Mayor Vows to Blanket Tbilisi with Free WiFi

Tbilisi City Hall announced about municipal wireless network plan, which will cover the entire capital city with free WiFi access before the end of this year.

Gigi Ugulava, the Tbilisi mayor, said that by the end of 2012 the capital “will be a city of internet with 100% covered by wireless access.”

Municipal wireless networks are already available in few neighborhoods of Tbilisi.

“I know many people will say: ‘who cares about internet, when I do not know how to feed my kid’; that would really be a legitimate complaint… We should be directed towards long-term tasks and trust me only education can help overcome poverty,” Ugulava said, adding that free access to internet was “as important as access to healthcare.”

“When we are talking about freedom of speech, here too we should give people unrestricted access to information,” he added.