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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."
Are there going to be any restrictions on access or anything? Or is it going to be free for all for hackers / pedos?
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.
Cerritos becomes the spam capital of the world
I hear in LA, I hear open access points are as common as traffic jams
Finally, I know how that song goes!
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of Cerritos, rising up throught the air
Now I know where to go on my next road trip!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
With all of these municipal and large open wireless networks being discussed I begin to wonder what these organizations will do about network abuse.
If I were a spammer I might consider moving to this town or better yet a town nearby. How's a beat-cop going to know that it's me spewing spam all day - or even a few hours - from various points all over town? I'm sure you can send a lot of spam in a couple hours or so.
-joe
So... Cerritos is paying Aiirnet to set up Wi-Fi transmitters all over the city and Aiirnet will keep all the profits. What's in it for Cerritos? Sure, if Aiirnet doesn't end up making money then it makes sense, but considering they will be the only broadband provider in town, they will definitely succeed and Cerritos will get nothing.
City funds (your taxes) subsidising porn? Will the city be able to fend off a sizeable, vocal group that does not want their tax dollars used in delivering questionable material to other citizens?
Or will they roll over and block that "questionable" material? (Scale this up the the entire Internet and UN control)
What controls will be placed on log files? If the city 'owns' the logs on city-owned servers/routers, will the police or DA be required to get a warrant before searching the logs for whatever it is they are looking for?
What restrictions are placed on usage? Personal servers, etc.
City-wide, free, Net access is great, but there are a LOT of questions to be answered first.
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
Perhaps the traffic Jams are caused by it?
"Damn, Slashdot posted another article." Scrreeech
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Well consider this the test bed I guess. Keep an eye on the cancer statistics!
I also have personal experience from parents complaining about WiFi networks on schools irradiating the children. My usualy response is that the microwave energy put out by the access points are typically 1/30th the power of your average cell phone, and that it's unlikely anyone will be holding the access point up to their head. Get some strange looks from tht one...
Of course, when I say I'm an engineer, I've had more than one parent (and teachers) ask me what trains have to do with it. (And I wish that was a joke)
=Smidge=
Government planning is just plain socialism and is really bad...
Unless it results in something really fsck'ing cool.
mod -1 flamebait
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.
It's not true that the city is without broadband.
My parents live in Cerritos and I set them up with DSL before I moved out.
It's very very tempting to have a bunch of friends drive around with portable microwaves and cellphones as a new means of DDoSing the city. Anyone know off-hand where the access points are? I kid, I kid!
It's interesting and convenient, but also gets me a bit paranoid. Those who read the BOFH articles would remember the bit where they used 802.11 to do thinks from changing their calendars on the fly to tracking down where in the building the boss is. Wonder if you can triangulate signal strength, etc. to pinpoint where a particular MAC is at any given time.
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.
If I were Emporer of Cerritos, I would RIP OUT each and every public phone. I would install VOIP public pay phones using the wireless network.
I would then load all the payphones into the back of a truck, and send them to the local phone company, with a note telling them about how they could have had their business if they would have just built out their network.
Then I'd offer discounts to all residents to sign up for the VOIP service, and ditch their phone company land lines.
Then I'd install Anti-gravity devices under the city, and float it up into the air, and just dump all of the city garbage onto Huntington Beach, or Rolling Hills.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.