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.
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