The company deployed 26 hotspots, plans on making the service permanent

Nov 1, 2011 15:03 GMT  ·  By

Last week, Nokia held the Nokia World 2011 conference in London, and now the company has announced the availability of free WiFi service for those who live in this city.

Only in a trial phase at the moment, the service will provide users with wireless networking in central London, and should increase Nokia's presence in one of the most important European capitals.

The company has put in place a number of 26 separate hotspots, and delivers the free WiFi to West End and shopping districts, as well as to a series of places that are most visited by tourists.

The company will keep the service alive in the area until the end of the year, but chances are that it will make it a permanent service starting with 2012, provided that it is successful enough.

BBC reports that, while the hotspots could offer theoretical speeds of up to 20Mbps, users will benefit only from speeds of 1Mbps on the downlink. They will also receive 500Kbps on the uplink.

Nokia plans on offering those who will purchase its new Windows Phones the possibility to find these hotspots easily through the Nokia Maps application available on them.

However, that will happen only as the service will start picking up Steam.

Nokia is said to plan on offering a one-click-and-go WiFi service unlike other providers in the country.

Thus, users will not need to provide their personal information to access the Internet, nor would they need a paid subscription to enjoy the service.

However, ZDNet explains that users will need to accept the terms and conditions of the service before being able to access the free WiFi.

Users will be able to enjoy access to these hotspots on a wide range of devices, including tablet PCs, smartphones, laptops or netbooks.

Apparently, Nokia aims at bringing the services to even more markets around the world, provided that it will enjoy the expected success.