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Philadelphia Considers Free Citywide Wireless Access

Posted by timothy on from the that's-what-I-call-brotherly dept.

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"

8 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. ME Benifits by stecoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is quite brilliant and actually cheap. Think of it, the city could reduce costs in other areas such as, say water meter reading - instead of having guy go out with a scanner to each meter, it could transmit to the office when necessary. That alone would probably save a few million. Services could use spare bandwidth for other services such as easier deployment of traffic monitors, stoplight optimization, human control of high traffic stoplights during peak hours.

    I know there is going to be many people that narrow mindedly say that the dollars could be spent on the poor or in some other avenue of no return. The city leaders have struck upon an idea that will actually revolve into a massive savings, data collection, data manipulation, data optimization threshold that will in turn benefit the entire population - it just wont be a direct "ME" benefit to everyone. I'm actually quite interested in seeing how this pans out.

  2. Yo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Philadelphia has been desperate to attract young profesionals to the city. This might work

  3. Finally, the Americans start to get it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only way you can improve technology is by getting the public sector involved in a defining leadership role. If you leave it to the corps, they'll keep you at the horse-and-buggy stage forever, just to keep robbing you blind.

    Let's hope this signals a trend.

    1. Re:Finally, the Americans start to get it. by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's why Intel, AMD and IBM have been stuck at 33 MHz for thier CPUs since 1993 right? Because they've been keeping us at the horse and buggy stage forever, charging us all $7000 for a computer.

      And why we are still fighting infections with plain old penicillin, I mean the Drug Companies aren't making better drugs since they can string us along.

      My, I still have to take injections of Testosterone rather than having some fancy new patch or gel that doesn't fry my liver since the good people at Watson http://www.androderm.com/p/what_is_androderm/index .asp feel like keeping us at the buggy and horse stage of life.

      If only the government would get involved so our technology could be as advanced as the Welfare and Housing Developments in the inner cities are...

  4. Free by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well it's not going to be free. Taxes will pay for it. Local I suspect, but depending on the Senators and Reps from PA, they might get some Federal monies for it, good old Pork as the people from states not getting the dough call it.

  5. Re:health risks? by ryanjensen · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Breathing, eating, sleeping, walking, driving, and working have never been proven harmless. Does that mean we should reconsider doing these things until they have been? Proving something to be harmless is like proving a negative -- it can't be done.

    If health groups have concerns about the ill effects of city-wide wireless access, let them prove that it causes ill effects. Otherwise, let innovation occur.

    --
    The Ezine Directory
  6. Re:Well... by zokrath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Warning, hyperbole and stereotypes ahead!

    So you are saying that none of the taxpayer's money should be spent on projects that actually benefit taxpayers? All of it should rightly go to crazy people that live in boxes and welfare leeches?

    The chronically homeless and poverty stricken are generally the result of societal influences, and are not something that can be solved simply by throwing the city's budget at it.

    I am sure there is a hefty portion of the budget already going towards various programs, but most of them are likely stopgap measures instead of education about birth control and financial planning, two of the largest (legal) hurdles faced by those below the poverty line.

  7. Re:I always wonder about... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Internet has no real way to identify people. Never did. Big deal. It's no different than payphones - there are lots of ways to get onto the Internet anonymously. Tracking everybody and everything so nobody can put a virus on the 'net is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, and chasing that fantasy will only burden legitimate users in a myriad of ways.