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Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports Taipei city planners are building what they say will be the world's biggest Wi-Fi network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital. The project will build on the network available in Hsinyi, an up-and-coming shopping and financial district that is home to the world's tallest building, the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101, and the city government headquarters. The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million. Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. The network will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005."
Is this the beginning of the end? Can ADSL/Cable companies compete with this stuff?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
1) There are more 7/11's than men in taipei
2) There are more women than men in taipei
3) I was using my neighbors wi fi for free and the department store next door's wi fi for free. If Taipei already doesnt have wi fi available in some shape or form somewhere then something's amiss.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
All this talk about large scale wireless reminds me of Tesla and some of his crazy ideas http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_todre.html.
Although Tesla can be creepy sometimes. When he was trying to do something similar with his tower he said, "In this system that I have invented," Tesla explained, "it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth, otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip... so that the whole of this globe can quiver."
I hope they're planning on making sure those access points are gripping the Earth hard enough.
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
I'm sure I'm not the only geek curious to know whether the city will use standard consumer Wifi APs from Linksys, DLink or the like, or go for either custom or industrial-level (Cisco) hardware?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Yeah, like some of you said, it might be kind of slow and congested, but at least it's a start. I mean, when the Internet first came around, the connection was still slower than what these people will prolly be getting. But nobody ever said that early Internet was useless (it wasn't very useful but it wasn't useless, either). So, I say, it's a step, a small one, but an important one.
"Software is like sex, it's better when it's free." Linus Torvalds
With all these WiFi networks springing up, don't they interfere with each other? Esp when people are planning to have city-wide WiFi networks.
What happens when WiFi networks interfere with each other? commercial vs noncommercial? public vs private?
Taiwan also have nationalized healthcare. Medical care is very cheap there.
I hope you see that many nations are organized to better the quality of life of the CITIZEN, and not organized to maximize the profit of the investor.
Other nations are organized like livestock ranches built for the benefit of the investor.
Guess how America is organized....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Taipei is about 27Kha (2.7megares?) in area, with about 2.7M people - that's about 100 people per hectare. Over 20,000 access points will mean about 1 per hectare. Since 802.11 covers about 200m radius max (about 100m radius at full bandwidth), that could put every AP within the range of 4 or 8 others, or even 24 others. That means a mesh with very high redundancy for routing, bandwidth and high-availability. And even 802.11g (to say nothing of WiMax) offers up to 110Mbps - which is about 1Mbps per person in the hectare. Very dense areas could have extra APs, to the max of about 1.7Gbps, with every 802.11 channel filled, for over 16Mbps for each user. Combined with lots of wired AP interconnects to the Internet, those 50+% broadband users in Taipei are going to get a lot more mobile, in just the next year. Sounds like a great market for Slashdotter app development.
--
make install -not war
Note that it will cover 90% of the city by the end of 2005. That's just a year away.
Here in America, we make plans like "Scientists will launch a robotic mission to Mars... by 2009." or "We will return to the Moon... by 2010." We never say "Such-and-such big technological plan will be in effect... by the end of next year."
We move so slowly, like the lumbering elephant we, as a nation, are.
Eventually, the more nimble nations will simply overtake us if we don't stop miring every project we undertake in red tape...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
If you ever go to Taiwan, you will understand the significance of this very well.
In Taiwan, 7-Eleven is not just incredibly common, they are also important, being like a fourth branch of government. There is usually one, sometimes two, 7-Elevens on every block. Even in Tainan, a far more rural city, there would literally be 7-Elevens two or three minutes apart. And along with selling food, software and cell phones, 7-Eleven is where people go to pay their bills, as well as being part of the National Retail Lottery.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
There is literally a 7-Eleven on nearly every street corner there. If every one of their stores had an access point, nearly the entire city would easily have coverage.
I'm sure they already have some sort of network linking the stores. You can already pay your utility bills, parking tickets, etc. there (when you pay they scan a bar code printed on the bill and the transaction goes into the system). They also have copy and fax services, private parcel deliveries, and Slurpees. Its like a Quick-E-Mart and Kinko's rolled into one.