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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"
What I'm thinking is, how will some health groups react? Adverse affects on health by wireless, especially in such large roll-out, are still not entirely proven harmless. No, I am not worried about health effects before all the flames come in, but there are some people/groups that tend to pay attention to this.
...security with something like this. Would you have to log in (even if it's free) so they can track you? I mean, if you go, open your laptop, get an IP and do evil things, how would they ever track your actions back to you? With your wired ISP account, there's at least SOME way to do that isn't there?
This is pretty thin on details but $10 million in infrastructure and $1.5/year to maintain seems awfully low for such a large coverage area. It's great that Philly has a mayor that is so technologically inclined. Perhaps when the conservatives start whining that there should be controls placed on the network to eliminate freedom of use (porn, etc) he might step in and kick it out?
I suppose that you get what you pay for when you are using a city-wide network (at ~$15) but shouldn't we be offering this without restriction on what you can visit?
This could be a good thing. After all, pushing the technology envelope is great. Adding wireless sounds wonderful and geeky and technically enjoyable.
.02
What about the security aspects though?
And who will be in charge of the usage of the acounts, monitoring of traffic, etc. to make sure the l33t kids down on 14th street aren't trying to knock over the DOD or the Pentagon? Not to mention, keeping up all the wireless devices on security updates, and latest antivirus patterns to make sure it doesn't turn into a network of zombies that ensure a cyber terrorist attack?
just my
Okay, so that's Grand Haven, Philly... Any others?
One city at a time...
Considering the obvious insecurity of wireless, how will they keep the illegal downloading down? Almost anyone who knows what they're doing can easily spoof a MAC address and download questionable content and get away with it.
I work for the Philly government... and I haven't heard about this..
Actually, my department is going to be starting a pilot for the employees, now whether this will feed into the 'big one' or not stands to be seen.
The city's chief information officer, Dianah Neff, is quoted in the article:
[Emphasis added]
I have never seen a wirless dial up modem before, have you? I also hope they don't plan on using Blue Socket, out of personal experiences of a much smaller installation attempt.
On a side note, I don't think I want to sit on the front porch for too long in Philadelphia. That might be a big health risk! Shouldn't they fix those issues first, before they worry about being at the forfront of wirless access?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Ah, Philadelphia, my home town. I went to attend one of the 80211-planet.com Wi-Fi shows there a few years ago. The conf was pretty small compared to all of the other shows I've been to. Thank goodness that's changed. We did quite a bit of wardriving, a snipplet of which you can see here. Since then, Wi-Fi coverage has exploded, which you can see here and for your area.
Of course, the pansy-assed white folks there can't cook, there are still a few places to get a decent meal.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Free broadband access means 70% of AMericans could watch video from any source at all. People could download video off of p2p networks, meaning that the high barrier to entry for getting a TV show or movie out to an audience would be changed to a lower barrier to entry. You would still have to have cameras (but they are getting reall cheap now) and actors and production sets. But the distribution system (tv stations, cable tv systems, movie theaters etc) has always been the obstacle to be overcome.
/i? sense: meaning that leftist ideas about raising the tax rates on the rich to former levels (e.g., 60% or more), and ideas about welfare for any poor person, and universal health care, these ideas are shunted aside.
But when anyone with a camera, free editing software, and some time and actors can make a movie, then upload it onto p2p, where it could be watched on free or very cheap p2p, that is going to mean that more leftist, liberal, progressive ideas are going to be propagated into American minds.
Right now, the mainstream media/Hollywood is liberal in the social sense (i.e., gay and minority rights, abortion, etc), but they are quite conservative in the economics
But free broadband would disrupt the media/entertainment distribution machine, thus allowing penetration for more liberal, leftist ideas.
I am all for it!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The article says that they would use houndreds to thousands of wirless access points. Let's assume that they end up using 10,000 access points:
$10,000,000 / 10,000 access points = 1,000 $ / access point
Does it really cost $1000 for hardware and installation if you do it 10,000 times?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Would they really allow full free access, or would they want to limit it to just port 80? I would think having full open access would just allow script kiddies to go nuts. Would there be any real harm if just port 80 were allowed? Would it be possible to use comprimised machines in Philly to DDOS if that was the only port allowed? Ok, enough questions, back to work.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
It'll be interesting to see how Comcast reacts to this...comcast is a major precense in phildelphia (including its corporate headquarters)...they own 2 of the major sports teams (Flyers & 76ers), and they're one of the leading broadband providers in the area...this can't possibly make them happy...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I think this is a monumentally bad idea. Free (in name only, since you WILL pay for it with taxes) access provided by the government will reduce choice and innovation. Do you really want the gov. to control what you can and can not view? As some have mentioned, first maybe they will block "terrorist sites", then porn, then anything about militia's, then guns, then gay sites, then hate speach, then...
All of which require people to do the work, they aren't simply "buy something big and expensive made somewhere else". So they'd be able to transfer the meter-readers to new jobs, some of which might be more interesting.
The money isn't going to vanish. Even if they stop taking it in taxes, there'll probably be more people going out to dinner, or the movies. Granted, some will be spent on merchandise made overseas, which doesn't help local economy as much. (Though you still have the truckers, and dock, warehouse and store employees....)
This is back of the envelope:
Let's say one guy can read 6 meters per hour (intentionally low)
In a full day's work, he can read 48 meters.
He works 5 days/week, 4 weeks/month, so that's 960 meters per month.
We'll say he gets paid $15 (intentionally high)per hour.
That's $2400 for reading 960 meters, or $2.50 per meter.
In order for the wireless self-reporting meters to save the city money, they need to have a monthly cost (including the amortized costs of purchase and installation) of less than $2.50--and even less if the meter-reader can check more than 6 meters in an hour or gets paid less than $15/hour. I really don't see how you'd get millions in savings from this. Furthermore, you still need someone to go out and check on the wireless meters that don't report in (for example, because the owner unplugged it). For the time being, I think some jobs are still best left to people.
(There are still probably lots of opportunities for savings and improvement, such as the traffic examples you cited. I just took issue with the wireless meter-reading part.)
Why should we pay someone to do a job that we can do cheaper and more efficiently some other way?
Perhaps not everyone feels life is not an organic factory in which we should be concerned with increasing production efficiency above all else. There are other ways of looking at the world than that espoused by Ms. Rand, however persuasive her fictionalized arguments sometimes seem.
Time to read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Comcast will never let it happen. They have their corporate HQ here in Philadelphia, and are quite influential in the city. They will find a way to kill this initiative. Why am I so sure? Look at their past behavior:
They own some of the Philadelphia sports teams and refuse to sell the home game broadcast rights to satellite providers for any price-- so if you live in Philadelphia and want to see televised Flyers and Sixers home games you must have Comcast cable, period.
RCN tried to start offering cable TV, internet and phone service in Philadelphia a few years ago, and Comcast used their influence to throw up so many roadblocks, that RCN gave up and went away.
They do not, and will not, stand for something endangering their revenues on their home turf.
~Philly
A while back, a town in Missouri wanted to offer telecommunications as a public service. A bunch of lobbyists for the telecommunications industry perceived this as a threat and got the state legislature to pass a law forbidding any local government from offering telecommunications as a public service. The Missouri Municipal League sued claiming that federal law pre-empted the states from prohibiting the cities. The case was agued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and was decided in favor of the state (and telecommunications industry). The case is "Nixon, Attorney General Of Missouri V. Missouri Municipal League Et Al." and a PDF of the decision can be found here At least 11 other states have similar laws to prevent local governments from "competing" with private telecommunications businesses.
The upshot is that if Verizon (or the industry generally) feels threatened, they will just buy some state legislators and pass a state law prohibiting it.
And anyone that knows Philadelphia Gas Works would never go near this. They offer terrible to non-existent customer service. If you get someone on the phone, they are surly and abusive. They refuse to collect on deadbeats and continuously raise rates on those who do pay to stay afloat. In bed with the corrupt city government (which is just as bad in the support area) so deeply that we can't get rid of them. Anything this city does (besides the center city district) turns to shit, and this will be no exception.
Yes I do know the poorest of the poor including some undocumented immigrants. In fact I go to church with them, been to there house for dinner, and even take care of there children in the nursery at church on Sunday. I have also help them set up the computers that they have been given for free or bought cheap. What they can not afford is the $20 a month for Internet access so there kids can look things up online at home. Free wireless would be a BIG help to them. The biggest things that the poor need are jobs and this program in PA could help create them. It could also help provide for an inexpensive way for people in the inner city to get on the net and get access to things like Job listings, on-line classes, news, and educational resources.
I think that you under estimate the poor. For the most part poor people are not stupid or lazy they have had bad luck and need a chance not a hand out.
What gets me is how many white liberals seem to thing that they must protect certain classes of people like they are children that can not decide what is best for themselves. I find that a one of the most common forms of racism.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I can tell you this, it will cost them a lot more than the initially $10 million. Is the city going to budget to maintain this service like they would water or other municipal utilities? I can tell you this, my water department are a bunch of idiots and I certainly would not want my city government running my internet access.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
First of all, I work in the convention business, providing Internet connectivity. Over the last 2 years, I have seen a rapid increase in interest to "provide wireless service". The problem of course, is that the ones who are asking are the CEOs and marketing droids that are just starting to discover this cool "Wi-Fi" stuff, and they want it.
Little do they know when everyone brings their own access point, all setup for channel 6, and they are all crammed into a convention center, no one is getting any real data transferred.
My work has become increasingly more frustrating dealing with these clueless people, who insist that they MUST have wireless connectivity. Is there any practical reason? Nope (except for the exhibitors who actually have wireless products and are show-casing their products).
Most of us know that there are 6 channels for 802.11b, but not everyone knows that the neighboring channels conflict with each other. This means if you put an AP on channel 10, the other on 11, they are still stepping on each other's feet and the noise level will probably prevent any user from getting on.
I hope this is a well-thought out plan, instead of a "it would be cool if we..." kind of rush.
I'm pretty sure the implication was auto-reporting meters, jeanyus.
However that's a non-starter in most occassions. The safety regulations & liability when it comes to any type of electronics are pretty severe. Putting a device requiring voltage into a currently mechanical water meter would require at the very least a huge amount of vetting and more likely simply wouldn't be doable at all.
From the standpoint of cost savings, however, a number of people here are missing the larger picture. Having those employees reading meters isn't just a matter of their salaries (and benefits), there's paying for their transport, liability for their actions and the actions against them, support infrastructure to deal with cases when they are unable to get to the meters to read them (overgrown bushes, dogs, locked gates).
For that reason you're going to see the electric companies go to auto-reporting meters as time goes on. They don't have the power issues, obviously, and many have experimented very successfully with what you could call ethernet-over-power so they have a transmission medium built in to the devices.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
>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.
How about spending the money on schools? On inproved health care? On the public transportation system?
Or do these things just benefit the poor or will have no return?
>into a massive savings,
They are spending $1.5 million a year to maintain the network and there is no mention on how they can make up the savings. So I'm not sure where you got this from besides theoritical wishing.
>data collection, data manipulation, data optimization threshold
They could do this without this network.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It can also be financed by commercial donations. Since you'll have to login in order to get access, the login screen and initial home page can serve advertisements.
It's been been done before.
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Cities often spend money to improve their image and attract business, because they think it's a good investment. At least this benefits everybody and contribues to commerce in a reasonably direct way. In short, I'll take citywide WiFi over a tax break for Wal-Mart any day.
I worked for the City of Philadelphia as a contractor for a year. I have no doubt that this is the pie in the sky dream that will not happen. There is no money, installation or support plan to this project/publicity stunt. They are so cash strapped it isn't even funny. The server room looks like something out of the early 70's. IT is just getting racks installed.
If I'm wrong and it does happen, look for the network to start failing immediately and having to take 6-8 weeks for something to get fixed and only after the appropriate bribes... I mean donations are received. Also look for the light post hubs to be missing soon after installation.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Broadcasting & Cable Editorial about Comcast.
U: phelps123
P: 321joe
(Thanks to BugMeNot for the login credentials)
~Philly
Income distribution is a tricky thing to measure, but when costs are lowered in a corporation, obviously the shareholders gain. The first thing to note there is that stock ownership is becoming more widespread every day, thanks to increasing participation in 401K and other workplace savings programs. It has become easier and easier for Joe Sixpack to participate in these kinds of gains.
Also, however, there are savings to the consumer. Look at the gadgets and gizmos that are commonplace in most US homes these days (PC's, DVD's, cell phones, a zillion cable/satellite channels) and I have a hard time saying things are tougher than they were in decades past. While there is always something to complain about (rising health care costs, for example), most people fail to recognize the progress that an economy makes over the course of time...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Obviously, I have mixed feelings. I feel a dramtic rise of education due to easy access to infiormation may be a benefit. But the current administration did a pretty good job of pissing away money already, must we make the people who actually pay taxes pay for the internet of those who don't? There was already a big problem here with gas companies wanting to charge paying customers a surcharge for the non-paying customers. Another problem is the city's current managing of their computer system. My g/f works for the sherrif's dept. and she gets sent home early all the time due to virus' and hack attempts Is the city going to do another poor job when they implement this idea.
Also, as some of you may know, Bush wanted to have broadband access for every american (not free) I find it odd that a democrat would use a republicans idea (ergo THIS IS GONNA RAISE TAXES)
Welcome to Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love) now leave!
San Francisco is nice.... but still way expensive and turns straight people gay. Oh, and the earthquakes that could take your life.
Lots of tech in northern Virginia... but outside the small city, it's all trees and such and the pace is really slow.
Or maybe Austin... which has zero culture and is in Texas, close to nothing. And they like to execute people before they realize you're guilty.
How about Philly? Affordable, lots of culture & history, tons of great restaurants, close to Manhattan, DC, Baltimore (and whatever city in Jersey someone might want to visit - Tweeter Center?)... oh, and now possibly Wi-Fi. The Philly sports teams, while not winning the league championships, have been pretty good at doing well recently - more than you can say for the other cities.
Philadelphia isn't perfect, but for someone who's young and not making big dough, it's a decent place to live if you want to be in a city.
You wrote:
On the other hand, this would also give the aspiring Rush Limbaughs of the world the ability to get their message out there.
Fine. Problem is that when it comes to widespread mass media, there IS no TRUE liberal counterpart to Limbaugh. Air America? Please! That is just the Democratic party talking there, and the Democratic party aint leftist, at least not when it comes to economics.
You wrote:
But I don't think that the general public has any problem getting messages from either the left or the right at this point in time. Otherwise, why would so many be so polarized on many issues?
The public is getting messages from the Right (GOP) and the right-center (Democrats), but there IS NO Left in America. If there is a left, tell me where on the major tv channels we have people talking consistently about universal healthcare, about welfare for all poor people (not just welfare moms), about raising the top tax bracket rates back up above 60% (they are at 35% now for earned, and 15% for unearned); where are all the liberals talking in the mainstream media about taxing wealth; about cutting the military budget in half??? These are ALL things that are in place in all the other industrialized, Western countries. Why not here?
Poll after poll shows that 70% or more of Americans want universal, tax-funded healthcare. But where does the media talk about it?
There is no economic left in America; the media and the politicians are perfectly to define leftism as all about gay rights, and abortion and gun control, and all the other "acceptable" liberal issues.
But when most of the country is on broadband, I can promise you, *I* and others will be out there with our homebrew movies and documentaries on p2p--THEN there will be a leftist voice in America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I can only speak for me but I worked in their IT dept at city hall and down the block in the SEPTA building where the rest of the IT staff resides. That's the spread. I brought my own equipment to work with since the PCs were not able to handle what we had to do. Like I said the racks were coming in and there was an attempt at organization. The managers I spoke with knew it was old and were trying to bring the city up to speed but it is a slow process. To order in equipment took months. Getting it installed wasn't too bad but they aren't oozing with tech staff there. Getting the money was the biggest issue.
Now if you take that whole environment into consideration and theorized on the city's ability to setup something that big. You would come to a similar conclusion.
Of course in another thread regarding Comcast's position on the whole possibility I thought that Comcast might be in position to partner with the city to accomplish this. I don't see them doing this on their own even with a consultant company. Too much $$$. They were having issues meeting the payroll!
Stepping out of my pessimistic role, I would love to see this happen!
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
You must have missed the N'Awlins part. We have the largest river in North America flowing through town. And enough rain to float the city, most years.
Won't be worried about water here until the next Ice Age, when the North American plate tilts under the weight of the glaciars enough to reverse the flow of the Mississippi.
Itemized billing for residential water won't actually prevent people from using more water than is available. It will discourage poor people from doing so, of course, but won't have much impact on the rich.
In central Texas a number of aquifers where pumped until they colapsed, which destroyed them. Think about it for a while.
Alright.
Was that long enough?
Pumping water from aquifers is a deadend proposition, unless your wastewater is pumped back into said aquifers. Desalinize seawater, use it, add the salt back in, and pump it back into the sea. Or build a closed-cycle system for water - draw it from tanks/ponds/whatever, use it, clean it up, put it back where it came from, lather/rinse/repeat ad infinitum.
The greed of a few people destroy a resource that could have lasted thousands of years.
Indeed? If it was just a few people, no doubt you can name three of them?
Incidently, "could have lasted thousands of years" isn't the answer. Long term sustainability requires us to think in terms of "millions of years", at least.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"