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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.
and the telcos used their lobbying dollars to CRUSH the effort. Good luck Washtenaw!
I am not left-handed, either!
I am a HUGE fan of the county/city wide wireless programs that are popping up all over the U.S. And Canada. While I do love this, I do have a few reservations. One reason why I do not live out where I want to (The Catskills in NY) is I cannot get broadband service without paying a huge amount of money. However, I am wondering how well a system like this would work in a mountainous area such as the Adirondacks or the Catskill Plateau... Does anyone have any information on a town/county/state implmenting a wireless network over ruggard terrain to reach the rural people where wireless might be blocked by hills, mountains etc? I would be very interested to see how something like this would be put into good use.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Perhaps someone out there knows the answer to this ... if I were to fly over this region would I (briefly) be able to access the internet from my laptop? If the Access Points have miles of range, does that range extend *up* as well as *out*? Just curious. And of course, by extension, as more and more cities roll these things out, will we have access to the net wherever we fly? Assuming the answer to my question is yes, could this begin to impact airplane design (especially small planes), by assuming net access? Planes could report their position (on board GPS tells them where they are, then they use the wireless net to communicate to "Air Traffic Controller" servers, which could then send back flight instructions). Just a few random thoughts for a Monday morning ...
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Merit is still a HUGE Internet (and Internet2) player in Michigan and surrounding states. Check out their newest (well, coolest-newest) project here: http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0508&L=msunag &D=1&T=0&O=D&P=131. I'd love to set up a LAN party on that baby!
I am not left-handed, either!
Are these networks going to require some type of login for the basic speed or will it be completely open for anyone to use?
And, that 85kbps is more than you would get if the telcos would have free reign with their "500kbps". Because, if there is no competition around, telcos tend to sell cheap "broadband" that tends to go to 500Bps (there's no "k" here... at least the B is capital) anywhen between 16:00 and 24:00 or so.
Most customers don't know how to notice they got cheated due to overselling, and those who do, have no recourse except for building their own mesh.
But, once the telcos have real established competition in the area, the quality of links suddenly increases by over an order of magnitude.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This all sounds well and good, but Washtenaw county is the heart of Comcast country. They will find their way into the state legislature's pocketbooks and have this initiative put to sleep like a sick dog.
This is nothing more than election year pipe dreaming.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
The telco's case is getting weaker and weaker as time goes on. "Broadband" as we know it here in the U.S. is getting fairly old now, but it has not kept up with the pace of other areas of technological advancement in IT, since the telco's and cable companies are reluctant to re-invest their multi-billion dollar profits (i.e. the 18,000 foot limit still applies for DSL in most places, although the technology has been there to extend it well beyond that). I live in an urbanized area in the middle of a medium-sized city, and cable Internet is my only choice for broadband since I am beyond AT&T's 18,000 foot limit. The cable Internet service is $55 per month and not reliable at all. My friends who have DSL are not really satisfied with the service they get for their price either. I don't know of anyone who even has more than two choices. The players in the broadband industry are operating as a cartel right now.
Popups are not required by 5c, and the requirements of 5c are definitely nothing new.
Here is the wording of 5c in the current draft of GPL V3 (7/27/2006):
5c says only that the program must include some type of feature accessible via a menu or command or button or something that's easy to find and use, that tells the user about the lack of warranty and that the work can be distributed (conveyed) under the terms of the GPL V3. Failing that, the program must display the information at startup. This is roughly equivalent to the GPL V2, section 2c, which says:
2c was written at a time when programs were assumed to be command-line driven (think GNU Emacs, for which the GPL was written). The idea is that some notification is required; if the program runs interactively, it needs to display the notice either at startup or by accessing somewhere in the program's interface. The updated GPL V3 language in 5c seems to be more appropriate for a wide range of applications from command-line driven to GUI to Web applications.
Note that neither clause states that this notice must be a popup. The notice requirements are basically the same as for any copyrighted work -- while a notice is not specifically required under the Bern convention, in the U.S. and many other countries the copyright holder has limited ability to recover damages in a lawsuit without one.
My blog
install 6000 radios on "water towers, buildings, light poles and other structures". In New York City, operators have to pay to get access to such valuable real estate.
Most people consider NY an example of how not to tax people, but obviously they have their fans. Reasonable places allow use of the public servitude. If the deployment of radio boxes can be done without interference to other infrastructure and without government cost but with great benefit to the people of the county, it would be silly to charge for deployment. The only reason you would tax something like that is to fund something unrelated.
It's also possible that you are wrong. Every one of those structures could be private.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.