Start-up HotSpot Amsterdam plans to turn Amsterdam into a city where laptops can hook up anywhere to the Web.

The first seven base stations are already connecting historic areas, while the entire city center will be covered within three months.

“We’ll go on to cover all of Amsterdam with 125 base stations. The idea is to prove to the big boys that it can be done, and that consumers can live with a mobile phone and mobile Internet. The landline is dead,” said HotSpot Amsterdam founder Carl Harper.

HotSpot Amsterdam charges 4.95 euros a day or 14.95 euros a month for a connection of 256 kilobits per second, while 24.95 euros a month will buy a connection twice that fast.

Mantsala, in Finland, has an 11 square-kilometer WiFi network, available to the public and schools, while New York plans to build a city-wide WiFi network.

The Port of Amsterdam installed a WiFi network three months ago, covering its 30 square kilometers, but that network is not for public use.

From Reuters.