Wireless Nomad (wirelessnomad.com) was a for-profit cooperative based in Toronto, Canada providing subscriber-owned home and business Internet access along with free Wi-Fi wireless Internet access and music to over a hundred nodes, making it the largest free Wi-Fi network in the country at the time.
[1] [2] [3] It was founded by Steve Wilton and Damien Fox in January 2005, and turned its DSL internet connections over to private ISP TekSavvy in March 2009.
[5] Instead of using Bell Sympatico's or Rogers Cable's retail high-speed Internet access services to provide service to their wireless access points, they were their own ISP under Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) rules that compel large providers like Rogers and Bell to resell their local loop cable and DSL circuits to smaller ISPs at a regulated (tariffed) price.
The antenna and WiFi gear was removed from Kensington and installed on the rooftop of Linuxcaffe (named after the Linux Operating system) on the corner of Harbord St. and Grace St. in downtown Toronto in June 2008.
[11] [12] [13] [14] In 2008, the co-op filed a submission to the CRTC in support of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers in the Bell throttling issue.