Silicon Valley, dubbed as the nation’s super highway for everything innovative, unveiled its new free outdoor wireless Internet program to be set in the core of downtown San Jose on Thursday with city officials calling it the fastest widespread connection in North America.

According to a release, the city teamed with SmartWAVE Technologies and Ruckus Wireless Inc. to deploy the public Wi-Fi system that will be available from Viola Avenue to the south, North 6th Street to the east, East St. John Street to the north and Almaden Boulevard to the West.

The city of San Jose spent a one-time cost of $94,000 to install the WiFi hubs around the city, which are plugged into a number of different frequented traffic lights. The service will cost another $22,000 to maintain on a year-by-year basis, relatively the same yearly cost of the previous system, but boasts a speed that is four times faster. The network will also help boost the speed of pay-to-park transactions throughout the city and near the HP Pavilion. In all, the service will be funded by San Jose’s general fund as well as the city’s parking revenue.

In previous trials, San Jose had tried to enable a number of Wi-Fi “hot spots” located in popular locations around town, but consumer technology outpaced the advancements in widespread WiFi capability.

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