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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"

3 of 480 comments (clear)

  1. health risks? by becauseiamgod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. I always wonder about... by Elecore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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?

  3. Re:ME Benifits by KevinKnSC · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    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.)