Belleville council discussed free Wi-Fi plan for downtown

The motion for the free Wi-Fi plan during the meeting was carried swiftly without conflict. Photo By Brock Butler, QNet News

By Brock Butler

BELLEVILLE – A plan to put free Wi-Fi in downtown Belleville was discussed by city council Monday evening.

Free Wi-Fi will encourage more people to visit and spend time in the downtown area, according to a report to council from Karen Post, the city’s manager of economic and strategic initiatives. It will also give the city and the Belleville Downtown Improvement Area with valuable data about visitors in the downtown, Post’s report says.

The cost of the project, about $100,000, will be covered by roughly $42,000 from the city, $30,000 from a grant from the Rural Economic Development Program of the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, $23,000 from the Belleville Downtown Improvement Area, and $5,000 from the Bay of Quinte Regional Marketing Board.

The area to be covered by the Wi-Fi is from Bridge Street to the downtown from Bridge Street to McNabb Towers at 350 Front St.

The project will provide funding not only for the free Wi-Fi but also include analytics software that will give the city and its partners data on visitors in the downtown.

While users will get free access, Post said she is looking to obtain data in the analytics.

Councillor Sean Kelly asked Post a question regarding what kind of data will she be collecting, raising concerns about people’s privacy.

“We live in a world now where it’s 24/7 we’re tracked, people know exactly where you are, your phone is tinging off towers,” he said.

Kelly wanted to know what the association will be taking from this data. He raised concerns about it tracking what stores someone was in; how much money they spent; what vehicle they used; and other details.

She said the data collected would not be considered personal. She said it would be very basic numbers.

“When folks login, we may ask them their postal codes so we’re able to tell where folks are from, coming into the downtown, we’re going to track the number of folks that are in the downtown and connected to Wi-Fi, we’ll be able to track how long they spent on Wi-Fi, how many return trips they had to downtown Belleville,” she said.

The Wi-Fi infrastructure is expected to be installed this spring.

Mayor Panciuk showed his support.

“I see this evolving in the future to cover all of our parks, all of our trails, all of our public space. It’s a part of what we have to do in today’s world,” he said.

The motion in the city council meeting was carried swiftly without any further discussion.