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Pittsburgh Launches Large, Free, Public WiFi Network

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-knoxville dept.

Snkscore writes: "Pittsburgh launched an outdoor public Wi-Fi network on Monday. The story here from cnet talks about their plan to cover 4sq miles of downtown Pittsburgh with 10Mb internet access and charge a $20/month access fee (cheap!!). I think this is the coolest thing. Next, I think they should setup access points along the train tracks." Update: 05/21 18:59 GMT by T : Garbled URL fixed now -- sorry 'bout that.

5 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Community WiFis by glenstar · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I have been trying to get my city (small suburban community north of Seattle) to do something like this for quite some time. It is definitely technically doable, but politically a no-go. My firm has discussed doing a guerilla-style implementation.

    Anyone have any stories about pulling something like that off?

  2. $20/m == free? by sehryan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How exactly does $20/m equal a free network?

    PS the link to the article is messed up.

    --
    The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
  3. The real link by BlueFall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The story is here. As for free vs. $20, it looks like it's free for now and they want to start charging $20 eventually.

  4. Re:What a great way... by dreamt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, just a quick note, Pittsburgh is very much NOT a steel city any more. Its not quite the high-tech city that somewhere like Boston is, but still is pretty high-tech. (I'm orig from Pgh, but live in Boston now).

    I don't even think that there are any working steel mills within 10-15 miles of the city, maybe even further. There is, however, CMU, the supercomputing center, UPMC medical center and a whole bunch of other research facilities.

  5. how? by BenTheDewpendent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    what channels does one go threw to get this kind of thing done? I could setup a gorilla system and cover a few blocks of down town area Salem if i played my cards right but id love to get Salem to do it and have it be offical and be involved in the implemtation of it.

    who do you have to call? how many signatures are needed? how many tons of paper work must be delt with? startup fee and cost? etc... any one??