Free Wi-Fi coming to Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park

By the end of May, Sunset Park is going to be on-line in a big way, with residents, shoppers and strollers enjoying free Wi-Fi along Fifth Avenue between 38^th and 64^th Streets, as well as inside the 26-acre park for which the neighborhood is named.

The Wi-Fi network – which will turn the strip into one long hot spot — is being paid for entirely by property owners and merchants who are members of the Sunset Park Business Improvement District which, led by Executive Director Renée Giordano, has been striving to improve the neighborhood for nearly 18 years.

Both Giordano and Bill Brent, chief technology officer of Sky-Packets, the company that is responsible for the technical aspect of the project, have high hopes for the effect on the neighborhood of providing free Wi-Fi.

“The residents will have availability, businesses will have access to changes in regulations and workshops, and college students will be able to do their homework in the park. I’m not even sure of the potential,” Giordano said. “It seems like the right thing to do.”

The logistics of the project have taken almost two years to sort out, but the implementation of the technology has only taken a month, with installation already underway, with the entire area expected to be wired within the next few weeks with residents and businesspeople accessing the Wi-Fi by logging onto !Sunset Park Free WiFi with their digital devices.

Brent says that it makes sense for this amenity to be offered to this community. Comparing Sunset Park to Chelsea, where Wi-Fi is currently available, Brent said, “only about half of those people actually benefit from it.” In comparison, “For people in Sunset Park,” he went on, “it’s a God-send.”

Brent hopes that the project will lead to people saving money on data plans and feeling more connected, as well as bringing the neighborhood the attention it deserves.

“A community that isn’t considered the most advantaged has an opportunity to be proud,” Brent said. “People will stop thinking of it as a string of bodegas, and are going to start thinking of it as a community, and they deserve that.”