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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
I lived in Ann Arbor for 5 years and just moved to Austin, Texas for graduate school. Damme!
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
They had the MERIT network there practically before Al Gore invented the Internet.
Where were you when the voynix came?
...this is the county where Rob, myself and a number of the others live in.
... and work as professional editors.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
I felt a great disturbance in the Network, as if millions of Washtenawans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If this can work in the U.S., presumably it would work even better in the UK with similar internet usage and a much higher population density.
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.
$35/month for 500kbps? The precedent will worry the telcos, but these prices are hardly any competition for broadband. The dial-up providers will definitely be against it, but I don't think they have all that much muscle.
City/countywide 802.11 a/b/g is POINTLESS!!!! I really don't understand why all this money and resources is being spent on it. They have horrible range and were never meant to cover an area this big, so you have to buy an insane amount of AP's to get decent coverage. I bet when all is said and done they end up with 8,000 AP's and the project ends up costing a few hundred thousand dollars. On top of that, constant maintaince that ends up not making it economically viable.
Calm down with the citywide wireless. I know WiMax have been dragging their feet, but my guess is by 2009 we'll have usable WiMax that is ready for city wide deployment. You are going to waste all this time and money now, so that in 3 years you are superceeded by WiMax (which will do the job better and have less maintaince). Hot spots are fine. If you want to drop 200 access points around the county to get some coverage for popular places, that's ok. 200 access points would probably be viable. 6,000 (or in reality 8,000) aren't.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
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.
This could also negatively impact the adoption of high speed cellular data networks, which are becoming popular with businesses.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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.
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.
thats the sad part here.
People are acting like the money is free. Trouble is a great many people in that county are going to be taxed for a service that a good number will never get to use.
Oh yeah, I know, there will be programs for people of certain groups to get access, most won't take advantage of it. Its another feel good bill that makes it look like a county/city/state is actually doing something good.
Sorry, if even one trailer exist at a local school it should the first thing addressed. Quit diverting money from projects already starved of cash. Internet access is anything but required to live life today and as such doesn't need governments spending money on barely tolerable technology. Next thing we will have 50 zillion connections and jumping from area to area will be a nightmare because none of the wireless providers will agree on any standard. (let alone governments wanting to tax people who are not their own)
The rich get richer by having services they need to do business paid for by everyone else. Wireless is definitely going to be that for sometime until Internet access is actually needed by the general public.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
When Dexter's on the internet, can Hell be far behind?
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.
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I think you underestimate the reality-resistance of the People's Republic of Ann Arbor.
A private company that takes advantage of technology to offer a cheap service is called communist. It's main competitor is a state protected monopoly, labled "reality". Something is very screwed up here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Most websites (/. included) do not suck up bandwidth. Glancing at America's most popular websites, I see lots of sites that will run just fine on an 85 kbps connection. Of the top 25, here are the ones that will have real trouble: Myspace (only audio streaming should have real issues), YouTube, CNN videos, and maybe flickr. You need to forget that those of us here are far above average information consumers. There are many people who go online simply to utilize e-mail, check the headlines, and perform research. One reason that more bandwidth-intensive sites are so high is the fact that geeks like me visit those sites many times per week using several computers. There is definitely a market for free85 kpbs wireless Internet service.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
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.
The death of dialup isn't just about the speed, it's having to actually dialup, the constant disconnections, the caps on how long you be on, and cutting off the phone. All those things are solved by wireless, even if it's just as slow.
I wonder how it could make a rat's turd of difference to m-net.
/.!
Give me one hypothetical effect, positive or negative.
M-net can get wireless bandwidth for free instead of data center bandwidth for free!
People who are online via wifi are more likely to log onto m-net and the user base will increase!
People will have another hot new michigan meme to discuss on m-net instead of wasting time on
He entered Congress in 1978. The beginnings of ARPAnet predated that, of course, but in scope and scale it was only a foreshadowing of what the Internet would become. The TCP/IP protocol was only first demonstrated in 1977, and crudely at that. Gore took an interest in it at a time when very few members of Congress had even heard of it or knew what it was (still just "a series of pipes" to at least one senator).
You can argue about the phrase "took the initiative in creating", but it certainly is true that he took the initiative in expanding and evolving the Internet as we are familiar with it today. From Wikipedia:
So, I have to ask, what's your talking point, exactly? Is there someone else in Congress at the time whose thunder you feel Al Gore has stolen? Someone who was more instrumental in the growth of ARPAnet beyond just a defense research network? Or is this just another case of Republicans swiftboating people with real accomplishments, because they have none to show of their own?