Slashdot Mirror
Philadelphia Considers Free Citywide Wireless Access
The Associated Press is running an story about Philadelphia's city goverment seriously considering creating the world's largest hotspot.
"For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot....the city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers"
The parent post is not flamebait. It refers to an earlier Slashdot story about a guy that was hassled by a cop for using a Public Library's wireless from outside the library. I can't believe I'm summarizing a story that appears FOUR stories down on the front page.
> There are however a LOT of suburbs that are
> considered Philadelphia as well
No there aren't. The City of Philadelphia is very well defined. The "suburbs" (Delaware, Chester, Bucks, and Montgomery counties) obviously wouldn't be subject to this legislation because the City Council and John Street only have jurisdiction over the city itself. Now, whether they chose to apply it just to Center City is a different story, but there are no "suburbs that are considered Philadelphia." Either you live in the city or you don't, and if you don't, this doesn't apply to you.
Ignore all of the previous responses (although they did have some neat ideas). I live in philly and we already have wifi at Love Park, the Reading Terminal, and some other popular areas. Its all free and its an ever expanding project, but only recently have they thought about going city wide. Anyway, there is no encryption, no authentication, no anything, you turn your computer/pda/{wireless device} and do what you have to. The bandwidth is really good, even with many people using it. And its convenient as hell, I mean you literally just sit down browse the web,or play enemy-territory :), and leave when your done. No registration/free registration/ or anything. I guess you could say thats a bad thing but if you ever did anything really illegal I guess they could kind of track you with your MAC address. Personally, I prefer how they have it set up, its keeping costs at the lowest, while maximizing accessibility. There is little administration costs, they set up the access point and let it go. It only ever needs to be looked at again if it malfunctions. You don't have to pay someone to look at logs all day, or block sites and make sure people don't get around it, or explain to people why they can't connect to certain things, or why a service they want won't work because some port is blocked. The wireless access is "just there" to use at your will like many public services payed for by taxes(although, I guess you could say at your own risk). Nothing is blocked (as far as I know) So far its been a major success, I could only see them requiring authentication if illegal activity got out of hand.
Regards,
Steve
I agree. I used to work in Philly proper, and they have a city employment tax of something like 4.5%, which is absurd, especially considering how much the traffic on the Schulkyll Expressway sucks. When I got a job out in the suburbs, it was like an instant 4.5% pay raise.
That's entirely not true. Both my mother-in-law and my wife and I have RCN cable, internet, and phone in Philly. Granted, their service is not available anywhere more than a few miles outside of the city, but to say that RCN "gave up and went away" is a complete fallacy. This is a shame because RCN's internet service is 100x better than Comcast's and the speeds I've been getting just with their base plan are absolutely phenomenal. If you live near the city (I'm near 69th Street station) check them a out...they were cheaper than Comcast last I looked too.