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Tempe City-Wide Wireless Snags
Triumph The Insult C writes "About a month ago, the dot carried a story about the city of Tempe, AZ, laying claim to be the first major metropolitan area to provide city-wide broadband internet access. Well, things haven't gone exactly as planned, as one of the companies involved, MobilePro Corp, is now being investigated by the state for not holding the appropriate permits. As a resident of downtown Tempe, I hope the rollout isn't successful, as I would much prefer to see a more community-based effort, such as in Seattle, Austin, and New York City."
About a month ago, the dot carried a story
The "dot"?
It would be great to see the wireless internet as a city utility (like phone, electricity, etc). A dream, but a also a hope...
What permits are they missing? The 2.4 GHz band is unregulated spectrum, and only the FCC has the authority to regulate radio spectrum.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
http://www.tempe.gov/business/wifi/
The town near my aunt's cottage went totally wireless when some drunk driver knocked over the pole that connected them to everything else...
I didn't rtfa though, so maybe this isn't the same thing...
Excellent, now I can take down the protective siding around my house, what with these intrusive waves going away.
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
I mean, OK if a community votes on a measure and the town sets up community funded wireless. But why would the original submission author hope for a private business to fail in the expectation that a town government would step up and fill their shoes? I mean, not only does it seem an unlikely outcome, but it's also mean spirited. Hey, if a business sets up something you want at a reasonable price - what's wrong with that? Would you prefer the government run this? \*cough!\* I call myself a liberal, but frankly, I'd rather see private industry handle this sort of thing. JMO. --M
I've seen a lot of talk about 'breaking the stranglehold' of the ISPs etc - but when you offer 'free' WiFi, don't you still have to connect to the internet using an ISP. No wonder the ISPs are fighting this - tehy're going to see a huge spike in their bandwidth usage if every user suddenly starts opening up his/her connection as part of a 'community' net.
The actual issue seems to be that the company (MobilePro Corp.) isn't registered with the Arizona Registrar of Contractors. The city officals, however, say the company doesn't need a general contractors license, so they are planning to continue with the construction.
This seems to be Local vs. State issue and while the State doesn't seem to be able to directly cancel the project, they can boot the company out of the state, so they'd need a new company to add to the infrastructure as they are planning to build the Wi-Fi.
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but in regards to public physical wireless internetworks, what keeps we private citizens from setting up a global wireless network?
Seriously, I don't mean a megabit dealy-bob or anything. just a couple nice 10's of K global wireless hot spot for the masses?
Don't we have the technology to broadcast great distances and without sophisticated (by todays standards) consumer-level equipment?
I'll setup an repeater if it's pretty cheap to buy and assemble one ¦D
(I imagine it would involve duct tape, a dissasembled cell-phone and some blinking LEDs!)
Is this really how you want your tax dollars spent? I mean seriously. If this was in my town I would rather they refunded us the money they would have spent on the project then going forwarded with it.
When will you people get it, capitalism, private industry always trumps government.
Look at NASA. Now look at Burt Rutan. Now look at NASA again.
Citywide wireless as a city run service?
I hope you enjoy the crappy service you are gonna get. I hope you like the speed you are gonna get. Cause if the city can realize a profit from this it is a short penstroke away from making there monopoly the law. Once that happens you won't ever see upgrades again.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like how certain companies are approaching governments regarding this stuff. They are trying to get a monopoly written in there favor. That is no better.
I like the idea of competeing companies for my dollars. I just don't see a productive place for government run business in that.
I currently live in Tempe, Arizona attending the University of Advancing Technology. This seems like a poorly planned project. Already in downtown Tempe stores have free WAP's opened up, ASU has free Wireless all over campus, note its huge 57,000 students, and even at my college, www.uat.edu, The University of Advancing Technology, we offer free wireless access to the community. No one is going to pitch in the money to pay for this service, most consumers have access to the internet via cox cable internet for $40 a month and businesses. There is no incentive to switch over. Our college, sponsered a wardriving project in which we found a lot of information about Tempe and the valley. The project was to map out the whole Phoenix valley WAPS. "The wardriving project is already 1/3 complete, after starting this fall. That was done with a crew of Al Kelly's war rivers who volunteered to set up the laptops (provided by UAT), configure the GPS and wardriving kits. "For the upcoming semester, students will go in wardriving crews to canvas the Phoenix valley and search out wireless networks. The data will be collected and then analyzed against demographic information such as age, income and commercial characteristics of the scanned areas. Wardriving crews have already gone on reconnaissance trips, and in a nearby seven-mile square mile area, found more than 1,000 access points." From my understanding I am sure more people will post from my school but they have found like over 200,000 non secured access points. I bet a lot of people are asking why do we need to pay $40 for city wide wireless since its already being offered free (legally that is)? Thats a good question.
The contractor hired to build out the Tempe citywide wireless service is being stopped by the state because they lack the proper permits to build out on public infrastructure (like traffic lights, etc). So the state is stopping the city from installing the public service by halting the contractor (whether they're doing this for private interests or for regulatory reasons was unclear from the article). Duh. I should have read it before replying to the author's submission. --M
Really, what would you rather have, freedom or safety?
Freedom and safety.
Anonymous Coward
I personally don't understand what the author is talking about. Yes, there is some development by the community (both public and private) of the wireless network in the city, but it is very limited. Currently, we have some cafes, various public buildings, and a scattering of parks that have free access.
Overall though, I wouldn't put the percentage at higher then _maybe_ 2% of the city as being truly wireless. And I'm not talking about putting wireless way out in the fringe neighborhoods and suburbs, I'm talking about right smack in the middle of down town, and in various big commercial centers, like the malls.
But that being said, it is nice to know that there is an effort to do this, even if the effects are negligible at best right now. After all, progress always starts off slow, and it may end up increasing dramatically in the next months/years.
You hope that something that could be useful to many people will fail, just because you like something else? You want to see money wasted, just to feel superior?
Why does this rollout succeeding, stop you from contributing to community efforts? Maybe you should make an effort to do better yourself, with your community ideas, rather than simply hoping that others fail. What an attitude!
... and then they built the supercollider.
You say: "I hope the rollout isn't successful as I would much prefer to see a more community-based effort, such as in Seattle, Austin, and New York City." I'm confused. Isn't the city really just a reflection of a community? If not, what is it?
RTFA... Tempe traded the ability of the wireless company to utilize the 4.7 GHZ band in exchange for them providing wifi service to the entire city. No money flows from Tempe to the wireless company, at any level, police, fire, or for any other municipal services. In addition, all Tempe and ASU related sites will be availiable free of charge.
The rest will be a subscription service.
I generally oppose government running services, but I think this is a good way of doing it. A private company is given a 4 year monopoly in exchange for ponying up to build the infrastructure to do it.
-=Lothsahn=-
I hope the rollout isn't successful, as I would much prefer to see a more community-based effort
I would personally prefer to see all the potential rollout models and have a choice as a consumer.
Oh, and hello Mr. Strawman, nice meeting you too. *cough!* Yeah, I realized this. --M
if the city administered these programs, they would be free. let me repeat that, they would be free.
Yeah, free, free as in ambiguous tax surcharges and property tax riders with funny sounding acronyms.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
> As a resident of downtown Tempe, I hope the
> rollout isn't successful, as I would much prefer
> to see a more community-based effort, such as in
> Seattle, Austin, and New York City.
What do you do if the community-based effort turns out to be awful? there's nothing special about being community-based which means they're going to offer a brilliant service; they're more likely than commerical companies, in some respects, but less likely in others, to fail.
If it's commerical, there's going to be competition, and you can change provider.
--
Toby
Hey, does anyone know if is this the 'asu_tempe' network we're talking about? It sounds like a different thing.
asu_tempe works fine for downtown cafes (Mill Ave.) but that's about it. There's also a number of other networks there, but nothing on my part of town.
Specifically the 100mW EIRP limit makes setting up a large network with good coverage rather problematical. Range is very limited compared to the US. They are not technical limitations of the hardware that is available.
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>>downtown Tempe...
Where's that?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It isn't and it never has been. New frontiers have always, always been driven by the desire for exploration backed by the promise of commerce.
I have no problem with the government funding blue sky science, it basically wouldn't get done otherwise but NASA amalgamates the science with a government funded monopoly on the access to space.
Rutan is doing more for space travel than NASA has ever done, and this actually has nothing to do with the technical contribution but is because of the social contribution, the liberalisation of access to space.
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What about roads? Who is responsible for the roads where you live? Water, electricity, phone etc etc.
How is a city run monopoly different from a privately run monopoly? Well, at least with the city run service you get to choose the people doing the running.
The question I suppose is, is it possible or reasonable to have multiple suppliers of the physical infrastructure? Is it possible or reasonable to have multiple suppliers of services making use of that infrastructure?
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a common misconception about government.
The government is a collection of resources that work on the behalf of you and I. We pay taxes so that all of us can lead better lives
If you think about it, the system works incredibly well, despite what the so-called conservatives will tell you.
The government provides you with a lot of benefits for your small contribution. Let's say that you pay $20,000 a year in taxes. That sounds like a lot of money, but it pays for a lot of things you need.
Things like roads, schools, parks, water, health care, space exploration, and even the internet itself. It's simply amazing that we get so much for that small contribution. Could you pay for any of that yourself? Imagine trying just to pay for just one of those things. Private industry could not, and would not fill the bill for any of these items.
That said, we certainly could do better. We spend two thirds of our tax dollars on militarization, something that's clearly excessive. No country is close to our technological level, yet we insist on making the ability to kill people the focus of our expenditures.
Let's imagine that we refocused that money. We could solve the healthcare equation, provide college education for free to everyone, pay service industry workers twice what they make now, and still have lots left over. This is not a radical idea.
Others have done this; Switzerland may be the best example. They have never had a standing army. They are also the longest lived representative government.
There's a huge difference between 'free' and 'paid for by someone besides the user' -- and that difference keeps the cost of something from rationing the use, thus leading to overuse or abuse of a network and negative consequences for those who do pay.
New frontiers have always been driven by the desire of killing other people more efficiently and from longer distance. A lot of hightech stuff came from military research.
Then the private business comes and parasites on taxpayer-funded research once its fruit gets declassified, rediscovered elsewhere, or leaked by eg. espionage.