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Madison Rolling Out City-Wide Wi-Fi

Posted by Zonk on from the charter-will-not-like-this dept.

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?

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Milwaukee To Get Better Treatment by SEGT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Midwest Fiber Networks is going to build a wifi system for the city at no cost to tax payers. Once the system is up they will rent it out to various service providers who can then charge whatever fees for access they wish. More information found here.

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    10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
  2. Re:Rah-rah Madison by carambola5 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about a competitive marketplace for cable television? Charter sucks. Lots. Some of us Madison residents lease their dwellingplaces and are not allowed to mount satellite dishes. Therefore, I, and many other Madisonians, are stuck with over-the-air standard TV or Charter Cable.

    Fortunately, I occasionally hear IPTV radio commercials for nearby towns. Hopefully those will make it to Madison before too long.

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    IWARS.
    People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
  3. Re:Done right for once, I think. by Ironsides · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Any ideas on if they are capping download speeds, blocking ports, or max download per month? Is this going to be an always on 100k speed or what? This probably won't be for anyone beyond the Joe Sixpack user of email, IM and websurfing. I'm pretty sure no one downloading a linux distro over bittorrent isn't going to be using this.

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    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  4. Wireless Bandwidth on a single VHF frequency by NewKimAll · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From what I understand, the standard bandwidth for VHF television will be going away pretty soon to get re-allocated. If the FCC were to allow the bandwidth for just one television station to be used wirelessly, how much bandwidth would that be per channel? Does anyone know?

    Could this be a possibility when people decide that 54G is still too slow to serve enough people at any given access point?

  5. Re:Done right for once, I think. by SeventyBang · · Score: 3, Interesting



    Dvorak had a fit a few issues ago because (Philadelphia?, Pittsburgh?) was going to put up a muni.net and some of the commercial enterprises realized they could earn a lot more by charging what an ISP is expected to charge instead of some paltry sum (or nothing). He later said these folks created some leverage^w^w a PAC and convinced the state legislature to pass some bill which would give the commercial folks the right of first refusal for any of these setups (and IIRC, something ungodly like fourteen months to decide). The Gov signed and Pennsylvania now looks to be locked tighter than a nun.

    Can anyone substantiate this? (and how would this affect the apparent plans of a nationwide Google muni.net?)


  6. Re:Done right for once, I think. by Bastian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nobody really knows. The city government and the company they contracted are being very tight-lipped about the whole deal.