Madison Rolling Out City-Wide Wi-Fi

It doesn't come easy wrote to mention the announcement that Madison, Wisconsin will soon be home to the newest Municipal Wi-Fi network. From the article: "'I made a commitment in 2004 to bring Wi-Fi to Madison,' said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in a statement. 'This is an important new service for Madison residents and businesses.' The Madison network will be rolled out at no cost to the city and the providers have secured initial funding from service agreements from ISPs. The initial phase of the Madison network will cover users in the downtown region of the city with plans to later cover the entire city." I love my town. Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?

Comments

Good news

[cdrguru]

This is perhaps a competitive service to cable and DSL. Unfortunately, it is probably just that, with lower capacity. Let's see, what happens when there are 20 people on the same accept point? You get something that works fine for someone in a Starbucks trying to read email and something that doesn't work at all for downloading the latest 12MB update from Microsoft.

WiFi even at G levels has a maximum bandwith of 54Mb/sec, which translates to about 6MB/sec. Wow, 6MB a second, that's better than most cable systems, right? Wrong. 6MB a second for the access point. This is divided up amongst all the users within range, and possibly over a significant area if each individual access point doesn't have it's own 6MB/sec Internet connection.

In a real-world implementation with some kind of mesh network and relatively few hard-wired connections between them, you are going to quickly run out of bandwidth when people use this as an alternative to a wired connection. Therefore, this isn't any competition at all and serves to just allow people to connect when away from home.

The likelyhood that this will be used as a cheap alternative to a hardwired connection is high. Therefore, there is a high likelyhood that the service will suck from the moment it is turned on.

Re:Rah-rah Madison

[mjh]

I thought the FCC made a rule saying that no such restrictions were allowed:

The rule applies to individuals who place antennas that meet size limitations on property that they own or rent and that is within their exclusive use or control, including condominium owners and cooperative owners, and tenants who have an area where they have exclusive use, such as a balcony or patio, in which to install the antenna. The rule applies to townhomes and manufactured homes, as well as to single family homes.

The deal here is that you have exclusive use of the area. I've even read of people placing their sat dishes inside a south facing window in order for this rule to apply to them.

Of course, if you don't have any view to the south you're still screwed.

Re:What more could you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if winter wasn't 8 months each year?

Who cares? You've got fresh cheese pouring in and the largest waterpark in the world an hour north. Not to mention that you've got some great indoor waterparks up in the Dells as well. (For wintertime fun.) Now if only the "New China International" restaurant had not gotten sold and renamed to the "Zodiac". That used to be like the best Chinese Buffet in town. Now it's just so-so.

I planted this idea

[bmasel]

in Cieslewicz' brain, when we were both running for the State Assembly in 1992, he in the Dem. primary, where he lost to now Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, while I was just fooling around in the Republican Primary.

Re:Rah-rah Madison

[admdrew]

...and the folks who worry the most about opposing ethnic diversity are often the ones who strive the hardest to spin the words of those they think they disagree with.

Reread the words you originally commented on: I care far less that there is little diversity here than I do that university and city officials pretend there is diversity where there is not.

If you want uniformity of thought, visit the hard-line conservatives that make up the majority of the rural and small town areas outside of Madison (and exist throughout most of the 'small town midwest'). Representatives from those areas are (and always have been) strongly bothered by the notion that a fairly progressive city (Madison) and county (Dane) exist right in the middle of them.

This cultural clash between the rural conservatives and the 'urban' (heh, as urban as Madison can be...) liberals is also one of the main reasons why this area is so minority unfriendly. Conservatives hoping to keep minorities out and liberals urging the importance of bringing minorities in debases the fact that we're all human, and ideally should be treated as such.

[/rant]