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Rio Rancho, New Mexico: 103 Square Miles of WiFi

Posted by timothy on from the pleasures-of-the-mesh dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Rio Rancho, New Mexico is going to have 103 square miles of wifi coverage thanks to Intel & Usurf. The Albuquerque International Airport also has free wifi available. (By the way, Rio Rancho also has one of the largest chip factories in the world. Owned by Intel of course.)" The airport service will be free, but though the site is coy about pricing, users will need to sign up (and pay) for the Rio Rancho mesh network. Update: 06/20 03:56 GMT by T : Rio Rancho, not Rio Ranch. Mea culpa.

4 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. I should care because ____ ? by Fjornir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can someone fill in the blank? I mean mad props to the engineers on the project, but... ?

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    I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
  2. keeping the scum out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On large wireless projects like this, how do you keep the scum of the earth from using it to their advantage? Can a pedaphile buy a cheap wireless card log on for awhile and get his pictures and then just throw out the card when done. Will we have to one day register our mac address's?

  3. That number is decieving... by GFLPraxis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's see, 103 square miles.

    WiFi would be spherical, or since we're using SQUARE miles, we'll just pretend it's 2D and use Circular.

    The equation for the area of a circle is PiR^2 = A where A is Area. The Area is 103 miles, so PiR^2 = 103.

    The square root of (103 divided by Pi) = 5.49, approximately.

    So this "103 square mile" network is 5.5 miles radius. Not bad, though the number 103 miles makes it look bigger than it is.

  4. Re:Spokane and now New Mexico ? by Fahrenheit+450 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, after all, Albuquerque/Rio Rancho is only home to an Intel plant, a Honeywell plant, Sandia National Laboratories, The Air Force Research Laboratory (aka Phillips Labs), EMCORE West, Eclipse Aviation, and an assload of other "high-tech" operations that I can't think of offhand. And of course it was the original home of Microsoft... So why would a backwater town like that get something like this?

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    -30-