New Orleans Tech Chief Vows WiFi Net Here to Stay

breckinshire writes "After Hurricane Katrina last year, New Orleans set up a city-wide wireless network to encourage businesses to return and assist in recovery. The New Orleans technology chief recently said that he intends to make the network permanent, in spite of state law and the disapproval of telecoms."

Comments

Opportunity Knocking

[wiz31337]

I take issue with the telecom companies trying to regulate what city government can and cannot do with their donated equipment. However, if the city shuts down their equipment and lets it sit inactive until another emergency the telecom companies do not have a problem with this.

What the city should propose to do is use the current emergency services systems (police, fire, etc.) in parallel with the wireless equipment. This would provide a variety of systems to use if one fails in the event of another hurricane. A majority if not all the equipment came from Cisco, which provides a software solution called LMR Over IP. This would ensure a highly redundant solution, just incase another event like hurricane Katrina happens again. This is a far better solution than having equipment sitting there useless, or removing it entirely.