Downtown Las Vegas free Wi-Fi turned on

Free Wi-Fi is now live in downtown Las Vegas.

The service, provided by LV.net in partnership with the city of Las Vegas, has been in testing for a couple of months and is now ready to go.

People within a one-mile radius of the Fremont Street Experience can access free 1 Mbps Wi-Fi from smart phones and laptops. In the next year, the company plans to expand to a 3-square-mile radius and speeds of up to 10 Mbps.

The Wi-Fi networks will have different names depending on where a user is located, but all will contain the company name and an indication that it’s free.

LV.net sold Wi-Fi connections downtown for five years before making a deal with the city to offer free Wi-Fi. The city agreed not to charge LV.net for keeping transmitters on city property in exchange for the municipal service.

“Businesses need the Internet to recruit talent. Leaders in tech want to see how savvy our city is,” Marty Mizrahi of LV.net said in a statement. “Startup companies in Silicon Valley first ask Las Vegas developers, ‘How fast is your Internet?’ Now city officials can say, ‘We provide free Wi-Fi downtown.’”