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