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Tempe, AZ To Provide Wireless Broadband
jangobongo writes "City officials of Tempe, Arizona are laying claim to being the first major metropolitan area in the United States to deploy citywide wireless Internet access. MobilePro Corp. and Strix Systems have been contracted to provide a mesh network covering the entire city, which is to be in place by late summer or early fall. Downtown Tempe and the Arizona State University will have free access available, while the rest of the city will be offered monthly subscriptions ($20 for dial-up speed and $30 to $40 for high-speed wireless). Local broadband suppliers have been quiet on this, unlike elsewhere."
they can compete with Tempe's pricing. They're not offering it for free everywhere or for something like $15/mo as has been suggested elsewhere.
If I had a deal like that in my hometown, I would subscribe; however, I would not shut my home connection down by any means.
Let's face it, I have it pretty good: a static IP, a connection that never goes down, an ISP that filters all my mail and good support. Why would I cancel that? Wireless is nice to have, but doing it old school does not have to conflict with that.
This is what's needed, local councils and the government need to provide investment for both wireless and wired high-speed net access. This way, even the rural areas can get it, how long will it be before prospective buyers of your rural house start to lose interest because of no broadband in your area? It is fast becoming an essential commodity.
And in this case, the fixed-line telcos now have some competition, which is always a good thing(tm).
Hey, if I had that in my city, now that I have Skype on my PocketPC Axim, it'd be just like a cell phone, but with cheap/free long distance! Woot!
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
We've had city wide wireless available for quite some time now. It's offered for FREE too. For those interested, I live in Fredericton New Brunswick Canada! Go Canada!
I LIKE TOAST!!!
OK, so what about power, gas, water, sewer, garbage? I don't see anything wrong with cities providing utilities. They should be able to run this at cost or at a profit, and they're providing a service that private industry hasn't gotten around to doing yet.
Get everyone in Tempe AZ to get with it and get a massive online Sims game going. Everyone can live out a life and never leave the house.
The benefits will be enormous. Traffic will be lighter and delivery & gaming support services will reap great rewards!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
At $20-$40 a month per subscriber, they'd have to have either a huge chunk of graft or have no subscribers to run the system into the red. If its the latter, then the system will probably end up just being run by the university. If its the former, some local news show will have some "Major Expose" and "blast the story wide open" on prime time tv where nobody will continue to care.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
They didn't hire anyone. The University built it out for them at their cost.
this is a good idea, besides the socialist factor played out here all the time.
Face it, you are giving government control of the medium. You are giving them the power to censor the internet when they control it like this. You are already seeing the FEC trying to graple the internet for political speech (which the 1st ammendment is there to protect at its BASE!!!). Giving the government the power to distrubute connections is tantamount to giving them the rights to distribute newspapers and sell "spectrums" for TV/Radio stations to broadcast on (whcih they already do).
Look where the FCC has gone with its control over that medium, they have been cracking down on "questionable content" for a long time.
Be careful what you wish for.
Municipalities have a valuable role to play in filing this gap. Municipalities have a long history of providing necessary services for citizens and stimulating local businesses. In the 20th century, municipalities built power plants and telephone lines when private services did not move fast enough. Our competitive power and telecoms industries today demonstrate that these services by municipalities complement private industry rather than compete with it. In addition, municipalities have a long history of spending money to benefit their citizens and encourage business development. They should have the same opportunity to offer public hot spots and broadband access.
From 2001- 2004 the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in global rankings of broadband Internet usage. Today, most U.S. homes can access only 'basic' broadband, among the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world. Nearly all Japanese have access to 'high-speed' broadband, with an average connection time 16 times faster than in the United States - for only about $22 a month. South Korea, which has the world's greatest percentage of broadband users, and urban China, which last year surpassed the U.S. in the number of broadband users.
The solution is not to protect the baby bells and cable companies from competition; it is instead to encourage more competition. Communities across the country are experimenting with ways to supplement private service. And these experiments are producing unexpected economic returns. Some are discovering that free wireless access increases the value of public spaces just as street lamps do. And just as street lamps don't make other types of lighting obsolete, free wireless access in public spaces won't kill demand for access in private spaces. Yet we will never recognize these externalities unless municipalities are free to experiment.
Source: NY Times & http://www.pbs.org/now/