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Chicago To Consider City-Wide Wireless Network
Mitchell writes "Chicago Indymedia reports on developments pertaining to community internet in Chicago. A press release from the Center for Neighborhood Technology reports that the city's Finance Committee has commissioned a study to explore the possibility of low-cost wireless internet across the city of Chicago, and reserve Chicago's right to establish a citywide Wi-Fi network. It could run into efforts underway now in the state capital by Big Telecom to shut out muni Internet in Illinois." Several readers also pointed to the Chicago Tribune's story on this possibility, including efforts to head off regulation which would make municipal Wi-Fi difficult.
in three days, we'll read a story about how the Illinois legislature is banning municipal wireless.
grandfather clause. It is sad that they have to rush this to implementation just to beat the legislation out the door.
Who are the network suppliers? Oh yeah, the big telco's. So they still get their money. They just don't get to set profit margins as high because they have to be low bidder to get the contract. Would this make an interesting alternative to legislating price controls? The city is simply a big customer, and market forces rule.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
I doubt that the city would run its own mail servers... if they don't filter port 25, drive-by spamming would be facilitated, and if they do, the utility of the service will be dramatically affected for the "common man", unless everyone gets a webmail account.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I think it should be up to the town. Here in my town, you have 1 choice if you do not want dial up connections that run at 19.8k (nasty old phone lines). yep, you can call the cable company, and pay them $35 (oops, just went up, make it $45 a month to get online.) In my community, there is alot of people that can't afford that. We have a Library with probably 15 pc's with internet access. Pushing a free wireless system would probably go over very, very well in this town. And if the majority of people want it, and there is no meaningful competition providing it already, why not? Thats how police, fire, ambulances, and even water and utility services started..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
with the very likely (lack) of security on this deployment, every wardriving script-kiddie who wants to cause some havoc will be there having a grand ol time.
See you all in Chicago!
... I wholeheartedly support plans by cities to deploy their own wireless networks. Especially those cities and counties that private companies have failed to adequately supply. The market has become too uptight and created an artificial scarcity, and it needs competition from municipalities to shake it out of its complacency.
The new regulations outlawing such measures are completely brain-dead, and do harm to the competitive environment while espousing "libertarian" values. Hell, even the venerable CATO Institute has become nothing more than a shill for corporations, and lost its ability to be objective and realistic.
From my perspective as a staunch Libertarian it is becoming increasingly clear that mixed economies provide the best soil for healthy competition, and that they do a better job of supporting the human and technological infrastructure required to foster a healthy economy.
Now, let the real competition begin!
-- thinkyhead software and media
Hahahahahahahahahaha >coff<
Now, tell me exactly how much real competition there is among the private telecoms? Let's see, my local wired provider in Chicago is....SBC Ameritech! Hm. Who else? Nobody whose name I know, that's for sure.
I have DSL. Not SBC DSL either. But guess who provides the wire for that, too? Yep.
Where is that competition? Oh...I get it. You mean that if they have to face competition, they'll go out of business. About Damn Time, I'd say.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Folks,
Put aside your geekiness for a minute (I'm a huge WiFi user, too) and consider the unfairness and inefficiency of government-supplied Wifi.
My argument against municipal Wifi is two-fold:
1) Internet access is a "nice to have" convienence but hardly a public necessity (like roads, schools, etc.). By creating a government-sponsored network, you inevitably impose taxes on many folks who will never use, nor want, a wireless network.
2) Government rarely does anything right, except create more government. I don't know about Chicago but my city (San Antonio, TX) can't even fill the countless deep potholes that are springing up everywhere. Do you trust these people to deliver you a secure, fast, stable network? Do you want to pay *THEM* to deliver this network?
Wireless networks are best left to commercial entities. If the city government wants to do something to promote a private, low-cost municipal network, lobby your city council members to provide free/reduced-cost access of utility/light poles to the deploying company in exchange for subsidized access fees for the poor (or better yet, low fees all across the board).
as long as they accept that other are in that space as well. If they pull a fast one and try to claim eminent(sp) domain, well, that is BS.
11b is nice and slow and CHEAP. There is new technology being developed that is much faster, able to penetrate buildings, etc. etc. But with Chicago doing a low-end cheap system, they set the bar for what they are willing to accept from somebody else. Hopefully, they will also resist the urge to offer monopolies. This can be a win-win all the way around.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No real libertarian would support a govt based wireless muni network. The reason telcom companies are not providing metro WiFi access is they are a lot smarter than local politicians. They are waiting for WiMax deployment, which is the right solution for the problem. When your local govt wastes your money on a WiFi network, you'll be stuck with it while other comunities are get much better perfomance with WiMax for a lot lower cost. No telcom company will want to compete with your "free" but lousy network.
Vote for Pedro
Of course, that means more federal debt and eventually more taxes for the rest of us.
Erhm, I think there's other little things like wars, a huge military spread round the world, and of course social security that tend to cost a lot more than services from states/cities : )
What makes you think you will have lower bills?
State ventures are usually much less efficient than private ones, so if anything, you would see either higher bills, or higher taxes. Either way, you'd end up paying more.
If you want state-run stores and industry, try moving to the last surviving communist countries - North Korea or Cuba for example. Good luck.
It'll go in, work reliably for several years....then Mayor Daley will claim that its being used for terrorist activities and get police escorted techies to execute surprise middle-of-the-night attacks on the access points and carve big "X"'s in the printed circuit boards, rendering them useless.
Seeing as city dwellers are subisidizing the rest of the country right now this seems pretty fair.
Not really.
What about those city dwellers that don't provide these extra services? They end up subsidizing those cities that do.
So if you live in a city and you pay money directly for a service that the city doesn't provide, you pay a federal tax on that money.
But the same person in a place paying the city through taxes for the same service doesn't pay federal tax on that money.
It's unfair for two people getting the same service to have different tax burdens simply because one purchases the service throught the city and one does not.
Exactly. Daley and his cronies can't pave city streets without massive fraud and horrible delays and plenty of taxpayer waste. Millenium park was 5 years late and hundreds of millions over-budget.
Why does anyone think municipal wi-fi will work at all, especially in Chicago? Corruption and waste will run rampant, just as it does in most other city services. As hard as it is to believe, Federal programs are typically models of efficiency and integrity compared to almost any urban government program - in Chicago or anywhere else.
I still can't figure out how Daley runs basically unopposed every elec... (insert sound of several large South-Side Irish lads hitting someone over the head with a piece of rebar).
and that would be true if we weren't talking about CHICAGO. You know who the Mayor of Chicago is right? Well let me clue you in his name is Richard M. Daley, and he GETS HIS WAY.
*points to where Meigs Field use to be*
> Who decides what is "too costly"?
That's _exactly_ the problem with doing this -- no one thinks about long term cost of a public deployment of Wi-Fi. That's the difference between a public effort and a privatized one.
Like when it needs to scale, who pays for it to grow? Who pays for the extra access points you need in a year when everyone jumps onto this network? How long will 11b be satisfactory? When it's not, who pays for upgrades to 802.11g, then Wi-Max, then 4G, then who knows what else 15 years from now?
We don't live in the age where copper wire handled most of the telephony needs for almost than a century. The time between shifts in the way people want to communicate is decreasing dramatically.
Basically, you are a moron, sir.
Although the internet IS considered (at the moment) a luxury, it should NOT be consided such.
*Putting on the predictive glasses*
In the very near future, folks who are not internet savvy will be considered illiterate, and backwards.
Soon everyone will require the internet to go about their daily business.
*taking off the predictive glasses*
Having said that, I will now assert that the State's act of NOT ensuring equal provision of basic internet access to all should be a criminal act, likened to not providing equal education to all.
Yes, a business may provide the service in the area.
Is it affordable to the poor? NO.
Can the poor get out of poverty without having knowledge of the internet? Possibily. Surely not as easily though. Therefore not having internet access is an impediment to escaping poverty.
You might say though, that the state does not have an obligation to elevating the poverty stricken.
If so, I would call you a Republican
I believe that the state should offer a basic level of access to all, and then let businesses offer a higher speed verion for people who want to pay for it. That is how education works (the wealthy can pay for private schools) and I think the internet should be treated in a similar manner.
Flame On Bastards
"It could run into efforts underway now in the state capital by Big Telecom to shut out muni Internet in Illinois."
Apparently, you are not familiar with Mayor Daley. You see, in the US, the state legislates the city, but in Chicago, the city legislates the state.
This "wonderful idea" for 802.11 hot spots, which are essentially coverage circles that are 30 meters in diameter will be obsolete in 3 years.
Anybody trying to use 802.11 (aka WiFi) to cover an entire city must be either clueless in technology or a politician.
The proper solution for this is just now emerging, in the form of 802.16a (aka WiMax) which gives coverage circles larger than 5Km, which can be used to provide city wide coverage, without too much pain. (Google it, there's plenty of stuff out there.)
WiFi was designed to get rid of that last 30 meters of Ethernet cable. and for that it serves well. People have been trying to use it in so many applications that it was never designed for.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal