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Verizon Pulling Plug on Free Wi-Fi in NYC

Posted by timothy on from the how-much-of-a-loss-is-that-really dept.

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?"

2 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. EVDO not that great by 1000baseFX · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

  2. Re:WiFi runs on unlicensed spectrum by SilentSage · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am a technical support coordinator for Verizon wireless. I can tell you that EV-DO uses a CDMA cellular signal for the entire EV-DO capable part of the Verizon network. CDMA networks operate at either 800 or 1900 mhz which is HIGHLY regulated (and costly) spectrum. EV-DO is not an 802.11 technology from our end but as with most ISP's what you do with your bandwidth once you get it is up to you. 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.