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Orlando Cancels Free WiFi Project
EvilStein writes "According to local news, the City of Orlando has cancelled the city WiFi project. The 6 month pilot program ran for 17 months instead of the planned 6, but in the end, it was costing the city too much money and very few people were using the service. Might other municipal WiFi projects go the same way?"
Officials in Orlando are pulling the plug on free Internet service. It turns out that certain downtown "hot spots" just weren't hot enough to justify the program's price tag. Sunday marked the last day of a pilot program that allowed free Internet access near Lake Eola Park. The pilot program was only supposed to last six months, but the city kept it going for 17 months. As many as 200 people using laptop or hand-held computers at once could check e-mail or surf the Web in the wireless zones. But city officials said that only about 27 people a day took advantage of the program -- not enough to justify the $1,800 the city paid every month for the service. The service may come back, city officials said, if they can find a way to expand the service beyond a few downtown blocks, and if they can find a company to foot the expense. Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
-William Brendel
I work at a software company as a developer. I have an Atlanta Bread right next to my office that has free wifi... I have never used it. Why? When I go to lunch I go to eat, talk with my wife, and just mellow out. Why would I want to surf the net at lunch?
Why would I want to surf the net at a park?
I used to think of all the cool things you could do with wifi everywhere but in reality I do not see all that much use for it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
... and I've never heard of this.
Why not? I'm a technically inclined 20 something who would have used this, had I known about it.
I think that is the real problem here. Their target demographic didnt even know about it!
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
I'm always a little amazed that people will use the word "free" when they mean "taxpayer subsidized."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You can get 4 Mb/s internet connection anywhere from free to $100/month. Who pocketed the remaining $1700 each month? Talking about corruption...
I don't believe in city government run internet but in free community wifi mesh networks - they work and very well - everywhere! In my town alone there a several free wifi mesh networks teaming up already and new ones popping up in the entire area.
Sounds great, doesn't it? Free WiFi for the entire city. No need to search for hotspots. No need to pay to surf while you're sipping your Starbucks coffee. But...realistically, who's going to use it? I'm a WiFi junkie and I keep forgetting about all these free WiFi initiatives. Also, we need to keep into consideration that first wee need a very mobile client base, people lugging around their laptops and then using them somewhere. When they do pull out their computers to work, it's usually at a hotel (which generally provides WiFi now) or at work (provided network) or at home (probably networked). I doubt anyone is going to cancel their Internet service at home simply because the city provides free WiFi. I'd much rather blame Comcast for a downed network than rely on the city. Like I said...it sounds great, but the logistics and cost of it all far outweigh the reality of the situation.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I often find myself at Panera bread after work if I have an activity shortly afterwards, because I have time to kill, but not enough to drive home and then back across STL for my cooking class, dinner date, or whatever.
The internet is a great tool - a channel for almost unlimited forms of information. It's potential hasn't even begun to be tapped, despite the wonders we've already seen. But to see more potential, we need a lot more than just access - we need people with the time, interest and freedom to explore that potential.
We don't see much of that anymore here in America. Few people have the time or interest to go beyond the mundane around them. The concept of progress has become the idea of people selling things to people, with little else involved. Science and education just aren't that important anymore, except for expanding markets.
Am I surprised this experiment failed? No - who is going to have the time to use even free bandwidth to try something new? Not many people anymore. We're just not interested.
That's not to say that it's a truly bleak picture - but we as a population do seem to be stuck waiting for progress to come to us, rather than going out and making the progress ourselves. We need science, social thought, meaningful public education, healthy debate and journalism, and a much greater interest in human progress.
It's not about liberalism versus convervatism - it's about humanity doing something to make the world better, so it's not such a horrible place. It's about doing something to outpace the destruction we're causing, at least on some level. It's about seeing beyond dollars, and using our vast resources towards creating a future where we all know more, not just avoiding the terrors that will never stop coming in new forms.
It's not experiments like these failing that we should be depressed about - it's that we have so very few experiments like them at all anymore (relative to population increase over time).
Ryan Fenton
I like how Government programs get cancelled due to initial lack of use....cancel the wifi, cancel the bus routes only a few people use....the government isn't a corporation, its there to help the people, not turn a profit. If only a few people were using a park would they pave it? If only a few people used the courts would they close them? Some things are just a public service, and WiFi is the public service of the 21st century.
Please don't get the impression that this was a city-wide project. In reality, the signal was only available over a few city blocks and one park in downtown Orlando.
This failure is clearly because of a poor location choice. The main branch of the Orange County library is only a block away from Lake Eola park where this project was centered, but no signal was available in the library when I was there earlier this year.
I don't understand why a city would offer this, why don't they also offer free telephone service and newspapers, its just as crazy a concept. I can understand why you would do it at attractions for example Baltimores Inner Harbor area. It makes no sense at all and is a waste of money.
A country-wide wireless network is being built in Finland. It will use Flash-OFDM technology at frequencies around 450 MHz. Here's the story in Finnish.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I hope they didn't kill the wireless in the library downtown though; that works quite nicely and is a great benefit when visiting for relaxation or research.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
$1800:mo for 6 months pilot, extended to 17 months, means they planned to spend $10K, but spent $30K instead. For a system to support "up to 200 people at once" - which would have been $9:mo, just in costs, for a hotspot. That's not "municipal WiFi", that's a token gesture, doomed to fail.
How much could they have spent getting people to know about the service, known to everyone in business as "marketing"? And with that kind of tiny coverage, what possibility could it have had to be meaningful as "citywide"? None at all. Philadelphia's project will cost over $10M, complete coverage for 1.5M people. And it will not just be some "hotspot startup", it will be a complete coverage, so people can forget about the network, and just get access to Internet content, services and people. That has a good chance of success.
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make install -not war