Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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"

11 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.

    1. 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.)

  2. Citywide WiFi? by Octos · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better tell the cops so they don't rough-up anyone with a laptop.

    --

    "I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner

    1. Re:Citywide WiFi? by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Informative

      The parent post is not flamebait. It refers to an earlier Slashdot story about a guy that was hassled by a cop for using a Public Library's wireless from outside the library. I can't believe I'm summarizing a story that appears FOUR stories down on the front page.

  3. 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.

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

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

  5. 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?

    1. Re:I always wonder about... by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ignore all of the previous responses (although they did have some neat ideas). I live in philly and we already have wifi at Love Park, the Reading Terminal, and some other popular areas. Its all free and its an ever expanding project, but only recently have they thought about going city wide. Anyway, there is no encryption, no authentication, no anything, you turn your computer/pda/{wireless device} and do what you have to. The bandwidth is really good, even with many people using it. And its convenient as hell, I mean you literally just sit down browse the web,or play enemy-territory :), and leave when your done. No registration/free registration/ or anything. I guess you could say thats a bad thing but if you ever did anything really illegal I guess they could kind of track you with your MAC address. Personally, I prefer how they have it set up, its keeping costs at the lowest, while maximizing accessibility. There is little administration costs, they set up the access point and let it go. It only ever needs to be looked at again if it malfunctions. You don't have to pay someone to look at logs all day, or block sites and make sure people don't get around it, or explain to people why they can't connect to certain things, or why a service they want won't work because some port is blocked. The wireless access is "just there" to use at your will like many public services payed for by taxes(although, I guess you could say at your own risk). Nothing is blocked (as far as I know) So far its been a major success, I could only see them requiring authentication if illegal activity got out of hand.
      Regards,
      Steve

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.