How WiFi technology is helping to regenerate historic city centres

Ingolstadt, a historic German university city established in the 1400s and supporting 130,000 inhabitants as well as a busy tourist and student population from around the world, has opted to modernise its city centre by providing free Wi-Fi access, based on wireless technology from Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Like many historic cities and towns across Europe, Ingolstadt needed to attract visitors to its city centre as well as support local residents and shop traders. It opted to make the new Wi-Fi network free and very simple to use - people simply register with their mobile phone number and receive access to the network for the following 14 days. Ingolstadt intends to offer more local services based on the network by adding WLAN-driven GPS guidance for traffic.

The new Wi-Fi service is managed by IN-City, a local trade association which encourages members including shops and cafés to participate in the public project by offering Wi-Fi access points. It provides free Wi-Fi to visiting academics and students from around the world via the “education raming” (eduroam) network. The system implemented in Ingolstadt is the first eduroam access that is not operated by a university or college.