Don't try logging onto that free downtown WiFi that former deputy mayor Sheldon Forgette funded...it's gone.
See: Downtown WiFi project is live
Forgette owner of North Bay Computer Doctors, confirmed to CKAT the program has wrapped up and won't be continued.
"It was a one year contract we had with the city and basically it wrapped up last month (Nov.)," said Forgette. "We did see some usage out of it, but it wasn't as high as we thought it would be."
The service ran from the North Bay Museum on Oak Street all the way up to the Bus Terminal.
Forgette says his company enjoyed working on the program.
"It cost a bit of money, but in the end, it's an operating cost of about $70 a month, after you put all the equipment up, but it was a fun project, it was fun to do," he says.
Forgette also says there are no plans to bring free WiFi to any other part of the city at this time.
He says the project ran into a lot of speed bumps over the past three years it appeared the concept was close to being dead a few times.
One problem was trying to come to an agreement with North Bay Hydro to use their poles to send the signal. That idea ended up being an extensive one.
“They wanted to charge us a bunch of money to rent the hydro poles and they wanted to charge us for an engineer to make drawings on what the antennae would look like on the pole,” said Forgette.
Due to that cost, Forgette says he decided to go another direction and put the Wifi technology on some downtown buildings instead.
