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County-Wide Wireless To Be Deployed in Michigan
alien88 writes "Late last week, the Washtenaw County Board approved Wireless Washtenaw Advisory Board's recommendation of 20/20 Communications to cover the entire county with wireless by the end of 2007. This includes Ann Arbor, the home of University of Michigan and future home of Google's Adwords division. The wireless network will be free for speeds up to 85kbps and $35/month for 500kbps. 20/20 Communications estimates it will take around 6,000 radios to cover the county.
This initiative is being funded without taxpayer dollars and is one of the most ambitious wireless deployments in the U.S. Will it succeed or will it fail? Check out the county's wireless website for updates on the project." Of course, the real reason this is worth posting is it's because this is the county where Rob, myself and a number of the others live.
This initiative is being funded without taxpayer dollars and is one of the most ambitious wireless deployments in the U.S. Will it succeed or will it fail? Check out the county's wireless website for updates on the project." Of course, the real reason this is worth posting is it's because this is the county where Rob, myself and a number of the others live.
They had the MERIT network there practically before Al Gore invented the Internet.
Where were you when the voynix came?
In addition to Washtenaw County, Hillsdale and Lenawee Counties are also setting up a similar wireless network, although these two counties are concentrating their efforts on the most populated areas and kissing off everyone else. (Did I spell kissing correctly?) And none of it is free.
Fata viam invenient.
Anntenas do not disburse energy equally in all directions. So the range in the "up" direction is not nearly as far as in the out direction. Wow, guess I actually used that EM class in college.
Funny, Grand Haven michigan as well as parts of Grand Rapids,MI does it with 802.11b and it works great. Each accesspoint has about 3500 feet range and on each home you add a patch antenna pointing back to the nearest AP and it works great.
Thgey are not using consumer grade crap like you are suggesting they are using the commercial licensed stuff that you obviousally either do not know about or have a grudge against.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My question to you would be, do you get good cell phone service in said area? Most times, trees are more than enough to reduce a wireless signal. There are three main problems that any wireless signal has to contend with. These are reflection, diffraction, and scattering. Multipath scattering would be the biggest obstacle in a heavily wooded area and would greatly reduce most wireless signals. While directional signals can maintain a longer distance [because they are being aimed] omnidirectional (coverage in a general circular area) signals would probably be severely impacted.
Wireless technology is probably much more cost effective than running land lines through rural wooded areas but it would still be very expensive to cover such a large area with such a small population.
Oakland County in MI has their 802.11 pilot up already. Causing a few problem w/business's who already had an 802.11 network deployed. It's nice to be able to jump on a non-monitored, non-proxied network from work!!
There are no obstructions up and down, whereas there are obstructions laterally - trees, buildings, cell phone towers, etc. The range vertically is much, much larger than the range laterally. You could probably go a couple of miles.
You can communicate with the shuttle and amateur satellites (that are 250-500km in elevation, not to mention a lateral distance away) on ham bands on half a watt of power - these transmitters are probably a tenth of a watt. So a few miles would be a fair assumption on these radios that are working on (IIRC) 100mW of power.