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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.
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.
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.
City funds (your taxes) subsidising porn?
...and it's "subsidizing"
More confusion.
The Ariinet network is being built by Ariinet, not the city. The accounts will be paid for by the subscribers, not the city. Therefore, no city funds will serve to subsidize porn.
It happens that the city will also obtain 60 accounts. Naturally, use of those accounts will be subject to the same rules as any other municipal network resource. Ostensibly that would exclude porn.
The city government has decided to allow a vendor to distribute a service in the cities geographic area. This should sound familiar because it's the same arrangement they already have with whomever provides cable. Said cable service being another likely source of porn...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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.
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.