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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.
More than 100 U.S. municipalities are considering deploying wireless city-wide networks. In this article, Network Computing's Dave Molta contends that such networks will stifle competition and will be an expensive mistake.
6 0300027
more here:
http://informationweek.mobilepipeline.com/
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.
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.
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As Dave Molta's article states/ 60300027
http://informationweek.mobilepipeline.com
muni WiFi is a bad idea. Many here are mentioning the waste of money, etc. But what about the choice of technology? The article says they want to deploy this with Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi was NOT designed as a wide area network technology. You only have 11 channels to work with and, realistically, only 3 because they overlap in the spectrum.
What about interference with user's home networks? It's bad enough that every Joe Computer has a wireless gateway set up in his room, but now those default-configured devices are going to suffer from an a/b/or g network flyin around the whole city.
The limitations of WiFi will cause a terrible quality of service, probably equating to slow dial up speeds with many disconnects as multiple users are trying to share this limited bandwidth.
Not to mention that it is difficult to imagine that the government is actually going to support and maintain this deployment as they should. Seems as if they are discussing setup costs and not Total Cost of Ownership.
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.
use this new network for *GASP* playing VIOLENT GAMES! http://news.com.com/Illinois+seeks+to+restrict+vio lent+games/2100-1043_3-5593248.html
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.