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The Hiccups of Free Wi-fi for Cities

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-enough-to-make-our-office-work dept.

smooth wombat writes "Several cities around the country are considering implementing free wi-fi for its residents. Currenly, St. Cloud, Florida is the only one that can make that claim. However, the 28,000 residents are still experiencing hiccups in the system more than a month after implementation including being able to see receivers but not being able to connect or connecting at different times with weak signals or not being able to connect at all. As a result, many residents are still paying for monthly landline connections. HP, which has been contracted to build the project and provide customer support, says it is working to resolve the issues by adding more access points to improve signal strength in isolated parts of the city. Despite these issues, HP says that there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service."

3 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. A large scale project induces hiccups. by Trigun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would be suprised if there weren't hiccups in a rollout this large. Give it six months, and then we'll see. Until then, let's all reserve judgement.

    1. Re:A large scale project induces hiccups. by Trigun · · Score: 5, Informative

      Terribly sorry, I got to the part that said "More than a month after St. Cloud launched what analysts say is the country's first free citywide Wi-Fi network, Lusardi and others in this 28,000-person Orlando suburb are still paying to use their own Internet service providers as dead spots and weak signals keep some residents offline and force engineers to retool the free system." and thought, "Hmm, more than a month, that can't possibly be 24 months."

      After reading the article, I found out that it "... launched the network on a trial basis in May 2004 in a new division of town to help give businesses an incentive to relocate. After further exploring the benefits, officials decided to expand it citywide." Which means that it worked well in the trial, and they had issues as they expanded and added users.

      Now let's dissect all of that. May 2004, St. Cloud launches test bed. Works. Continue to run testbed.
      Sometime between 01/01/06 and 03/24/06, after having to go through committees, raise funding, and implementation of the full scale wi-fi network, they release it to the public. People complain (Which is their nature, and some of them their sole function) that they can't get wireless coverage, or that the access points are maxxed out. When they do connect, it's slow. Some lady at the beach, which has really decent line of sight when compared to, say an apartment building, can use it.

      So, after RTFA, I think that I'm still right. But I could be wrong about that. It's been known to happen,

  2. Wrong, not if it is done correctly by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In my city not only is the Wi-Fi free, but it actually turns a profit for the city, who resells bandwidth on it's fibre ring that powers it to local companies.

    In essence, the city is acting as an ISP. The ISP offers free bandwidth to residents, and leases surplus bandiwdth to other companies.

    It can also be seen that, even if a city did not turn a profit on it's own network, the increased tax revenue from people migrating to the area because the WiFi is there couldpay for the cost of the network.

    I am not saying that this is the case in this particular city, I am just pointing out that free Wi-Fi can be a win-win situation for all residents if you have smart people in charge of the thing.