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Persuading A City To Go Wireless?
An anonymous reader submits "We keep reading about cities dishing out free wireless; Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, TX, and many, many others.
But how does one go about forming a group to get their city to go wireless?
Looking around, there are a few articles out there, but most deal with selling it to businesses. I haven't been able to find a definitive guide to "Getting your city to go wireless".
So I send my plea out to the Slashdot community - just how does one go about getting your city to go wireless?"
The first point you need to sell on is need. Can private business fill the need in the area, if not, then Govenment has the responsibility to listen to its citizens and make an informed decision. I would personally like my ton to offer this, but we already have companies providing it. Govenment should not compete with private business over such matters.
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I'm serious. Cities have better things to spend the tax money on, if you really want it to happen then find other people that feel the same way and offer to fund it.
I'd start by trying to get the most touristy areas covered by wireless. Beaches, Main street, historic district, etc.
It's much more likely to happen there since most cities have no problem providing this sort of support to non-citizens.
Over time, this might grow to your local parks and hang-out areas.
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Except that it doesn't usually make a profit. Just convince it that it'll bring in business people and the like and increase city revenues. Of course, if your city's a hick town in the middle of nowhere or fairly small, it might not be popular, especially if it's going to be geared towards business people (no offense).
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
If I remember correctly, and indiidual known as the Blue Fairy is rather good at removing wires from things.
Clicking on your link, I learned what I already knew -- many businesses offer wireless access. Oh. Hardly news.
So, to answer your question, you do not convince a city to go wireless. You convince indivual businesses to do so, or if you run a business, you do so yourself.
You could try the good ol' angry mob o' citizens :)
Some other, less angry methods include:
- A petition. Get enough people to sign a petition (get some tourists too) and someone's bound to consider it.
- Resarch. Conduct your own research/study (or hire a research/studies firm) on the desirabiliy and benefits of wireless access points through out the city. Be sure to include cheap methods.
- Set up a small wireless network at a local park to demonstrate to the city that people want it.
A few of us in Medford MA have just begun discussing how we would go about convincing the city to offer wireless. We've all been reading the reports at MuniWireless.com"
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
No offence to any government working /.ers that operate the computers, but having the government offer "free" wireless internet is a horrible idea.
Besides tax dollars being used to kill the competition, you'll end up with a low quality service. The same types of people that work at the DMV will work at the Municpal Internet Department. I'm not talking about the techies that know what they're doing, I'm strictly talking customer support.
Also, why would you want to give the government easier access to your internet data? Most of the folks here are adamently against the Patriot Act, but free governemnt sponsored wireless seems to be okay?
My company uses Verizon with the EvDO cards and have "wireless" everywhere we go, at near cable speeds. Its $80 a month and I get a real human to answer the tech support line after i prompt for English. AT&T and others have very similar solutions.
I can only imagine tech support through the government.
I know a great deal of smaller towns are getting it for the economic development 'buzz'. The biz-dev guys say 'we gotta have wifi in the downtown area to attract the high-tech crowd'
So the city council approves the spending on the hopes that having a free wifi network will attract new business downtown. But it's not only new businesses it's foot traffic. Got wifi in your park? then perhaps the businesses and restaurants around it will benefit somewhat.
Sometimes the development is pretty easy since they piggy-back on an existing wifi network, i.e. for fire or police.
Just like a few years ago the big thing among the communities in our area was fiber. Somehow if the city had an extensive fiber network then high-tech firms would come beating down your door, or perhaps choose you over another location that didn't have fiber.
I would always tell the local biz-dev guys, if large company X is coming here and have an immediate need for the bandwidth that fiber has they most likely already have a relationship with a telco, and that telco will lay fiber to them to keep this business. So what's the point of the fiber you just buried?
Of course now with cable and dsl most small/medium sized businesses don't need to worry about fiber.
A good part of it is justifying the cost of doing such a project for what might be little benefit to city budget committees who are always strapped for cash. Other than "hey look we're tech savy come here!" what benefit do you derive from paying for free wireless upkeep in a metro area?
I live in Duluth, Minnesota (great white north), and we are making a lot of progress througth tech kiosks and access points in touristy areas to become more and more of a wired city, unfortunatly duluth is geographically a huge city since it is about 50 miles from one end of town to the other despite that we only have about 85,000 people. Since I am in the hinterlands on one end I woul never be on an access point, and even if they did set one up it would only be able to serve about 20 houses. And since, despite being in town I am in the middle of nowhere I can't get wireless, dsl, or cable, and those phone wires hand hammered by Thor himself don't support anything faster then 28.8. Help!
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Actually, that's not too far off. I was once persuaded to make a fairly sizeable IT asset purchase from a large hardware vendor by allowing the female saleswoman to suck the old pointy warrior. The best part is that I promised her I would let her know when I was close to climax so she could finish with her hand. Well, I did no such thing. Instead I fired a fairly substantial bit of goo right in her mouth. She gagged and backed up and then I nailed her on the cheek with the next bit. Careers in IT can be very rewarding.
But how does one go about forming a group to get their city to go wireless?
Tell them that its a great way to make MONEY...
$$$$$
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Wouldn't mobile phone network providers lobby against this sort of thing? If a city went wireless, portable WiFi VoIP devices could be used as an alternative to mobile phones, without the call charges. Since mobile phone carriers have deep pockets and people wanting a city to go wireless wouldn't have as much influence, chances are politicians would go in favor of maintaining "soft money" lobbyists protecting their source of revenue.
I think the article author might misunderstand what it means for a "city to go wireless." Many of the cities mentioned don't have any sort of universal infrastructure, but rahter a network of patchwork wireless ranging from free hotspots from ISPs promoting their service to wireless home users who intentionally (or unintentionally) allow people in their area to use wireless. As for a city, Spokane, Washington has a large, city-supported and funded wireless hotspot in their downtown area which they greated to give public servants (from parking ticket writers to police officiers) a data network using cheap, off-the-shelf technology. You many want to consider that route.
Talk about your massively insecure network...
Do we really want to encourage everyone in an entire city to take part in a single network which seems almost inherently insecure? I can't imagine they'd use any kind of WEP, as that would defeat the purpose of having a city-wide network. I know I feel a lot safer behind my router's firewall than I ever do warchalking.
The wireless "backbone" could be running OLSR - as described here.
This is off topic, but this discussion really made my curious. All those cities listed are American.
How do cities in other countries compare? London, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, Athens, Seoul.
the city i live in has been unwired since this summer.
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Instead of whining and trying to persuade "the dad" to provide us with wireless, isn't it easier to build it up by ourselves? :)
There is no need to persuade them to go wireless if they don't want. They see the initial infrastructure cost and are afraid of it, but I think we (the ppl) can volunteer to build up a city network.
Just sacrifice some of your $$ to buy equipment and find some friends in the neighboorhood to start a small wireless network. Then, find more friends to join the network and collect money to buy more equipment. Be sure not to break any laws and not to allow piracy etc, so that your network will survive. After your network grows, startup a nonprofit to collect donations etc and buy a fatpipe to connect it to the Internet.
There are already many projects working like this and they succeed. When they grow up, they even get the gov support and if they are lucky they may even get founding etc
volunteerism is always better. This is clearly shown in cases like BSD and GNU and Linux and open content encyclopaedias where unpaid volunteers create much better products than business solutions etc.
See an example in EU: http://www.awmn.gr/
Have the city actively assist the deployment of private wifi networks by giving tax cuts to individuals and companies that participate and rework the zoning laws to make filling in the gaps easier. In this surveillance state age, do you really want to be getting internet access from the government if you can avoid it? They'll take your privacy and say that since you got it for free, you are bound to their arbitrary rules.
The best way to approach this is for the city government to actively help private citizens implement this in the same spirit that the internet first got big. Tax cuts, profits, the like. Personally, though, I would rather pay for a private service than get a free public service. When I grow tired of the private service, at least I can immediately disconnect it from my wallet by canceling it, you usually can't do that with a public service.
Right now I think the best thing that the governments in this country could do would be to destroy the licensing of the airwaves and move all of the frequencies over to public use. That way we could have wifi be the norm and get digital radio broadcasts from webcasters in our cars since we'd have all of that bandwidth to use. Just imagine how cool it would be if your radio had a foldable keyboard that you could type the URL of a RSS/RDF file into that would get you radio feeds from local and nonlocal web broadcasters. Now THAT would keep the RIAA and ClearChannel awake at night.
And it would give Orrin Hatch another reason to continue on with his miserable, worthless career as a fraud of a right winger.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
His original plan was to sell the service like an ISP but last time I talked to the owner he had made it more reliant on consulting and setting up wireless networks. Now the business is attracting as many industrial clients as commercial operations.
To a degree the city has also latched on but working with the local businesses is the key to getting your own city to go wireless. And it does attract people. In a city of around 10,000 its pretty common to see two or three laptops or palmtops downtown on any given day
We have tourists for the beaches. Never have I seen someone walking down the street carrying a laptop or whatever wishing they could get online. This is an asinine idea.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I'm off to Philadelphia next month for the first time. Can anyone from the area suggest good spots to jack in as i'm sure I will need my /. fix.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The popularity of wireless mystifies me. Although it is riddled with problems, from poor security to unreliability, people love it. Even when they're in their own homes, and all they have to do is run an ethernet cable to have a completely reliable, secure LAN, they STILL go with a wireless solution -- usually at a much higher price (paying for a base station, wireless card, etc).
Before anyone responds to tell me how wonderful wireless is, until you can convincingly make the following issues go away, you won't get anywhere with me:
1. Security: Anyone with a net stumbler can see your network's parameters and possibly use them to play with you. Even if you're using WEP, it'll only be as secure as your implementation. And don't forget, someone can just log all the packets you're sending and try to decrypt them later.
2. Reliability: weather conditions can screw up your wireless signal, as can anything else that causes interference, from electrical equipment to thick walls. Furthermore, someone who doesn't like you can jam your signal fairly easily. Which, by the way, would be a lot of fun if you didn't like your neighbor. Wait for him to look really busy at his computer, and turn on your jammer. Hilarity ensues. Great fun for the jammer, not so fun for the poor sap who loses his net connection right in the middle of a download.
Some will say that with improving encryption, squirt transmissions, better equipment, etc, wireless will improve to the point where the two issues I mentioned will go away. Fine. But this requires more processing to handle the connection, which slows the connection down. And the FCC limits how strong your signal can be.
I just don't see how wireless is ever going to be a good solution. People will continue to use it -- of course. But people still use Windows 98, too.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I don't think the goverment should be in the business of wasting the publics hard earned money on wireless internet access.
It only takes one person to set up something like this. You set up your own free wireless access point and then you tell people about it. Eventually, you can meet with other people that have done the same, share information, and form a user group. And when enough of the people at the right locations have joined your group, then you'll have pretty good city-wide coverage.
Real politics, not to be confused with realpolitik, which is part of the perversion mentioned above - an earlier but not kinder form. Get to know the people in your city who matter, politically. Don't expect to start at the top: these folks are rarely impressed by how many dead novices you've left behind in flamewars on slashdot. Expect to spend time at it; think in terms of years. You may well need to wait until one key opponent retires or is defeated at the polls.
Politics is fundamentally conservative, and rightly so. It's an important part of our collective memory as a society; or, I should say, the people involved in the process are. When changes may have large, hard to reverse effects, it's no sin to move slowly and cautiously. From time to time we get an experimentalist in power, and while they often do some things that are good, even long overdue, their less successful efforts play a big part in reinforcing the desire not to change - not too much, not too fast. Compare and contrast, oh, here's an easy pair: President Lincoln and the emancipation on the one hand, and Bush's assault on freedom under the guise of protecting us from terrorists. It's a good idea, the problme is that the most dangerous terrorists are the ones currently in power right here at home...
1. Get involved in a tech committee
2. Get your face in front of the Council often (you are always allowed to say your peace at bi-weekly meetings) -- DON'T BE A DICK
3. Come up with a pilot project
4. Get it in the annual budget
5. Profit
I say this as an anonymous coward who just left a local government IT post.
In my town the rationale was to keep weekend tourists staying around during the week if they could swing it with our public access mesh. Tourist dollars pay for it and the mesh was really cheap so long as local businesses donated space for the mesh boxes. This requires someone integrated into the community to head up the project of course. You can't just walk up to a random small business in a place you aren't known and ask for the use of their attic and the inevitable visits to cycle power.
Seastead this.
I think it is disgusting that people even think about this; there are a lot of people that cannot even handle everyday life.
It is bad enough the governments only spend money on reducing effects (while the causes are never actually dealt with) and at the same time allow the human species to destroy itself.
So why talk about spending money on something that is really an unnecessary luxury?
that gets any true wireless internet.
over the last 5 years, companies have come and gone.
sure there are some wireless hotspots, but as far a widespread section of the town having coverage? provided by either the city or private business?? fuck no, it will never happen. not in this technologically backwards ass town. fuck, we will get fiber to the home before city-wide wireless access.
I mean Chicago is just a giant hole regarding anything, it would be nice if they managed to get the city known for something other than, uhh, pizza?
world.
I will start by saying I do not have a wireless network. For me, there is not enough benifits to justify the expense.
1. Most p[eople don't care because most people will never have this problem.
You need someone with motivation. It is not easy to configure a tool to grab somneones packets and 'decrypt' them later. That take work, sklill and knowledge. Depending on the encryption may be futile.
Also, someone has to take the time to go looking. most peoiple have better thjings to do.
Indoors weather patterns usually aren't a concern.
And if the weather is bad, who is goinmg to be using the outside network? Do you seriously belive that in a thunderstorm someone is going to be sitting outsdie with there laptop?
Building a Jammer is something very few people will do. And as more people go wireless, the smaller percentage of them will be interested in doing this. Because the people who are interested are already doing it. It is not worth most peoples time.
I can do that with cordless phones, but I don't. POint in fact, most people don't.
"And the FCC limits how strong your signal can be."
that has nothing at all to do with your points.
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I am no expert, but I have had the oppertunity to work with public(government) IT admins. No offence, but some are fairly clueless. Most professional network admins have a hard enough time keeping spammers off their networks, but could you imaging a free, public WIFI city? That would be every spammers dream come true. Besides, I can thing of a million better things my taxes could do.
I suppose Bill's house is magnetically shielded too, eh?
Well, let me address some of this:
1. Hackers already play around with wireless networks. They do it all the time. Why don't you google for "Warchalking" or "Wardriving" sometime? It's a leisure activity for them, they do it because they can. It's fun and interesting. THAT is their motivation.
2. It is only "not easy" to do these things until one motivated hacker produces a tool. Then everyone does it after a two minute download. Remember the concept of the "script kiddie"? Who do you think writes the scripts themselves? Do you think every script kiddie out there is building his own stuff? Or that he even understands how the stuff works at the system level? Of course not. All he knows is that he downloads a script and he runs the magic incantation to mess with someone he doesn't like. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because something is nontrivial, it won't be done.
It only has to be done ONCE for everyone to be able to do it trivially and easily. By the way, a quick google got me a list of several wireless packet loggers that already exist. Finding specific tools is left as an exercise for the reader (have fun, it's interesting).
3. I've just GOT to respond to the jammer issue. I googled for this, too. All the frequencies involved in 802.11 radio comms are well known. so are their power limitations. It is trivial for someone with even rudimentary electronics knowledge (which you can pick up from a library book or a correspondence course) to build a simple radio transmitter and tune the frequency, is it not? And it is equally trivial to arrange for a power output of, say, a few watts, which would drown out any node within range.
So, how hard do you think it would be for an interested party to build one? All it takes is a trip to Radio Shack and some reading.
It isn't that it's likely this will be widespread. It's that it is possible. Why would I rely on a technology that can be interfered with so easily? You can't mess with MY LAN unless you break into my apartment. But someone could mess with a wireless setup from their car, out in the street.
THIS is my point.
4. Strength of signal: yes, this does matter. It determines range, and how well your signal is going to get through the walls of your house. AND, although you've already pooh-poohed this point, how easy it is for someone to jam you.
5. You mentioned cordless phones. Excellent! Because although YOU don't, and "most people" don't, SOME people DO. Case in point: my ex girlfriend took a plane into Long Island to visit me a while back. She had a cell phone which was capable of analog mode. I warned her, don't use her cell in Penn Station because it'll get cloned and she'll get screwed. Do you think she listened?
'Course not. So she called me from the lower level of the station. And her phone got cloned. Within three weeks, her cell phone bill came back in the several-thousand dollar range. As best we can figure, someone cloned her phone on day one of her visit, then made a shitload of copies and handed them out on the cheap. It took her weeks to straighten it out with the phone company. She was really pissed off about it, too.
Just because YOU don't do it, doesn't mean that all sorts of nasty people out there won't.
Just thinking aloud.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Seems like technicians would realize the benefit of a wireless network pretty quickly if we started attacking all the wires.
(Don't try this at home.)
We've celebrated the radio, television, microwave oven, wireless telephones, and now wireless internet... among countless other devices controlled or manipulated by transmitting data through electromagnetic waves.
My question: what health effects (defects?) will this have on us, our children, and the rest of the world as electromagnetic waves that have historically been absent from our planet's atmosphere continue to saturate our lives?
Just curious.
Oh, and I forgot:
During a thunderstorm, the interference affects you indoors as well as outdoors. Because it's the electric field produced by the charged clouds (and locally, by lightning strikes -- a huge current causes a huge EMF) that's causing the problem, NOT the rain.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The infrastructure you need included:
- IP assignment policy across the continent
- a node database that has a Geographical Information System to tell you where to point your antenna to find neighbouring nodes
- local interest groups that help businesses & individuals go wireless & advocate at the local level
Gay hippy nerd tattoo factor.
It is unfair for tax money to pay for a service that is useless for most of its constituents. Only the people who can afford laptops will benefit from this. Do you really think that people living in poverty should have their taxes raised so rich people can get internet access in more public areas?
.... hills and trees action. The US is not all the same geographically. How does he get wireless there? I'm interested because I'm in the same situation as the parent, no broadband available*. For the past year and change I've been listening to two different local whitebox shops (one of them is my dialup ISP) say they are going to open an area WISP. But so far the best I have seen is one of them has an antenna on their roof of the business and runs a single access point from there, obviously not an "area" solution. I'm really beginning to think that wireless access is going to be almost unobtanium in areas that aren't ideal for it or don't have extremely condensed population, areas that already are served with a variety of broadband solutions.
I guess maybe it's different in the plains states, etc, any place with hills and a lot of trees, wireless is very costly, you need a LOT of access points on a LOT of the higher hills to really cover an area that's city and immediate surroundings wide.
*with one exception. So far, the only universal wireless I have seen is satellite internet, and the startup hardware/install costs and recurring monthlies are very expensive, along with the problems with sat inet that have been discussed here before.
I fly to Indy a lot. Was just there a couple of days ago. Will be back this week. No where in the Indianapolis International Airport is there a wi-fi hotspot. Not even the Starbucks will let you plug in (good luck finding even a power outlet in there).
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I live in Philly and could give a rats ass about ubiquitous wireless. How do I persuade the powers that be NOT to go wireless?
"We keep reading about cities dishing out free wireless; Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, TX, and many, many others."
AHhaagg! Wrong answer! Nothing is free when it comes to the government. THANK YOU for helping increase our taxes.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
We, as geeks, have to realize that very little of what we create has a long shelf life -- 20 years from now, just imagine the mess as a "wireless" city band-aids and duct tapes layers of new wireless technology ontop of the ancient 802.11z network that seemed such a great idea in 2004. Think back 20 years - the Commodore 64, IBM PC at a steaming 4MHz, and the Amiga. And modems at 300bps. :)
cerritos CA, where i live also has gone completly wireless like 2 years ago. (but its one of the richest cities...we even have a library built from some rare as hell metal...(like 15mil $)
I'm betting that one day there will be proof that being bombarded by all the radiation from wireless devices increases your chance of developing cancer.
So this is a stupid idea (city going wireless), IMHO.
Check out the Seattle Wireless website. http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/FrontPage
--- That's a deguassing idea!
You can get your neighbors to sign up for a cooperative Wi-Fi network like www.radiuz.net
Traditionally there are two competing providers for Broadband, the Cable Guy, and the Phone Company. They have invested $$ Millions. When the municipal authorities begin to offer it for free, the incumbents use their influence quickly. In 13 or so states it is illegal for a municipality to offer network services outside government buildings.
So you need a publicest, a P.R firm, and a lawyer to start out anticipating you will be involved in a big shoot out before you know it.
Since you already know about a bunch of existing free wireless networks, why not contact the people who've actually done it? That way you eliminate all the people who have opinions but no experience. By posting an "Ask Slashdot" your selecting exactly the opposite way!
YOU FAIL IT!!!!
Look, this is a myth, folks, that needs to be beaten with a stick until it's good and dead.
1. When you think "wireless utility", how about you think "water utility" - yeah, that stuff that pretty much just works, so much so you take it for granted. Designed and run by gov't employees.
2. The reference to the California DMV is exactly right. It's impressively low hassle, and has been for some years - but before that, it was hell-on-wheels, fulfilling every bit of that myth. It's pretty clear that what happened is, somebody took control of the California DMV and, well, fixed it. Made it run sensibly and effectively (not so easily done). It's amazing the difference. There is an unsung hero in that story.
3. The well-known comic, Dilbert, is about government bureaucrats, ineptitude and inefficiency... oh, wait.
4. Others have pointed out such companies, so...
The point? The performance of an entity, whether a piece of government or a private company, depends primarily on its internal culture (which is itself influenced by individuals like the unknown hero of the DMV). It has very little to do with whether the service it provides is for-profit or not.
Of course, companies can go out of business, but it's pretty damn obvious - if you look at evidence, instead of relying without thinking on that that myth/theory - that plenty of companies with abysmal customer satisfaction profiles merrily continue to profit.
Bizarrely, the Arab League claims that this move by Israel is a violation of international law. No, I'm not kidding.
I have wireless in my home. I use it with my laptop, which is my main computer, for one reason - convenience. I can walk in the door, open the thing up, and surf the internet. I can pick up my laptop and walk anywhere in the house, and some places outside it, without worrying about being disconnected.
I'm not terribly worried about people coming along and breaking the flimsy WEP encryption I have set up for a few reasons:
1: there are two more networks, unsecured, on both sides of my house. If someone wants free web access, they can use my neighbours
2: while wep encryption does suck, iirc it still takes a while to crack. Why bother?
3: Even if there were no neighbours or WEP encryption, and someone came along and changed some settings on my router, then I would do the following:
a) pick up router
b) push pin into 'reset' button for 10 seconds
c) spend 30 seconds putting the settings back in
And do you know what? For the marginal amount of effort it takes to do that, having the ability to control appliances and lights(relays are great), change my music, and stay online while walking around my house is worth it. Plus, there is then only one cable coming out of my ibook. Where I use it on my bed, having just the power cable is a definite plus.
In short, I believe that your points are invalidated because it's too damn easy to simply repair what is broken by vandals.
I think we should look at 802.11i and the WPA standards as valid solutions to security, they aren't everything they could be I think that security is become less of an issue (now that these standards are popping up on the market). Personally a wireless point is something I use to compliment my wired systems when I'm on the front porch or something, pulling CAT-8 cables all over the place is not my idea of mobility.
Here in sydney, a wireless broadband provider has just started up http://www.unwired.com.au/ and seems to cover most of the city and the 'burbs (Pretty impressive when you think that Sydney, in area, is one of the larger cities in the world). Though it isn't TRUE wireless ie. if you change position very quickly you have to log back on - not much good on public transport then (unless you're in a traffic jam :P )
Bristol City (not the football team ;) ) went wireless recently, and won an award for it.
That article also has an interview with reasons why and how they did it. It cost £3.2m which was funded by the government, local business and HP. It isn't however, just free wireless access for everyone, it is mainly for businesses and projects to make use of it - eg The first wireless application, Schminky, was launched in March 2003, at the Watershed Art Centre's caf. It allowed tourists to interact using mobile devices to play a 'Simple Simon' style game.
Other applications followed such as Savannah, a project involving the BBC's Natural History unit to help children from six Bristol schools learn about the ecology and ethology of African plains.
The strategy-based educational adventure game using wireless iPaq PDAs allowed children to become 'virtual lions', with predators and prey mapped onto the virtual landscape which overlayed school playing fields.
Further projects include the world's first global positioning system (GPS) 'radio play' recreating the 1831 riot for tourists walking around Queen Square and last November's Harbour Trials, giving tourists a multimedia tour with Bristol Ferry Boat Company.
Artciles about the Savannah project is here
Other links: here and at the BBC
My question is, who is goin to pay for it? Getting a city hooked up will cost several hundread million dollars. Do the citizens really want to pay for it, when the majority don't even know what wi-fi is? In addition, will the govt implement something when the ISPs will be fighting to death over the issue?
As far as I'm concerned, wi-fi will likely only be implemented in some regions (maybe near city hall where the govt can hand out information, or something) or for limited areas.
I don't think this wireless access thingie is a good idea...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Also, why would you want to give the government easier access to your internet data? ---------------- All other points of your argument aside, what would make you think that 'the government' doesn't already have access to your 'internet data'? You think they're too cheap to spring for a dsl connection or don't know how to Google? Seriously, there are too many in the Slashdot crowd who are deceiving themselves as to their anonymity on the internet. Best to limit the power of government to abuse you than delude yourself that you're somehow more anonymous on the internet if the government doesn't provide the service. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
Why would you want your city to go wireless, it will probably be filtered like in Libraries. The American people need to learn to stop depending on the nanny state to hold their hands. What is the point of free wi-fi. I have wi-fi in my house, but eventually it's just going to be an empty marketing ploy, that doesn't mean anything.
I hate sigs.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/09/wo_ asbrand092104.asp
u ms/forum.asp?f orumid=852
o ice_over_i.php
... They have lessons learned and real working city WiFi examples for marketing materials. [Best URL for me was WiMAX] http://www.wimaxforum.org/home - The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, non-profit corporation formed to promote and certify compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products. WiMAX supports industry-wide acceptance of the IEEE 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN wireless MAN standards
The above URL for article: Who Pays for Wireless Cities? (Telco friendly ___)
Some comments in the, following URL, related forum are far more interesting.
http://www.technologyreview.com/for
As always the AT was altered to protect the innocent.
Posted 9/23/2004 by Michael Keegan, Manhattan Beach, CA, WiFi
michael- -|at|- -manhattanbread.com
Subject: wireless municipalities
http://www.manhattanbread.com/
Posted 9/24/2004 by Matt Stone, Many places, WiFi
matt- -|at|- -civitium.com
Subject: Who Pays for Wireless Cities?
http://www.civitium.com/
Posted 9/22/2004 by Costis Toregas,
matt- -|at|- -civitium.com
Subject: Wireless Cities
Posted 9/22/2004 by Jonathan Baltuch, St. Cloud Florida, WiFi
jbaltuch- -|at|- -aboutmri.com Subject: City Wi-Fi
http://www.aboutmri.com/
Posted 9/22/2004 by J.D.Bailey,
james2003- -|at|- -monmouth.com
Subject: I agree with Mr. Jonathan Baltuch
[Interesting supporting article] The Voice over IP Insurrection
http://www.gigaom.com/2004/09/the_v
This is the place; you may want to seek help on forming a WiFi group. Also, don't forget the folks and links above
I hope this stuff helps - OldHawk777
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The people can do it. Start a wireless funding co-operative. The alternative is waiting for wal-mart to do it for you poorly yet eternally.
I'm building co-operatives right now at http://www.ideacradl
Our network is build and operated by a foundation with volonteers in a co-operative model. We try to keep the network operations non-commercial, but seek co-operation with commercial entities in services (Internet) and publicity and development. The network is free to be used by anybody. Hence we don't do any authentication, billing and other boring business stuff.
We aim at fixed-wireless usage; Out users are people at home, small business, not-for-profit organisations and schools.
Our network is financed throug the sponsoring of nodes, mainly by the site-owners (sponsor the powerusage as well); about $1500 per node. Through this model we don't have any recurring costs (the DLS lines are sponsored as well) and all investmest are written off immediately.
I talk with a lot of other cities and villages; killer steps IMHO:
start with an IP plan
financing by gouvernment in stead of users
focus on technical challenges.
The succes of your project depends on the focus on organisation. All the technical issues can be copied from others (all our work is documented and released in open source), the work that needs to be done locally can only be organised and steered by YOU!
The local gouvernment is supportive and starts to get interested now that new small business emerge and people get employment through their activities for Wireless Leiden. We are moulding these small startups into a consortium that does development of special wireless applications and YES they also build commercial wifi networks in other cities for $$$.
There is a phenomenon gaining strength in the US which is reshaping the high-speed wireless world. Cities around the country are beginning to implement public high-speed wireless (primarily 802.11) systems at a rate which will reshape the landscape permanently. What began as an entrepreneurial effort in airports, convention centers and coffee shops is evolving and being eclipsed by a public need and basic right to connectivity. Government has traditionally provided basic services to its citizens such as electric, water and sewer, roads, parks, schools and social services. These and other services have been identified as core services required for living. Today a convergence of technological ability, economical implementation costs and the elevation of access to information, through ubiquitous high-speed internet as a basic public service have created an environment for this paradigm shift. The model that is evolving calls for universal high speed connectivity at a dramatically reduced cost or totally free to the public. This is being and will be provided as a public utility service by cities and governments through their public electric utilities and other service departments. St. Cloud, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, whose motto is "Celebrating Small Town Life" is currently implementing the prototype model of tomorrow for public wireless. On July 1st of this year the city went live on Phase 1 of its "Cyber Spot", a 100% free-to-the-public high-speed wireless network. This initial phase covers about 12 square blocks of the historic downtown and the lakefront. By the end of this year Phase 2 will go live covering the city's master planned mixed use development, Stevens Plantation, adding one square mile of coverage. The goal is to expand the system over the entire 12 square miles of the city in 2005. This would provide residents anywhere within the city limits free high-speed internet - anyplace, anytime. As part of this process the city, which is projected to expand over the next 5 years through annexations to as much as 20-24 square miles, will become possibly the first city in America to require through its land development code that all new developments expand the city wireless infrastructure along with other services such as electric, roads, water and sewer. The initial uses of the system are significant and include public safety, education, city departments and general public connectivity. These uses can justify the system 10 times over but as Mayor Sangiovanni (the driving force in the city on the implementation) points out it is the government's job to put the backbone in place and create the opportunity which will enhance the lives of all its citizens. While there are many uses today, that will expand exponentially over time as people find more and more ways to incorporate and use the system. We only need to look at the internet for guidance. It was only in the early 90's that the internet left the world of academia and entered the public domain with the debut of the first Netscape graphical interface. Today the internet is pervasive in our lives with the majority of the current uses never envisioned in the earliest days. It was the placement of the opportunity that created the ingenuity we all experience today. You can philosophically and economically justify the implementation of public systems everywhere. You can argue that this eliminates the information divide between those that are economically advantaged and those that are not, leveling the playing field. You can justify the cost through increased levels of public safety. You can justify the cost through internal productivity gains within city government. You can argue that increased connectivity will be an economic development driver for businesses within the community. All these and many more reasons would be 100% correct and should be reason enough. Here is a basic statistic we have looked at in St. Cloud. 72% of its citizens have internet access at home, 29% of those broadband. The savings to the citizens in a typical household wi
Austin Wireless City has set up over 100 hotspots in Austin, all free, within various venues. This includes a partnership with the city to use its network for free wireless at city buildings and parks. The recipe for building hotspots the AWC way is at Less Networks, which provides a backbone for the AWC sites. However there's more to it than the recipe would suggest... e.g. getting visibility with the city and getting support from the wireless industry within Austin was party a function of the Wireless Future project. Bottom line is that we laid a lot of groundwork and had a major university helping suppor the effort, as well as over 90 companies in town with an interest in making Austin a hub for wireless activity. The businesses formed the Austin Wireless Alliance, and it's been promoting business and commercial aspects of the wireless explosion. Verizon just selected audience as a launch point for its 3G service. Rich MacKinnon (founder of Less Networks and Austin Wireless City) and I are both willing to talk to other folks in other cities about the work we did... and the Wireless Future report can be downloaded as a pdf here.
Jon Lebkowsky jonl@polycot.com http://www.polycot.com
Just made a post about how private wireless is poping up all over Chicago.
Duh. The economist in me speaks out.
How should cities establish free, city-wide wireless access?
Tax credits.
You are eligilble for a tax credit=cost of providing a wireless internet access to your local area. You are required to provide at least port 80 (http) access, and other capabilities are optional.
Most companies are more than willing to do stuff like this, if they can do it on the cheap/free. By allowing them to shirk on their taxes, they'll totally do it. You'll have access point popping up on buildings all over the place.
Not just internet cafes, either, though they'd go nuts with such a proposal. I'm think that nearly any company that has a reasonable internet connection would participate in such an agreement.
I know ours would.
Just my 2 cents.
How to get to this point? Form a working group. Meet up with whoever you can in your area. Write a proposal. Take it to a minor city official, but don't ask them to push it for you. Instead, ask them how they would write it. Make those changes. Take your revised proposal to every internet cafe/coffee shop with internet access. Get them to sign off on it.
Return to city official. Show it to local media. Etc, etc.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I've lived in Austin for three years, and frankly I was surprised to discover that there's a lot of wireless networking research being done by UT, IBM and Intel. See my Telephony column http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_austin_texas _wireless/
With all this talent working on mobile networking and pervasive computing in town, it's really no wonder that the wireless freenet movement is so strong here.
As a city councilmemeber, I have led an initiative to deploy a county-wide wireless broadband network in Houston County, GA for the last year and a half. Recently, I joined Civitium LLC, a consulting firm dedicted to working with local, regional, and state government to deploy wireless broadband networks, as their Government Strategist. In that capacity, I recently composed a step by step cookbook for community leaders interested in deploying a wireless broadband network. It will be published by www.muniwireless.com in the next 7-10 days. There will be no cost for the cookbook. You can also review some of our resources for local governments and the Wireless Houston County report at http://www.civitium.com/perspective.htm. I can be reached at matt@civitium.com or 478.447.2944 if anyone has questions about our project and Civitium's resources and services.
I am an elected official who has led an effort to deploy a countywide wireless broadband network for the last year and a half. As you can imagine, our project has helped us gain tremendous experience in the process local leaders should take. For that reason, I have composed a "Community Wireless Broadband Cookbook" based on our experience and best practices. It covers everything from assessing a community's need for broadband to funding the network and enhancing its value. It will be available for free at www.muniwireless.com in the next 7-10 days.
Check out Auckland NZ. Reach Wireless using RoamAD(metropolitan wi-fi) and Woosh using IP Wireless. That town is a hotbed of wireless progress. Auckland's Wi-Fi Hotzone. Interesting thing here is that the city gt behind the launch of the network and actively promotes it, but does not own it. See How the city got involved.