If you’re out in public looking for WiFi, chances are you will find it at a local cafe or a nearby Starbucks, but what if you’re not near any of these locations? That means that users will need to rely on cellular data, which is fine, but sometimes could be slower or unavailable due to poor coverage. This essentially means that you would be without an internet connection.
Well it seems that over in Porto, a port city in Portugal, a startup company has come up with a rather novel idea of providing WiFi to the masses of the city, and how they are going about doing that to cover the entire city is by equipping several hundred vehicles with WiFi routers, 600 to be exact. Dubbed NetRiders, This allows the vehicles to roam the entire city whilst providing its residents with WiFi.
The company has since moved its headquarters to the US which means that its idea could soon be making its way to those in the country, assuming that they clear whatever legal/regulatory hurdles that they have to first. The company is aiming at cities such as San Francisco, New York City, and Austin as its initial markets before moving on to other parts of the country.
It’s a pretty awesome idea and on top of providing WiFi to the masses, the company’s NetRider devices are also able to help the cities they operate in with collecting valuable data, such as how to manage their waste and also the health of their roads.
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