Toronto Hydro owns the utility poles, even, and they're still a problem: Toronto Hydro bought the street light system from the City of Toronto, ITBusiness.ca reports, and they were unaware that their plan to bring Wi-Fi to the financial district would be snagged by problems at the poles. While they had location candidates for placing Wi-Fi nodes, they found that many poles in the financial district lacked power at all hours of the day; this is often the case for street lighting. They had to upgrades those poles. In other areas, they found an absence of poles entirely, which required working around a lack of assets.

Law enforcement also raised objections to the telecom arm of Toronto Hydro's plan to offer free service in the first six months of operation. They wanted user tracking to avoid "illegal or unsavory" network uses. Instead of applying a direct tracking, they came up with a compromise: You must supply a cell phone number to which the system uses SMS to deliver a user login and password. (For international travelers, that means "free" service carries a US$1.00 to $2.50 surcharge, approximately, for international SMS.)

When the system goes to a for-fee basis, they'll use a different authentication method that will still require some kind of physical personal identity confirmation.

The specter of electromagnetic emissions also raised its head, but Toronto Public Health gave the utility a green light.

The goal reamins to cover 600 square kilometers over three years.