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Persuading A City To Go Wireless?

Posted by timothy on from the what's-your-value-proposition dept.

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?"

4 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Austin is wireless? by dougmc · · Score: 3, Informative
    Living in Austin, I was quite astounded to find that the city had gone wireless.

    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.

  2. Muniwireless by YeOldeGnurd · · Score: 3, Informative

    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...
  3. Correction by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Informative
    I don't know about the other cities, but in San Francisco, it's not the city that has gone wireless -- it's a group of people within the city that have set up free wireless access points.

    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.

  4. Persuading a Continent to go wireless by gtoomey · · Score: 4, Informative
    In Australia we have a numerous local wireless meshes that are being joined to make a mesh spanning a continent.

    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