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.

Comments

Ann Arbor was always ahead of the game.

[krell]

They had the MERIT network there practically before Al Gore invented the Internet.

Re:A naive question

[Henneshoe]

If the Access Points have miles of range, does that range extend *up* as well as *out*?

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.

Except

[everphilski]

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.