Underworld Wide Web: Moscow to launch wifi in cemeteries

If the service proves popular, authorities will look about expanding it to the rest of the capital's 133 cemeteries

MOSCOW: Residents in Moscow already enjoy free wireless Internet in cafes and on the metro system but now authorities in the city have also decided to bring wifi to a more unusual setting -- some of its most storied cemeteries.

The free services are set to start working next year for visitors of the Vagankovo, Troyekurovo and Novodevichy cemeteries, where the likes of author Anton Chekov, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin are buried.

"These cemeteries are like open air museums," Lilya Lvovskaya, a spokesperson from city-run funeral service Ritual, which runs Moscow's graveyards, told AFP.



"People often come and find themselves standing in front of a grave and want to know more about the person lying there."

If the wireless Internet service proves popular then the authorities will look about expanding it to the rest of the sprawling capital's 133 cemeteries.

According to the Moscow city website, every year some 120,000 people are buried in the city and there are some 8 million graves there.



The Novodevichy and Vagankovo cemeteries already have GPS systems installed to help visitors locate graves of famous individuals.

The city in October launched an online system to auction off family plots in cemeteries.