Nation's Largest Free Public Wi-Fi To Be Launched In Harlem

New York City will now be home to the nation's largest Wi-Fi network in a new step to improve the city's Internet access, especially in lower income areas, NBC News reported.

Covering 95 blocks of Harlem, the Harlem Wi-Fi Network will be the largest outdoor Wi-Fi network in the United States, serving approximately 80,000 Harlem residents, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The network is not supposed to be a free alternative to expensive wired networks provided by companies like Time Warner Cable, Rahul Merchant, New York City's Chief Information and Innovation Office, told Mashable.

Merchant said they created the network "so that folks who are walking through the neighborhood through the city are able to just get an access to anything they want in terms of data," and that "this is a pure public service," not a competitor for wired home providers, Mashable reported.

Once completed, the network will be free of charge, have speeds of at least 2mbits and will cover the area from 110th to 138th street, between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Madison Avenue, NBC News reported.

According to Mashable, the first phase of the network's rollout will be completed by the end of December, and officials said the last phase will be finished by May 2014.

"It will provide free, fast outdoor Internet connections for portable devices 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Bloomberg said at the press conference. "And I can tell you, as I was driving up here, I wish I had some of that. It was hard to make a phone call, but much harder to get data."

The city collaborated with the Harlem Children's Zone and Sky-Packets to launch the Harlem Wi-Fi network, with funding from a public-private partnership with the Fuhrman Family Foundation. It was Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman who approached the city with the idea of creating a wireless network in Harlem, the Fuhrman's said during the press conference.