There was once a dream : probably accessible from the mountain-top. That dream was free WLAN access across urban areas. After roaming a few cities over the past few months, I can confirm such unfettered access is quite rare, and I suspect unintentional.

Surely venues can offer 50m radius of bandwidth-limited access without huge cost , giving overlapping coverage ?

People like swisscom, MONZOON and the ironically named "Free Internet" WLANs require registration and payment. Even Startbucks insist you obtain a password and are limited to 30mins.

I recently spent 20mins in the freezing cold the other night writing a post to thsi very forum from an iphone in the freezing cold street on Limmatquai.

Some more astute providers have included advertising on their jump page, and I am sure they could embed subtle advertising to offset any costs...

BigD

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You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

Until Google decides to give free WiFi access to the masses I fear unfortunately this will remain the status quo. Other companies do not stand to gain much from providing such a service for free and public authorities do not deem it a priority for its citizens. I still harbour the hope that this will change in the not too distant future.

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's git nüt wo's nid git u aus wo's git git's nid für ging, me nimmt's woe's chunnt u lat's la gah.

There's free WiFi over most of the city centre of Luzern, though it's limited to 2 hours and is really, really slow. The thought is there at least.

It has an annoying opening page that you have to click through, which means my iPhone apps can't use it, but browsing is still possible.

it's been out there a while but you might want to purchase this

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There's free WiFi in Baden. It's limited to 90 minutes a session, but there's nothing to stop you logging in again immediately. It's just inconvenient.

http://www.badenwlan.ch/

it looks like it's only available very close to the train station at the moment though?

Or along the Bruggerstrasse where ABB and Alstom are.