{"id":13733,"date":"2016-03-23T17:33:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T21:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13733"},"modified":"2016-03-23T17:33:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T21:33:19","slug":"wifi-eyed-for-aurora-light-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wifi-eyed-for-aurora-light-posts\/","title":{"rendered":"WiFi eyed for Aurora light posts"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

WiFi could be coming to an Aurora light post near you \u2013 that is if Aurora partners with Bell Canada to make it happen. <\/p>\n

Bell has approached several York Region municipalities, including Aurora, on possible partnerships to bring \u201csmall cell\u201d technology to help relieve the pressure on their wireless networks. Since Aurora converted its street lights to an energy saving LED system last year, the new fixtures are essentially WiFi ready, now it is just a matter of turning them on. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something we\u2019re quite excited about,\u201d said Anthony Ierullo, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Strategic Planning. \u201cThe Town has made an investment in LED infrastructure\u2026and an ancillary benefit of that is these poles have WiFi capabilities that can be enabled with some hardware and software. The technology is enabled in the LED heads, but the infrastructure hasn\u2019t been put in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cBell Canada has really shown an interest in partnering with the municipalities and have launched a pilot project to leverage those potential WiFi networks to take some pressure off their existing wireless networks. There is a significant concern with the wireless network providers about the amount of traffic with smart phones running through their networks and the need to ramp up those networks. This type of partnership could potentially give them an opportunity to take some of that traffic off their main network and onto this ancillary network, and potentially assist in not requiring as much infrastructure in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Infrastructure which may not be needed as frequently in the future include additional cell towers.<\/p>\n

While many points of a potential partnership need to be \u201cclarified\u201d before moving forward, Mr. Ierullo added the telecom company is \u201cdefinitely interested\u201d in carrying out talks and looking at benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are potential options around public WiFi that could potentially come out of it,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s an initiative we\u2019re excited about and are chasing down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The potential program was recently brought to Aurora\u2019s Economic Development Advisory Committee. There, Council members and citizen members offered their enthusiasm. Councillor John Abel, for instance, said such a partnership could address cell \u201cshortcomings\u201d along the Yonge Street component. <\/p>\n

Citizen member Marilee Harris, on the other hand, said she looked forward to seeing whether the Town of Aurora could get a revenue stake in such an endeavour. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about partnering with Bell to have them use this network to sell their services,\u201d said Mr. Ierullo. \u201cThere may be a municipal component to it, but that is not what their interest is.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WiFi could be coming to an Aurora light post near you \u2013 that is if Aurora partners with Bell Canada to make it happen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3zv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 14:11:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}