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Largest Citywide Wi-Fi Deployment
Grumpy writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that Aiirnet will begin installing, next month, the largest single Wi-Fi deployment in the nation in the city of Cerritos in Southern California. Ultimately, anyone with a laptop or wireless device will be able to surf the Web from virtually anywhere in the city's 8.6-square-mile area. Scores of wireless networking transmitters are being placed atop public buildings, traffic lights and other structures to blanket the city. The 51,000 residents of Cerritos have not had DSL broadband access to the Internet because the city is too far from the telephone company's central office and Cable Internet access has not been an option either."
Not true. Actually it's already started, you can get wifi access in Cerritos (as well as a great deal on a new car at the Cerritos Auto Centre - thanks Super Dave) in some spots for free. When they've completed it it's going to cost $30 a month apparently to access, so this is not a free WiFi installation.
I live in Magnolia (just north of downtown Seattle for you not in the know), and there aren't any SeattleWireless APs listed for up here, so obviously it's not big enough yet ;)
Spots in Belltown I've tried aren't bad, though. Need more peeps with good bandwidth to open up.
The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
Much of the downtown is already being covered. Next year even they're covering the major malls and other areas.
When asked, the local ISPs rightly said it probably won't cut into their revenues, because with the amount of people on the free network you'll never get high downstream / upstream speeds, but it'll be great for surfing the web or checking your email on the go from your PDA, nearly anywhere in the city.
http://www.unb.ca/bruns/0304/12/news/wireless.html
Well, have you felt at all uncomfortable at some point during the last 50 years or so? Bad news, my man: you have been irradiated with a wide variety of radio waves for your entire life. A little more or less shouldn't hurt, unless you have the transmitter strapped to your body day in and day out.
EM radiation increases the risk of cancer for high power or high frequency, or both. It screws up the dircetion of cellular (that's biology, not telecom) components causing errors in the way it replicates the DNA. When that error is significant enegough to produce a mutation, and the mutation survives and grows, it could be a cancer.
It is unclear if the power of a cellphone (note the antenna right next to your brain) is definitely enough to cause cancer in a certain number of people.
Note that main power transmission lines are low frequency but extremely high power. This explains stories about cancer clusters near these high power lines.
WiFi is so low power that even at the relatively high frequency that I can assure all of you are QUITE SAFE from its health effects.
I am an engineer too, and no, I don't work for a WiFi company.
I no longer live in Cerritos, but my family still does, and parts of the city *do* have DSL service, though much of it is a broadband deadzone. Sad thing is that our cable company is the same as our phone company (at least in much of town), Verizon. So you can guess why cable modem service hasn't been rolled out. This is all despite what should be a great infrastructure because Verizon/Americast rolled out some experiemental high-tech-wizzy video-on-demand services a few years back (that has since been abandoned, I suppose). I wonder why these companies find Cerritos so appealing when it comes to these services? (It's not a very populous city, the per-capita income is high but not the highest, and it's kinda stuck on the edge on la county and orange counties)
As a resident of Cerritos for 24 years, let me provide some background information on the town:
Cerritos is located in the southeast corner of Los Angeles county, just north of Long Beach. The 605(N/S) and 91(E/W) intersect in the northwest corner of town providing incredible freeway access to residents and visitors. Cerritos has borders with the Orange County cities of La Palma and Buena Park, and is 15 minutes from many beaches, so living there provides one an interesting mix of influences from different urban and suburban cultures. I called it a town, there are about 50k residents so I'm not sure what that makes it technically. Cerritos has ended up becoming, IMHO, an interesting oasis in Southeast LA since the decline of the surrounding areas of Compton, Paramount, Lynwood, and the East LA area.
Greater Los Angeles area residents will surely have heard of the huge Cerritos Auto Square, an early entry into the auto mall type setup (I've heard the first of its kind?). The city also has hosted a mall since early on, the town of only 50k now supports as many as 3 malls, 1 classic mall and 2 major "Town Centre" type establishments. They city subsidized the building of a Sheraton hotel and performance arts center, with the classic motive if you build it they will come. (They have, supporting the brand new commercial complex). The city routinely takes pro-business steps such as this network and the city is remarkably prosperous because of it. The city has a HUGE library of its own, which it just recently upgraded, its own sheriff's station, water utility, 2 high schools, pretty much no service is contracted out to another jurisdiction.
Now, specifically to this story:
SOME residents of Cerritos have been able to get DSL for years. I know, I had it. The DSL service is capped at 768/128 due to the type of network in place, not distance. This was a major fight I had with Verizon, I lost but was actually satisfied with their explanation, remarkably. The cable has remained analog, however. Verizon was also the cable provider.
If I understand the local news correctly, Verizon has lost the cable contract and this new company is coming it. They will be setting up the citywide network and running the cable system. Presumably, they will be securing it themselves since they will be charging for access, so all this security talk is really nonsense at this point. Of course, and home relays could be insecure, but this is nothing new. The city is benefiting since all government agencies (see above about no outsourcing) will now have access through this system. The people benefit from this anywhere in the city access, especially those for whom broadband has been unavailable.
This probably sounded like a big commercial, but I don't care. I do recommend it as a great place to raise a family. I just moved to Long Beach to be 2 blocks from the shore, but I would go back in a second if the LBC sunk into the ocean.