internet access over large areas (up to 30 kilometres).

Until wireless Internet access becomes generally available, statistics show that the number of broadband Internet connections will probably double until the end of this year.

At the same time, the number of Internet users has doubled this year, Nagy stated. There are some 4.9 million Internet users in Romania at the moment, that is 23% of the population, according to Catalin Patrasescu, an associate of the market research company SmartPoint.

The number of Internet connections in mid 2005 amounted to 1.93 million, compared with 973,000 at the end of last year.

Broadband connection (that is those of at least 128 Kbps), accounted for 27% of the total. Their number increased by 36.57% from the end of 2004, to 522,000.

Still, despite the doubling of the number of Romanians that have access to the Internet, there are still many places, especially in rural areas, that are isolated in terms of communications.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology will receive a 60 million-dollar loan from the World Bank at the end of this month in order to implement a project that targets the narrowing of the “digital divide” between cities and villages. mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro