CBS, NYC Turn on Free Wi-Fi in Midtown

More than 20 city blocks in midtown Manhattan will have free Wi-Fi access by the end of the month, courtesy of CBS and the New York City transit authority. What's the trick, given the rash of muni Wi-Fi failures we've being seeing? Advertising.

Areas of the "CBS Mobile Zone" are already live, with the entire area—from Times Square to Central Park South, between Sixth and Eighth avenues—slated to be covered within a few weeks, according to BetaNews. If all goes well, the city might go with an ad-supported Wi-Fi cloud covering all of Manhattan, and beyond.

Wi-Fi access points for the "zone" are mounted on midtown CBS billboards, as well as on MTA "urban panels" (weather-proof flat-panel TVs) near subway entrances. CBS also plans on handing out free routers to area businesses for indoor access to the Wi-Fi cloud.

Of course, nothing's really free, and the price you pay for access to the CBS Wi-Fi network is advertising. First, you'll get a splash page: an ad-supported portal complete with news, sports, weather, and the like (all linking to CBS content, I'm guessing); meanwhile, BetaNews reports that when you're near a particular billboard in the "zone," you might get ads from the advertiser who's sponsoring that particular billboard. I'd imagine the same deal could work for the guy who puts a "CBS Mobile Zone" router in his deli.

Ads (or should I say, more ads) surrounding my Web content isn't exactly my favorite thing, but if it's done the right way—that is, so as not to totally disrupt my browsing experience—and we get free, city-wide Wi-Fi in the bargain, I'm all for it.

Related:
CBS links up billboards for NYC Wi-Fi network [BetaNews]