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Minneapolis To Go Wireless
an_mo writes " According to a Minneapolis Star Tribune article, Wednesday will see the announcement of a request for bids on a citywide wireless access service The city will unveil a request for a proposal for a privately owned, $15 million to $20 million citywide wireless and fiber-optic network to improve government communications by linking every city building, police car and housing inspector. The network would also would be available to every individual in the city for $18 to $24 a month."
That area is so flat one high gain antenna on top of a flag pole should be able to service everyone.
As a resident of a suburb just outside of Minneapolis (Eden Prairie), I'm somewhat torn about this:
On the positive side, this influx of competition in the broadband arena is good for me as a consumer, currently tithing about $45/month to Time-Warner Cable (which serves Minneapolis and the SW 'burbs). More competition in the broadband arena is a very good thing--especially when it shakes up entrenched local monopolies (Qwest DSL and Time-Warner Cable). Also, as a Hennepin County (which contains Minneapolis and my suburb) taxpayer, technologies that can streamline government operations (and either provide better services and/or lower taxes) is another good thing.
However, on the negative side, I'm nervous about governments getting into the broadband business--the potential for intrusion and abuse of the citizen's rights to privacy is certainly increased. The fact that this deployment is run by a private company helps a little--but it still concerns me, since the government is providing the funding for it.
Technology itself is neutral and can be used for both good and evil purposes. Perhaps, what I'd like to see would be a citizen's oversight group that can provide the checks on government abuse of the network.
Another smaller suburb to my southwest (Chaska) has their own municipal deployment, which apparently is working out pretty well.
As long as municipal broadband doesn't block other entities from providing broadband service to a community and foster competition, municipal broadband could be a very good thing. But, I'm still concerned about potential abuse of the network by the local governments.
Because, surprise, it takes time and money to do things.
Kudos to the government for charging monthly for access. Charge the people that use it instead of taxing everyone for a handful of geeks to use it.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Spending $20 Million to install wireless is great, but it'll reflect poorly if the system isn't completely overhauled every few years.
I look forward to the time in the not so distant future where wireless internet access is considered an inherent right. Even now, driving around Boston with macstumbler, I can find dozens of open non-WEP protected networks ripe for the taking and so I delude myself these unprotected networks are a purposeful open sharing of bandwidth. Am I the only one who finds the idea of forcing your citizens to pay to join such a network to be a little silly? I guess I think this sort of thing should be a public right rather than an extra cost. Mind you, let's reform healthcare and education first, and give them the kind of money they need, but you know, after taking care of the more essential essentials, free wireless and fiber-optic networks for everyone!
So if every cop car is linked, couldn't you find a way to track the location of each car and then use that to plan a crime? Or see that there are no cars on the road, so you can speed as fast as you want.
Want to empower your citizens or simply want to sell them to the highest bidder?
Sure this simplifies the question, but some solutions ( http://www.personaltelco.net ) work with all the parts of a community ( citizens, biz owners, etc) to create the power to empower, not simply the muni blessed right to make more montly bill paying consumers.
The real question is , what works for your community. In places where there is not a grass roots DIY mindset then the AOLization method might indeed be the way to go, for communities that can raise the populace to action though....oh thereis so much more to be done.
Come to Portland, see the results in progress.
-tom
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
This is the phone & cable companies worst nightmare - they spend billions building their networks and somebody can now undercut their costs with $99 wireless access points and antennae. I think Qwest DSL costs $40-50 in Minneapolis - 2x as much. Still, competition is good - maybe phone & cable companies will step up and we'll see the type of residential speeds that they already have in Korea and Japan here in the US in a few years.
Tristan Yates
FTA: No tax money would be used for the Minneapolis wireless network, which would be paid for, built, owned and operated by the winning bidder on the city's proposal. That is a markedly different approach than in Philadelphia, where the city will own and operate a new Wi-Fi network.
From You:
Kudos to the government for charging monthly for access. Charge the people that use it instead of taxing everyone for a handful of geeks to use it.
The one reason I am not against this implementation. Had they made it free, I would have been pissed. One thing I am concerned about though, how is this network (if it is using standard 802.11 a/b/g equipment), going to be affected by personal wirless hubs/routers? That should degrade/jam performance. They also are talking about replacing police radios (if I understood that correctly) with VoIP radios on this network. Wouldn't that be open to jamming (as in even more so than cellphones) and interference from other WAPs? Or are they going to ban the use of all non-city WAPs?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Didn't Popular Science just claim that Minneapolis is America's most technologically advanced city? Seems like citywide wireless access would be a piece of cake for these guys...
[o]_O
Why would you think that the cities will do this and currently AT&T,MCI,Level3, etc. wouldn't or don't do this? Do you think that they value your privacy so much they wouldn't comply with such an order?
If the NSA wants your data, they're going to get it. A network such as this makes that no more or less likely.
Take your tinfoil hat off at the door.
Anyone wardriving this area? I'll post a link to an image if someone uploads their wardriving discoveries.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I agree that they are looking for problems in this regard, however it should idealy only degrade performance. Unfortunately the real world experience proves otherwise.
The city doesn't have the authority to regulate the ISM bands, so there is not telling where this could go.
Not to mention that HAM operators have precedence and very few restrictions in channel 1.
I live in Minneapolis and have to say that I believe that they will find a way to royally mess this up.
On one hand, I see the benefits of it - I even think it may have far reaching benefits (like raising property values). On the other hand, we are Murderopolis and the money should go to fighting crime.
In a strange way, wireless may actually help with things like crime rates. No, I am not kidding! The city needs to attract business and people back into the city. Offering this inexpensive, quality service is one way of doing just that. More jobs = less despair = less crime.
I live in the North side of Minneapolis which is where much of the crime exists. It is in parts very bad, the gangs have control. When the gas company goes on service calls into these areas, they frequently hire off-duty police officers for security! There are quite a few empty or underutilized commercial buildings and several large areas where commercial businesses were tore down and are now just empty lots. Still businesses would be crazy to relocate here. They would be robbed, their employees harrassed and their property vandalized.
If wireless comes to Minneapolis, I would hope that it would hit the North side first. It would be an incentive to bring people and business in.
But the city won't work that way. North will be last.
Meanwhile, the cable company will slowly quit providing amazing broadband service since the few remaining subscribers won't justify the cost of upgrading equipment. Here, North Minneapolis will be the first to be cut back.
I'm screwed.
I've lived in Minneapolis all my life, and I'm here to tell you that free wireless is a natural outcome of our longstanding populist/socialist traditions.
Free market, my ass. If you want to live in a better world, instruct your government to tax you and your neighbors -- then spend that tax money on a better world.
-kgj
-kgj
...to RTFA, here are some key points.
* The citywide wireless network is necessary to improve government communications by linking every city building, police car and housing inspector to the city's databases, city officials say.
* No tax money would be used for the Minneapolis wireless network, which would be paid for, built, owned and operated by the winning bidder on the city's proposal.
* Minneapolis officials decided not to build their own wireless network because of high construction and administrative costs, Beck said. In addition, city officials were concerned that cities offering high-speed Internet service have been accused by large telephone companies of competing with the private sector, he said.
* the city also needed an improved network that could speed up data traffic in its 47 main buildings and extend high-speed access to 300 other buildings
* The city also wanted to replace expensive cellular radio communications used by police cars with a cheaper and faster wireless data network. There also was a desire to provide broadband to an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the city's population that either isn't served by high-speed Internet access or can't afford it.
So, there's a little bit more going on here than the city slapping an antenna on top of the IDS tower and charging people for internet access, which a lot of these posts seem to think is what is happening.
just read through the comments, didn't see anything about this...
how are they going to enforce log-in? That is, when I have my 802.11b network setup at home, i simply use WEP and MAC filtering to ensure that no one but me can connect to my router. But if it's open to everyone, how do they make sure that only people who paid can use it?
There's a local free service in my city (Montreal) that has wireless for cafes, and it's pretty cool, but kind of annoying at the same time. When you connect, the first time you try to access a page, it directs you to a log-in page. Then you can browse as much as you want, but every 10 minutes or so it'll direct you back to the log-in page. It's okay, but I wouldn't trust it not to interrupt me during.. i dunno.. online banking or something.
Also, if they do use WEP or something, they can't very well give each user their own key. Besides, it's pretty well known that WEP can be cracked. Couldn't you listen in on conversations around you can grab people's passwords? Forget paying $24 a month, I'll just figure out someone's log-in and use their access...
I remember back when everyone was using dial-up it was always possible to get lists of people's log in names and passwords, which i guess were leaked from local ISPs, and people would use them instead of buying their own accounts. I can see this happening even more easily with wireless.