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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.
Who decides what is "too costly"?
If the citizens of an urban area decide they want to pay for Wi-Fi, why does a state representative from downstate Hooterville think they can say otherwise?
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
read the article:
The basic argument against metro Wi-Fi deployments boils down to three major points. First, these initiatives are viewed as inappropriate expenditures of public funds that are likely to result in higher than expected ongoing operational costs. Second, the report asserts that such efforts are both anti-competitive and will have a chilling effect on private efforts to expand broadband services. Finally, the authors maintain that the goals espoused for these projects, which range from economic development to delivery of broadband to underserved populations, are unlikely to be fulfilled.
I'm amazed that neither San Francisco (who was also thinking of this idea) or Chicago are worried about people messing with these city wide wi-fi networks. Can anyone help give further insight into that problem?
I just think it would possibly be an issue when they have people connecting and then more "computer literate" people scanning the networks for files, boredom (malice), etc.
Ubuntu, the way linux should be.
Try Ubuntu FREE! --
...at least in cities like Seattle. Chicago should be about the same.
see, theres already a bazillion free wifi hotspots. get a group to map 'em out (if they havent already), and bingo. you have free wireless almost anywhere you go.
http://www.seattlewireless.net/
I live in Chicago and this is a BAD idea. All I need is one of the MOST corrupt governments in the U.S. competing the private telecoms out of business and for all intents and purposes controlling the INTERNET in Chicago.
That lasted for about 6 months. Then December came, along with about a foot of snow. This covered up all the warchalking runes and made finding open networks a little harder.
Unfortunately, war-pissing never caught on, and war-chalking has become much less popular (see, e.g.: ) so I bought a little handheld wireless sniffer, and it's worked ok for those times I was desperate for an internet connection. But a municipal wireless network would be 100 times better. It would save a lot of time having to sniff around, and would have much more consistent and reliable coverage.
Oh yeah they will. Someone has to have his finger on the pursestrings. Maybe not the technical portion, but you can bet your ass that an office within the city govt. will be set up to administer this thing.
they'll contract the whole thing to the lowest bidder. Hence, competition among network suppliers.
and they'll pay that contract through money collected from everybody, not just people and businesses who wanted it. Like all other WiFi suppliers would have to.
For those who want the service, it may well be cheaper. For those who don't want/need it, no price is too low.
The city is simply a big customer, and market forces rule
The city has the ability to force everyone to be in the market. If TimeWarner could force everybody in town to pay up, they could (theoretically) lower their enduser prices as well.
TVA anybody?
This created jobs, provided power to people without eletricity, and helped reduced private utility companies prices.... Anyone see a parallel?
Where I'm from, Calgary Alberta (Canada!), we have a 'wireless city' http://wifinetnews.com/archives/001821.html
:)
Or at least, so is the 'hype', but let me explain how it is:
- Only a small portion of the city is, notably a portion of the downtown ocre
- Any one MAC address is only allowed one hour online at a time.
I realize the article is proposing more then what we have up here, but I was pretty impressed with what my city has done.
Basically, I can go out for lunch, and avoid some bad legal problems if I'm to use my work network for home coding, or what have you. An hour's just perfect for me: but if I want more, it's a Telus (http://www.telus.com/) hotspot, so naturally I can buy more minutes.
I'd love to see this spread city wide, but I'm not really sure the point: taxes would probably have to go up, and either noone will use it when they can use their home networks (over only using an hour a day), etc.
That said, it's a nice on-ramp, it's good for visitors, and I personally like it.
- - - -
KickingDragon
Seeing as city dwellers are subisidizing the rest of the country right now this seems pretty fair.
They're just for people with cushy cars. If you really need to get somewhere, you could walk, ride a mountain bike, or buy a Jeep.
The government ought to stop subsidizing people who are too lazy or short-sighted to navigate the terrain they live in.
I guarantee that they're spending $100 on pavement for every dollar they might spend on internet access. If you want to address the real problem, demand that they stop sinking so much of our tax dollars into paved roads!
I know I'm going to get some flames for this because quite a lot of Slashdotters seem to believe that everything should be free, but I'm not absolutely comfortable with free city-sponsored wireless.
Telecom companies rank just below HMOs on the vileness scale, but having Chicago put up wireless APs everywhere is not going to result in a socialist Internet dream where the city pays for your pr0n downloads. What it does result in is some lucky corporation's dream, where everyone in Chicago pays the city (some more indirectly than others) to pay a single contracted telecom to give them wireless Internet.
Not everyone is going to use this service. That's OK, not everyone uses the school system, but we all pay for it...but in this case, I'm not even sure that a clear majority in Chicago use the Internet. And even if they do, some use it much less than others. Most Slashdotters probably would have a hard time going back from their broadband accounts to $10/mo dialup, but the average person who checks their AOL email once a day is probably under no pressure to switch anytime soon.
Furthermore, due to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which I firmly believe in, I expect the city would end up having to do (or contract out) major security work to handle people with too much time on their hands. The issue of censorship comes up as well -- the city now acts as the ISP for a host of activities that may include breaking Illinois state law. This can probably be ironed out, but why deal with it at all?
As much as I love getting stuff free, I have to say that this screams "boondoggle". The potential waste and corruption (this is the Chicago city government we're talking about) of a deal like this, as well as the small number of potential beneficiaries, makes me very dubious.
What do I like better? Portland's Personal Telco Project. It's not sponsored by (read: under control of) the city government. It's done by private contributors who choose their own ISP, allowing a wider range of solutions to be chosen, are responsible for the cells of their own network, and -- apparently -- make group decisions by consensus as opposed to mandate (as the city would be the primary controller of a municipal network, I'm guessing most decisions would be by mandate of some controlling committee). There is also less potential for fuckwad-related damage, since the people who put these up generally are nerds or assisted by nerds who know what they're doing. In short, it's much more decentralized and, IMHO, essentially more free.
Of course, it's not as easy to get city-wide municipal Internet the Personal Telco way as it is to simply tell all your fellow citizens to pay for a luxury that you want.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
of the Chicagoland area, I've learned a few things about the way things are done in Chicago:
Granted, I like the idea of a city-wide WiFi network. But I know that if Chicago adopted WiFi, Daley and Co. would find some way to poison the well and ruin everything for everybody.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
After Ring the Fing A, it looks like their "pondering" is in the direction of letting some as yet unknown company rent space on their light and electric poles.
Said company would charge people say 20$ a month for a password to connect to the service (or something like that) and said company would pay the city "rent" for the pole space.
This is in no way the free municipal wifi that people are daydreaming of. This is merely a city trying to find a way to cash in on the wifi craze by renting their property.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
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.
So, should government not provide public libraries? Museums? Parks? Most people don't use those, and you are inevitably imposing taxes on those that can't read and don't want books.
Private enterprise would probably create a technologically superior network, true, but then they have to come up with a pricing model to charge for use. This defeats the whole purpose of the plan: free access for all.
Even if they decided that wireless wasn't generally useful and that most residents wouldn't use it and didn't want to pay for it, they could still easily justify it. It makes the city more attractive to tourists and businesses, stimulating the local economy, providing jobs, increasing tax revenues to offset the costs.
I'd be in favor of ending your so-called "subsidies" to urban areas if we also ended:
Would you consider this a fair trade?
Internet access is a "nice to have" convienence but hardly a public necessity (like roads, schools, etc.).
I disagree with that. Schools and libraries are essential to the functioning of a democracy because they help prepare voters. But schools and libraries aren't enough; voters also need fresh information and avenues for participation. This last election showed that the internet is shifting power back to individual citizens, but we'll never see the full flowering of that until access is pretty much universal.
That doesn't mean that the government should promise a T1 in every pot. But it's perfectly possible for cities to provide moderate, limited wireless internet access without noticeably harming the market for wired or wireless broadband. That will allow for all sorts of community coordination, distance learning, self-directed education, and citizen participation that today are restricted to the well off.
Unfortunately, the parent's point about "wireless networks being best left to commercial entities" is really only applicable where competition exists! There is no (real) competition for the regional "baby bell" telcos, because they own the infrastructure, and are regulated (badly) by the various state corporation commissions. The local municipalities are at the mercy of whatever timeframe and limits the telcos place on upgrading that infrastructure. OTOH, most cable companies are regulated at the municipal or county level, where the local governments can use the "big stick" of not renewing the cable company contracts for service. The difference in improved broadband access (between the telco & the cable provider) is remarkable.
Fairfax County, VA has Verizon for their telco, and Cox Cable for their cable service. The county specified the percentage of broadband access provided, as well as the timeframe that it could happen in, under threat of replacing Cox with another provider. So far, Cox has been rolling out broadband cable access right on schedule. OTOH, Verizon has been very slow to upgrade their infrastructure (POTS) for DSL access. Verizon doesn't answer to the county, but to the state, so there is no possibility of overturning Verizon's monopoly "applecart" at the county or municipality level.
Competition is a fair means to bring broadband access to a county or a region, and anything that a municipality can do to help foster that competition is fair game (in my book). The telcos' rush to squash municipal competition in WiFi access by doing an end-run with state legislatures is an unmitigated grab for continued monopolistic power that does not bode well for the consumer.
The underlying question that the citizens need to be asking their state legislatures is "Does the state grant monopoly status to corporations for the benefit of its citizens, or for the benefit of its corporations?" Increasingly (at least in these United States of America), the answer is in favor of the corporate monopolists. And considering which political party is in control of most state legislatures these days, it is a foregone conclusion that the corporate monopolists will win. In the USA, at least, our neocon politicians do have an ethos (of sorts): they stay "bought" by their corporate masters.
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