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Paris, The City Of Wi-Fi?
TheMatt writes "An article at the IHT describes an effort to make Paris one big Wi-Fi hotspot. The project, with partners like RATP and Cisco, if approved, will place two or three antennae outside each of the 372 Metro stations in Paris and link them through an existing fiber network that runs through the subway tunnels.
The current pilot project is centered along the route of Bus No. 38. You can sign up for access to the pilot which is free until June 30."
I thought there was some legal issue w.r.t. WiFi in France -- that the 2.4ghz spectrum area was reserved by the French military?
stupid extrans... grrr
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
Doesn't France have some really low limit on encryption? Like 48bit encryption?
Does that apply to wireless as well?
Anyone have more on this?
Look at the RATP's metro map. Unless they're planning to include all of the RER stations in that, Paris will not be totally covered by Wi-Fi. Even given a 300-metre radius, which is probably being hopelessly optimistic, you won't have full coverage the way you do with GSM wireless coverage - the stations are usually more than 300m apart, not to mention the 'shadows' created by buildings, etc. in the path of the signal.
Now, if they mounted transmitters on each wireless tower or minitower or microtower, you'd have 100% coverage of the city.
Nevertheless, it is a good idea.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Just thinking about my work I've done in Paris.. there are many times the stations are simply swamped with people. Laptop wifi is just out of the question. Far too many people and no real area to sit down. Besides, you only have minutes in a subway stop before your train comes. Even with Hibernate, my W2K box takes a while to be ready for use.
That really only leaves handheld devices, like a trusty ole iPaq. But.. with anyone with an iPaq (or laptop for that matter) probably also carries a mobile telephone - probably with bluetooth.
So in the 5 minutes you've got in the subway station, why not just go to street-level, turn on your PDA, and connect via GPRS. The iPaq with bluetooth is fantastic for downloading and running a quick scan on your email.
Plus if you really want to sit down and check your mail or surf, then zip off to a Brasserie for a coffee too.
Gare du nord now has WiFi.. I spend many hours sitting there waiting for my trains. Hey that's a great idea - wire up the trains themselves with WiFi. A Thalys or TGV with WiFi access would rock.
Here in State College, PA I usually eat at a locally owned coffee and bagel shop called Irvings or a large regional grocery chain called Wegmans. Both places offer free wifi, the local Starbucks doesn't even offer wifi and if it did you would need to pay ~$6/hr.. If two places are of equal quality, but one offers free access, where would you go?
uhm, I've done this in Bryant Park, New York, and it was a great way to stay connected to people at home in Europe, without wires, without cost. I think that experiment is still running
http://www.nycwireless.net/
This is exactly what I was looking for as I'm going to Paris next week. There are lots of people wandering around the middle of town with laptops, sitting in the park with laptops. Of course you wouldn't be sitting outside with one in winter - however I don't really think that's the period they'd envisage most users. Using a laptop on the metro is not really a practical proposition.
Possible users?
Business travellers using one of the major stations with an hour to kill in the cafe.
Tourists emailing home.
Day trippers from somewhere else in Europe who want to email home/check the internet for something (Gare du Nord is a terminals for Eurostar).
All depends how much it costs of course. I'll definitely use it when it's free.
THe local starbucks charges 30$ per month. HEllOOOOOO! I tend to study at starbucks, so i could easly rack up 3-6 hours a week, but im not willing to shell out 30 bucks for that, especially if im not there for a few weeks. THink aobut it, anyone who has a wireless laptop, probably already is paying for a connection at home. THis would dprobably almost double the cost of most peoples connections. I woul dlove to see figures of how the service is working, as far as subscribers.
MAybe if they went with 1$ a day, i would have used it. OR maybe a discount plan, for every 1$ of coffee you buy, you get a percentage off the 30$
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Where they really need Wi-Fi is inside the metro tunnels. Surely they could install some leaky coax or seomthing that will make it work for the people actually travelling in the Trains.
I live in Paris (I'm not french, my work sent me here), and I have to travel the full length of Line 1 each day. The trip from Chateau de Vincennes to La Defense each day is 45 minutes to an hour, and if I could make my laptop work for that time, that would cut my workday by nearly the same amount as my travel time. I've been waiting for them to do the same thing with the mobile phones. Right now, the phones work in some tunnels, and not in others.
It's true that all the cables and fiber run through the metro tunnels, that makes it easy to hook up any building with fiber, because nothing is very far from a a Metro station. Both Cable Internet and DSL here in Paris is available everywhere.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I have been in contact with a friend in Tallinn, Estonia and he tells me that Tallin is full of publically accessible Wi-Fi hot spots. You can see more on this page, referenced at Wifi Free hot spots.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Exactly. Look how well Ricochet did. It was built, and nobody came (no pun intended). It might make a comeback, as predicted, but we'll see.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
You're right. I can see this service being valuable to a tourist.
I was looking from my perspective: Living in/near San Francisco for 8 years, I couldn't see this service being very useful to me. Sure, access to resturant reviews would be nice, but whenever I'm out with my friends, we can come up with plenty of recomendations without the aid of a computer. And I can pick up a free paper and flip to the resturant review section.
In the short term, I do not see many tourists using this service. For all their inconvenience, a good map, guidebook, and phrasebook will cost you about $50 total and can fit in your pockets or a backpack. Sure, you don't have a GPS or a phone, but I'm not sure a GPS is necessary within a metro (There are maps at the train and underground stations. It's Paris, getting lost is fun! And you're pretty safe compared to an American city), and there are many pay phones (Many with web terminals).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Ricochet had it right when they started, then simply screwed it up over and over again as time passed.
...What, the now dead company with no active phone or employees? Explaining this, did nothing. I finally gave up and decided if they want "their" cash they will have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
$29.95/month + I think $5 or $10 for modem rental, total about $40/month. Reasonable, if only 28.8.
Oh, now you have to buy the modem for $300 upfront, well shit that's a high but it's a 1 time charge. This is the deal when I signed up. I loved my Ricochet access, most often working a 1/2 day at the coffee shop near the train, eat lunch, take train in to the office for the other 1/2. Some of my most productive coding was in that coffee shop. 28.8 was more then resonable for email and "work related" web surfing, and in a way it was a plus because it kept me from even trying to play games over it.
Ricochet was great, the network was expanding, they had a huge deal cut with MCI/Worldcom (yah, but at the time this sounded good) to expand the network and upgrade it. When I signed up they promised speeds of 128k for the next modem versions (with "substantial" rebate for current modems) or 64k with existing modems.
The new 128k service rolls out, for like $80/month. They never mentioned a more then double price hike for the new service when they signed me up... Oh yah, and if I want anything more then 28.8 I'll need to upgrade, my $300 less then a year old modem that was going to 64k on the new network now wasn't. We'll give you a $100 rebate off a new $300-500 modem for having the eariler one, but we'll still charge you $80/month to use it.
"Thankfully" I still had my modem, speed, and price that I liked (28.8 was fine at $30/month). But no new such modems or accounts were offered. If anyone new wanted Ricochet, they needed to shell out huge cash for the 128k "service" which still had much less coverage then the 28.8.
They were bankrupt within a year.
Just as they went bankrupt (same month) they decide to "renew" my annual subscription for another $300 charge to my Wellsfargo credit card. Never mind that A) the service didn't exist anymore, B) I had canceled it, and C) that credit card account itself had been CANCELED over a YEAR previous. Wellsfargo still let them put a charge on it without question. They said I could "clearly dispute it and it would be no problem", but later said I had to first personally try to resolve it with the vender.
To this day I still get a creditor of the month trying to get me to pay that now $500 "dept" that Wellsfargo allowed to be placed by a bankrupt company onto a credit card acount that had been canceled for over a year.
Fuck Ricochet and Fuck Wellsfargo. Long live WiFi!!!!
My