Want to see the future? Go to Brighton, where it is being created through a blend of anarchy and civic pride. A partnership between the free Wi-Fi movement and the local council has now delivered wireless broadband via a new WiMax service.

Almost the whole of Brighton is now blanketed by a wireless internet service that delivers data faster than broadband. It carries public sector, commercial and educational traffic - another first for the city. Schools have multi-megabits of data, businesses get the equivalent of high-speed leased lines, students have fast data in their dorms, and everyone gets free Wi-Fi in pubs and cafes.

The Brighton metronet, as it is called, emerged after the council noticed the buzz surrounding free Wi-Fi. "Nobody in Brighton is ever further than 10 minutes from a free wireless broadband hotspot," says Bill Parslow, head of ICT & e-Government at Brighton & Hove City Council. "This free Wi-Fi culture permeates the city and serves a real economic function, allowing free and easy access to the internet for mobile workers."

The network is based on the WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) standards. "We used WiMax as it outperforms Wi-Fi in both range and bandwidth," says Parslow. "Wi-Fi might have a range of 50 metres in reality, but the Brighton metronet`s longest link is 7.5km - and this link alone provides 24 megabits per second of uncontended symmetric bandwidth."

As well as the Skype VoIP client, commercial grade telephony was tested during the Brighton Festival, and is on offer to businesses through Sabre Telecommunications . It is a service the council could also use to eliminate its internal phone bills.