Taxis in London will now have free Wi-Fi for customers.CNN reported that the initiative has been launched by Eyetease Limited and will start from March 2013.
"London is the first of several major cities we are launching CabWiFi." CEO of Eyetease, Richard Corbett said to CNN, "Our ultimate goal is to make CabWiFi a standard service in all London black cabs," he added.
So far approximately 1000 of London's Black Cabs have signed up for the service. How it works is that every for 15 minutes of free Wi-Fi access the passenger has to sit through a 15-second advertisement.
Corbett said in a press release, "This is really great news for London. With dwell times averaging 15 minutes in the back of a taxi, what better way to pass the time than to use your laptop, tablet, book reader or phone with guilt free internet access."
The Wall Street Journal reported that the free Wi-Fi service has just recently been approved by Transport for London. "The bigger goal is to build a mesh-network where one device can talk to another. When we get to a certain critical mass we can start to have a network across the city," said Corbett to WSJ.
To date there are 24,000 cabs in the city of London and Corbett hopes that they will be able to get at least 10 percent of them to sign up for the program.
The device, which was manufactured in Latvia only takes two minutes to install in a black cab and is no cost to the cab driver, Corbett noted.
He added for advertisers its an ideal way to showcase their products, being that black cabs are such a commodity in London.
."We can send new ad content on an hourly basis so it can be very time and location specific. We know where each cab is, you can imagine the campaigns. We also know the device that is being used. We can target quite precisely," said Corbett to WSJ.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
