Residents and visitors to London will now be able to access the Internet from parts of the city for free thanks to a new Wi-Fi network now live along a 13.6-mile stretch of the River Thames.

MeshHopper began offering a pay version of the network last year, and the free version is available through a partnership with free-hotspot.com. Service is available from Millbank southeastward through the city to Greenwich.

In August, the network will be extended to a total of 22.3 miles, the group said.

Users are required to view an advertisement for 15 to 30 seconds every 15 minutes that they stay connected to the network. Those who may want to bypass those ads need to sign up for the service provided by MeshHopper.

In either case, download speeds are somewhat slower than what many may be accustomed to. Free service offers speeds of about 256kbps, while the pay service offers download speeds of 500 kbps -- equivalent to the speed of modern cellular data connections.

London is not the first city in Europe to get municipal Wi-Fi. BT has several small Wi-Fi deployments in towns across the UK, and Free-hotspots operates about 1,500 small networks in locations across Europe.

Paris is also in the process of building their own network through a joint partnership with Alcatel-Lucent and French mobile carrier SFR.