Slashdot Mirror

Triumph The Insult C writes "About a month ago, the dot carried a story about the city of Tempe, AZ, laying claim to be the first major metropolitan area to provide city-wide broadband internet access. Well, things haven't gone exactly as planned, as one of the companies involved, MobilePro Corp, is now being investigated by the state for not holding the appropriate permits. As a resident of downtown Tempe, I hope the rollout isn't successful, as I would much prefer to see a more community-based effort, such as in Seattle, Austin, and New York City."

belial writes "The FreeNetworks Conference is in less than a month (June 6-8). If you want to find out what's happening in the Community Wireless Network world, this is the place to be. Keynotes include Tim O'Reilly, Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing, and a whole gaggle of wireless geeks from the FreeNetworks community. Find out about the latest happenings from BAWUG, Consume, NoCat, NYCWireless,SeattleWireless, WirelessLeiden, and more!"

akb writes "Manhattan Neighborhood Network has embarked on a project to combine two community networking communities in NYC, the nascent community wifi network on that isle with public access cable TV. The project has successfully conducted a test which involved cablecasting an mpeg4 video stream being transported by the nycwireless.net wireless node in Bryant Park."

dailywireless writes "Cometa Networks (formerly The Rainbow Project), a joint venture by IBM, Intel and AT&T, plans to merge Wi-Fi and cellular networks. 'Cometa's vision and plan for this is to offer a single sign-on, single authentication, seamless-roaming nationwide network,' said Michael Mass, vice president of marketing for the Communications Sector at IBM. 802 Plant reports 'AT&T will provide the network infrastructure and management, IBM the wireless installation and back-office system, and Intel the Banias processor. The company plans to have ubiquitous coverage - no further away than 5 minutes walk in an urban area or 5 minutes drive in a rural area - by 2004. which will require the deployment of more than 20,000 hotspot access sites across the U.S.' What fate awaits "free" networks like NYC Wireless, Seattle Wireless or Portland's PersonalTelco? Will AT&T use CoMeta's blanket coverage, with 20,000 "hotspots", to crush the "free" rebellion like a bug?"

bigfatlamer writes "This week's NY Times City Section has an article (FRRYYY) on wireless access in New York City's busiest park, Bryant Park. The director of the park has installed a free 802.11b network with complete coverage of the park with help from NYC Wireless. From the article: 'With some clever engineering and hardware from Cisco Systems and Intel, the wireless park was born. Just as park users could sit wherever they liked, so too could they gain access where they liked. The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.' NYC Wireless is currently working with the Parks Dept. to put similar networks in Madison Square and Tompkins Square Parks. If they could do Prospect Park (3 blocks from my house) life would be perfect." NYCwireless helps those who help themselves...

blastedtokyo writes: "According to this story from CNet, Time Warner Cable is going after people who share their wireless connections via NYC Wireless or other public share networks. All we need is a warchalking symbol that conveys 'I'm a lawyer who doesn't have time to figure out how to set up a WEP link.'" This might remind you of a story posted the other day about other ways cable ISPs are trying to lock down their networks.

Passacaglia writes "An article in the Washington Post reports that a coalition of companies, including Dell, Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and even the BSA, have filed a report with the FCC complaining about how cable providers are placing restrictions on how subscribers use broadband access. This is in the wake of the recent FCC ruling that cable providers need not open their networks to competition from outside ISPs. The restrictions include limits on VPNs, servers, and many things that would make broadband really worth having." Meanwhile, TWC sent nastygrams to people it suspects are using unsecured wireless networks, skimming the info from the public database of wireless access points.

burnsy and others sent in links to stories about 802.11b that are cropping up everywhere. The New York Times has one. (Well, two, actually.) Salon has one. InternetNews has a piece about Boingo, a new wireless start-up, that's also covered in this Forbes article. (The NYT article above also mentions Sputnik.) Both Boingo and Sputnik are trying to leverage the existing community wireless networks to speed their network build-outs. MIT's Tech Review has an interesting piece about a wireless start-up that has already tried and failed. Fixed wireless is also booming, according to an industry study.

Ant sends a link about the Geek Guard proposal that is floating around. Supposedly technology companies would form the backbone of a fast-response technology force. But Verizon was and is part of the problem with regard to communications, not part of the solution. A lot of technically-inclined people and groups like NYC Wireless did assist in lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, and they're still helping out businesses and people with no internet/phone connections and not even an ETA from Verizon on when Verizon might get around to hooking them up. If Verizon fulfilled their Geek Guard duties with all the rapidity that they, say, install DSL lines for competing DSL providers, they would have "rescheduled" their disaster response three times and we'd have an appointment for early November right now.