Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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?

14 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Thanks Zombie Lurch! by conJunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well, it looks like yesterday's zombie lurch accomplished something for the city!

  2. Hum... by Chickenofbristol55 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I could just imagine this scene. Brainnnnssss......Brainnnnsss.... Oh my god run for your lives! ZOMBIES.... Wait, what are they doing now? I think they are reading their e-mails, whooo... thank god we are safe for now.

    --
    public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
  3. Done right for once, I think. by Ironsides · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    Hmmm... No tax dollars being used, sounds good to me. How are they getting funding? A subscription fee or what?

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
    1. 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.

      --
      Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
    2. 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?)


    3. 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.

    4. Re:Done right for once, I think. by MacDork · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Any ideas on if they are capping download speeds, blocking ports, or max download per month?

      Any ideas on what they plan on logging and censoring 'for the children?'

    5. Re:Done right for once, I think. by cpeterso · · Score: 3, Insightful


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


      Transparent government always inspires confidence.

      --
      cpeterso
  4. 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.

    --
    10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
  5. 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.

    --
    IWARS.
    People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
  6. Good news by cdrguru · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

  7. Re:Rah-rah Madison by mjh · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

    --
    Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
  8. 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?

  9. this will be interesting by ScottSCY · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm very interested to see how this plays out and how effective it will be. I've spent a lot of time in madison (my girlfriend lives there), and it's one of the most spread out cities I've seen. They apparently have a law there (or city ordinance?) that no building can be taller than the capitol. It seems like having a city be so spread out would present some problems to deploying wifi on a large scale. Another thing is the UW campus takes up a large part of the downtown, and a large percentage of the people who hang around downtown are students. So, don't most already have wireless through the university? Is there really a need for city-wide wireless? Just a few thoughts.