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The GovWiFi programme has been rolled out in some 350 government premises as scheduled, providing around 1,500 Wi-Fi hotspots, and there are more to come, the Permanent Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development (Communications and Technology), Mr Duncan Pescod, said today (June 27).
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the "Ubiquitous City - Hong Kong" (U-City) Fun Fair today, Mr Pescod said, "Building Hong Kong into a wireless city is one of the key initiatives under our Digital 21 Strategy. We launched the GovWiFi programme to provide the public with convenient and free access to wireless Internet facilities at government premises."
"These are not just passive access points. We are introducing services that can make use of the new Wi-Fi infrastructure to serve the public better by providing easy access to site-specific public information and services when connecting to GovWiFi at government premises," Mr Pescod said. The information available includes job vacancies, application procedures, various reports and forms at Job Centres, and the latest weather information in the vicinity of the GovWiFi premises.
Usage statistics show encouraging growth in adoption of the GovWiFi service by the public. With reference to the starting position of July 2008 when 130 premises were rolled out, the monthly usage in number of GovWiFi service connections has increased from around 59,000 to around 210,000 in May 2009, representing an average monthly growth of around 13%. In response to user demand, the Government will provide Wi-Fi facilities in 30 more premises, including venues of the Hong Kong 2009 East Asian Games, major district parks, more community halls and centres and a few more government offices.
The U-City project, run from November 2007 to June 2009, is a collaboration effort between the Government and the information and communications technology (ICT) industry to encourage the development of wireless applications using the public Wi-Fi networks in Hong Kong. It has in place an award scheme to encourage, subsidise and recognise the development of innovative Wi-Fi applications.
"As a direct result of the U-City project, there have been innovations that will have a positive impact on many different aspects of our daily lives. I am particularly excited by the fact that some of them have already been successfully commercialised into usable products and more are expected to do so," Mr Pescod said.
"The widespread availability of wireless networks will facilitate application developers to come up with new applications and will no doubt create business opportunities. This should mean additional employment and help foster further development of the ICT industry, truly a win/win outcome," he concluded.
At today's ceremony, 12 of the most innovative Wi-Fi applications received awards. They included a wireless location based system; mobile map; mobile portal; mobile video broadcast; peer-to-peer video streaming service on Wi-Fi networks; location based shopping search service and digital publish platform.
Details of the applications are available at www.hkwdc.org/marketing/captive.html. More information on GovWiFi can be found at www.gov.hk/wifi.
Ends/Saturday, June 27, 2009
Issued at HKT 16:40
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