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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
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
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
no, but think about the labor needed to do that, and the technicians to solve all the problems, and then the tech support responsibilities for a city of 1.5 million people trying to connect to the wireless network...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
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
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.)
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