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?"

Comments

Need

[regjoe]

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.

Re:Need

[RollingThunder]

Govenment should not compete with private business over such matters.

I disagree. When things are best provided as a localized monopoly, I would rather the government (yes, with it's inherent inefficiencies, which are magnitudes less than rabid conservatives would have you believe) have that monopoly, than a for-profit company that will eventually abuse that monopoly.

You can prevent the company from abusing the monopoly with government regulation, true - but then you're spending money to regulate the industry. Better you just do it yourself, via the government.

Offer to pay for it

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Tourist hot spots?

[NoInfo]

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.

A city is a business.

[mind21_98]

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).

Re:A city is a business.

[captnitro]

Your point is correct, but I wouldn't necessarily say that people in the middle of nowhere wouldn't benefit or want it.

For example, I live in the New River Valley (Virginia), where the entire place is practically nowhere. However, we're expected to grow immensely within the next 10 years because of, among other things: suburban sprawl, low cost of living, cheap real estate, and so on. While the town I live in has a poverty rate of 43% (!) as of the 2000 census, the population is split between poor farmers and businesses attracted by nearby Virginia Tech, which has been very active in the past few years in advertising "you could be home by now" for business because of the aforementioned reasons, as well as the proximity to a Top 30 research institution.

In this case, wireless has popped up all over in the past year because our town council is smart and realizes that if we want to attract business, we should offer business perks comparable to that in a larger area. Similarly, it gets the townfolk out and about and spending money because whereas they might not be able to get DSL at home, they *can* get wireless anywhere downtown. It also costs less in terms of coverage area, despite the startup costs taking a bigger chunk of available funds. Several years ago, towns in the area decided to pay for an assload of fiber, most notably Blacksburg, where VT is located. By doing this they lessened the cost for private owners to roll out wireless, among other connectivity, around here.

The point is, I think there's an even bigger incentive for smaller areas to roll out wireless, or at least the connectivity to make it happen. In a large area, a greater percentage of persons will have broadband, or even Internet access in general, so the argument could be made that wireless is a benefit mostly only for visitors. But in a small town, it can benefit the entire community with a much bigger payoff.

Austin is wireless?

[dougmc]

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.

Angry mob

[JorDan Clock]

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.

Muniwireless

[YeOldeGnurd]

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"

You don't

[cbelle13013]

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.

Justification

[Agilis]

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?

Simple .... Money!

[polyp2000]

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...

$$$$$

Resistance

[Anonymous Writer]

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.

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

[nenya]

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.

Re:Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Talk about your massively insecure network...

Wake up and smell the coffee. The internet is as insecure as it comes - anything you don't feel comfortable sending across WiFi you shouldn't send across the Internet either. WiFi has the advantage that only people in your neighbourhood can break in - that's heaven when you compare it to the internet :-) Encryption exists, use it, you should do anyway if it has to go through the internet - no difference.

non-US cities?

[Saville]

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.

no need to persuade them

[wikinerd]

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/

Ah, yes: Wireless. Bad idea loved by all.

[crazyphilman]

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.

Correction

[stephanruby]

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.

Persuading a Continent to go wireless

[gtoomey]

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