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Verizon Pulling Plug on Free Wi-Fi in NYC
Cashen writes "'Verizon Communications Inc. is turning off the free wireless Internet access it beams from New York City telephone booths for DSL subscribers who use laptops away from home or the office.' Full article here. Is it just a coincidence Verizon is expanding its EV-DO in New York at the same time? Guess we have to pay to play now ... The real question is, when is EV-DO coming to Michigan?"
Verizon is apparently giving people wireless modems/routers now, as I'm seeing them popping up all over my neighborhood. Most people don't know enough to secure them, and they're 802.11g, too!
Is it me, or is there something wrong with this story ? Text doesn't show and link was funny.
So, there's no protection at all against signal problems if EV-DO runs on standard WiFi equipment. I wouldn't pay for that.
Also, first post.
I hate your sig!
people will just use the access points around...
come on anyone who buys a router now gets wifi on it and they leave it open OR you just discover the keys and break in (yeah it takes a while but thats life)
realistically wifi is here to stay and its kind of free (to those in the know)
most of the students I know dont pay they just leach of others bandwidth or plug into uni...
regards
John Jones
with their own gear.
As far as I'm concerned, if it's their stuff, it's their call. I DO have an issue with their lobbyists getting legislation passed that forbids other people from doing the same thing.
Take your trucks and go home, Verizon. Leave my toys alone.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
or not sucka!
The key phrase in the article is "better business model" = "way to make as much money as possible without being forced out of the market by competitors"
where's all that Karma?
Get yourself down Starbucks - coffee and WiFi!
Pay girls to strip!
How do you pull the plug on wireless?
"The real question is, when is EV-DO coming to michigan?"
I live in Alabama, you insensitive clod!
Didn't your momma ever tell you that there is no such thing as a free lunch even when its free.
Get yourself down Starbucks - coffee and WiFi!
Well, at least WiFi...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
WTF? That must be the weirdest interpretation of that movie I've ever heard.
How often can you do that? Once you pull the plug, you'd have to put it back in to pull it again, right? Didn't see that story.
As long as everyone participates we'll see even more free community wireless networks popping up everywhere. This will create a new, distributed, and more redundant internet infrastructor and make the provider model obsolete. Verizon can go and fuck themselves.
Although I would replace "die underground" with "discover a previously unknown race of mole humanoids, learning a bit about themselves as they learn about their culture" and "enslaved and consumed" with "competing in a intergalactic drag race: the stakes have never been higher, the future of humanity amongst the stars hangs in the balance".
come on anyone who buys a router now gets wifi on it and they leave it open OR you just discover the keys and break in (yeah it takes a while but thats life)
Using an open access point is cool. I leave mine open and people are free to use it. Using a network that has keys on it is uncool. That is criminal because you actually are breaking into a system to use it. It is also stupid because most of closed networks are corporate network that have people monitoring them. There is enough open access points that spending the time breaking into a closed one is a waste of time anyway. I think most people breaking into closed networks do it more for the l33t factor despite being script kiddies.
Please, George Lucas, don't hijack my brilliant script full of euro-angst and a no-happy-ending plot and turn it into a heroic story with Jar Jar.
There will be no mole humanoids. There could be an army of vampires ("we always knew they'd come running down here, hiding away from the sun like we've done forever, and now it is time to feast on them") down there, but nothing else. What I'd like to see is the same hopeless fight against the inevitable doom as in the "On the Beach".
The real question is, when is EV-DO coming to michigan?
Really? Since when would "stuff that matters" make it the "real question" when, or even if, an acronym for something that is for most both quite unimportant and uninteresting, reaches <insert place of choice>?
That question instead got me thinking of a mouse running in its wheel, and perhaps it was thinking "I wonder when I reach the end".
The center of NYC is Central Park, not many residences there. Realistically it might not be the center, but then again going a bit south (which would be the center of the island) is mostly business, hotels, and a private residences. One really has to go east, west, north, or south of the center to find the private residences.
Now Starbucks, that's on every damn corner here! But I thought their deal was with T-Mobile.
It was "free" to VERIZON DSL CUSTOMERS. Yes, people that PAID for service.
Is it just a coincidence Verizon is expanding its EV-DO in New York at the same time?
Obviously not, if you read the article in your own link.
"A lot has changed over the past two years in terms of wireless access," said Henson. "Everybody's trying to look for a business model around (Wi-Fi).... But the better business model in our mind is the EV-DO network."
I work for a municipality in the Tampabay FL area. We are rolling out quite a few EVDO installs,
and "per Verizon" we are one of their Bigger customers in this market.
The area I'm in is "Very heavily covered" (per Verizon) for EVDO access which is the broadband side,
and you automatically flip-dlop between that and the 1xRTT which is the "National Access" part of the system.
The EVDO if your lucky gets you anywhere from 350 to 768kbps (Don't use the Venturi Client)
while the 1xRTT drops you to 28,8 to 76kbps.
For an area that is "Heavily covered" I have had nothing but trouble staying in the EVDO side consistently.
However, If you need decent wireless connectivity because your on the road allot working from your car it
is better than nothing. Just a little steep on the price for the quality of the service.
I think that Verizon got a little ahead of themselves as they did when they first rolled out their DSL years ago.
I had to teach their engineers how to configure that for this area as well, not to mention teach the linemen
that bridge taps are bad as is fiber for DSL, but I digress
That you are delicious.
Now before everyone says it costs the city money, lets think about it. At City hall, you have a mayor you must pay anyways, the elected officials. And you have the city workers. So that cost is there regardless of what a city does.
The added cost, of having someone set up the service, well, would it be more than a company? I don't think so. At least with a city, you won't have a CEO pulling in millions of dollars a year, will you? And with a city, you can protect the workers, they can't get fired. In a company, at the very exact moment a CEO gets a 10 million dollar bonus, he can lay off thousands of people to save the company a few million. Don't that seem a little dumb?
Cities are the perfect provider for this service. For what a company will charge, a city can provide the service for pennies on the dollar. Just think about the economies of scale, a city getting the service costs reduced because of all the people, it is like buying bulk. It is the best value people can get.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Is this supposed to shock anyone? A business charging money for a service is nothing new folks.
If Verizon/TMobile/SBC/etc were smart though, they would bundle the services. Have DSL or Cell service and for an extra $5/$10 you get unlimited access to their APs and such. If they make you pay full like T-Mobile seems to, they're dumb.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
I think we're gona have to face it - affordable, flat-rate, decent quality wireless is not going to be a reality for a few years yet, but it will be eventually, just like DSL is today. We can speed it up by giving the ISPs/networks some demand and competition in the form of lots of free access points which will get people hooked on wireless net access - you couldn't imagine living somewhere today without a net connection, within 2 years you won't be able to imagine not having a portable net connection.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Is it just a coincidence Verizon is expanding its EV-DO in New York at the same time?
I'm sorry, but when did verizon communications become verizon wireless? VZW is not Verizon Communications, and EvDO is a completely different technology than Wi-Fi. If you honestly think verizon is pulling the plug on free wi-fi (which btw, is only free for verizon online customers) and replacing it with another company's $80 wireless data service, you'll need to educate yourself a little. Call me crazy, but it just doesn't seem like a good way to push customers along. The real reason is that no one actually cared about the hotspots. who's gonna stand next to a phone booth to use wi-fi? I believe I'm the only one. And the only reason I used it was because I was sitting in my car waiting for the street-cleaning nazis. Now I live in new jersey, get cable, and have EvDO. Now get out there and start buying EvDO, it's awesome.
That was my point... but thanks for expanding :).
Pay girls to strip!
Time to put down the crack pipe dude.
Substantially higher bandwith for both forward and reverse links. Both Verizon and Sprint still have a lot of infrastructure yet to deploy. DO and DO rev A infrastructure should be more and more common as carriers add to and replace systems, just as DO and DO rev A will become more common in handsets.
But at least Verizon is somewhat on the ball with modern wireless data telecommunications. Why are the US GSM carriers so slow in deploying WCDMA? If you think EV-DO sucks, go look at EDGE.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
"The city can provide for free."
Well let's be blunt here.
1-They don't call us taxpayers for nothing.
2-Why should I pay for your* habit?
*Yes, "your". I doubt you were really thinking of others when you made your suggestion on how "Other People's Money"(OPM) should be spent. Which interestingly enough is the exact mode of thinking most politicians use.
It's not really the EVDO but rather Verizon I have issues with.
I typically do a lot of beta for verizon, I'll have to see when they will have them for rollout
Damn me and my ability not to read sarcasm!
All very fine and all, but do not complain when somebody hacks your system. If you have your stuff behind a firewall, I guess its ok, but most folks put their access points behind them. That is if they use them, that is if they understand how to use them, that is if they understand what they are...
Verizon giveth, and Verizon taketh away....
At home most of the time my computer is powered off. Kinda hard to hack it that way. :-)
> Now I live in new jersey, get cable, and have EvDO. Now get out there and start buying EvDO, it's awesome.
I'd certainly love to give EvDO a try, but believe it or not Verizon EvDO service isn't available anywhere in Northern California (including the entire San Francisco Bay Area). It is incomprehensible to me that the only two cities in California that have the service are Los Angeles and San Diego...! What gives??
Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone.
So the OP's comment makes sense, and you need to learn about how business works a little more.
"Does this mean that Municipalities should stop providing sewer services, trash colection, electric service, telephone service
propane or natural gas services, water services? Shall I go on?"*
You can go on all you want. The majority above are for the public good. WiFi is for an elite few who have no problem telling the rest of us how our tax money should be spent. At least with a private company, I can vote with my dollars. With government, I have to jump through hoops to get a bad decision reversed, and get my "borrowed" money back. If I ever do get it back?
*The other thing about your list is that for some of the services, they are provided either by controlled monopolies. e.g. telephone. or private companies. e.g. trash pickup.
We had to pay to play with it bundled with DSL - WiFi was included with the fees, not "free". Verizon is just screwing up wireless the same way they screwed up ISDN/DSL. Engineers convinced them (as NYNEX) that they'd done 80% of the work to offer ISDN in digitizing the PSTN WANs. The marketers never got it (ISDN: "I Still Don't kNow"), couldn't sell it because it was slightly ahead of its time, and dropped it ASAP - in favor of DSL. Which took forever to even approximate getting right, partly because of the (gasp) competition from colocating DSLAMs under forced infrastructure access sharing. Only now that telcos like Verizon have killed the DSL competition is that product even approaching reliable availablility, 15-20 years after its introduction was fumbled as ISDN. WiFi hotspots was another "we've already built 80% of the product" sales opportunity blown by arriving before (mobile) content created demand easy enough for marketdroids to fulfill. And this time, the competition from hotspot chains and other 3G (Sprint's EV-DO, already ahead of Verizon) won't really go away. So they're screwing up this one, too - dropping WiFi "in favor" of 3G, well before 3G is ready. Of course it's all too familiar: Verizon hasn't changed since NYNEX, so why should anything be different?
--
make install -not war
"people will just use the access points around..."
Well now I can see why the UK is going down the toilet.
Hey JJ, it's OK for people to break into your car (that's life).* Please leave the keys in the ignition next time.
*And before some wag starts going on about "digital natures". You're missing the point.
I typically do a lot of beta for verizon...
Doesn't everybody?
What?
But from what I hear, the Detroit rollout is pretty fucked, so expect the July light-up date to be pushed back until at least August.
Here's a tip: In each market where Verizon deploys EV-DO, they leave each site turned on after testing, but set so that only techs can access it. They'd rather customers get no data at all, than spotty coverage on a not-up-yet network.
Setting your card's "access overload class" higher than 9 should allow you to use the fledgling network. It should also make your traffic higher priority than anyone else's, so you'll continue to have service during periods of heavy use. (Use with care! Pushing out emergency traffic would be Bad.)
"You can set it up with a Wi-Fi router on your end but then as with anything else you are responsible for the security of the network that you set up."
That and don't forget to pay the bill in a timely manner. The "community" would hate to see all that "free service" cut off.
OR you just discover the keys and break in (yeah it takes a while but thats life)
And the mac addresses that the AP is set to allow.
Or I suppose you could just break into people's houses and plug in a cable. It takes a while to pick the lock, but that's life.
nt
Unless it supports WakeOnLan..
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
"And you have the internet now? ;)"
They kept eating the pigeons.
"As soon as a company goes public... all of a sudden, you are controlled by the greed of the stockholders and the board instead of a handful of owners."
That's why a smart owner remains a majority stockholder.
In the end, I think it will come down to Comcast Vs. Verizon. In the near future, they will both be able to offer the same services. It's just a matter of one or the other.
This move by verizon however, makes me lean towards comcast. Verizon was on the bandwagon to prevent PA from implimenting free Wi-Fi (except in philadelphia) which is not very nice of them at all.
Granted, comcast has done it's fair share of bad things. But I think verizon's greed is getting bigger, since they now charge more for my DSL. Unless I sign a contract, which is just nuts. There is no need for me to sign a contract with them, no logical reason on MY end except it'll be cheaper. But it cuts out freedom from changing when I want, without penalty.
That and their pay-as-you-go wireless costs at least $1 a day, no matter if you use it or not. Also a joke.
Sorry to rant, but verizon has been getting under my skin recently. I'd really love to see comcast come along and play angel... maybe even start to offer free Wi-Fi access.
http://www.6765656b.com it's the ~ for us geek's.
Verizon owns 56% of Verizon Wireless.
If you honestly think verizon is pulling the plug on free wi-fi (which btw, is only free for verizon online customers) and replacing it with another company's $80 wireless data service, you'll need to educate yourself a little
Wrong. If you would have read the article, you would have learned that that's EXACTLY what Verizon is doing.
Do you mind if someone browses child porn from your open access point? Afterall, you're the one going to jail if they do. Secure your access point or accept the responsibilities for any actions taken via that point.
Why are the US GSM carriers so slow in deploying WCDMA?
I've been doing alot of looking into this recently to try to find a carrier in my area that offers higher speed data cellular. The gist of it is that the next version of wcdma/utms uses some frequencies in the 2100 band that national satellite providers use and until they can find a replacement freq or get the fcc to license some bands in the 2100 MHZ they're(who ever provides utms) are stuck with 800/1900MHZ band. I don't know how much this affects wcdma/utms rollout in the US. The rest of the world doesn't have the same problems with that satellite band that we in the US have. So essentially if I wanted a higher rate wireless connection (the providers in my area offer only cdma2000 1xrtt) I would have to wait for cdma200 1xev. They are a few providers that offer egprs but not anywhere where I live.
Surprisingly (at least to me), the answer is yes. See http://www.ka9q.net/5220.html.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Bzzt, wrong. You become an ISP and are thus protected.
Unless it's Linux.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!