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Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan
thatshortkid writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a proposed plan for municipal wi-fi in Chicago has fallen apart. The story cites contract disputes and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing. 'Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined ... Even if Chicago declines to back a municipal wireless network, city residents soon will gain more Internet connection options. Sprint Nextel Corp. is building a wireless WiMax network here that is due to offer service next spring.'"
So I'm going to try & compare this to water to citizens, but I recognize it's not the greatest comparison--people need water to survive, most people don't need wi-fi to survive, etc.
... why? The water wasn't the greatest quality, you had to actively go to the well, it might be limited during dry spells, someone devious could poison the water, etc. So we now pay the city to ensure that water is delivered us via a system of tubes and that it is potable.
Back in the day, when a town was being settled, they would have a well. I think it still works this way in most rural parts of third world countries. You thirsty? Walk down to the well & pull up a bucket.
What did you pay for that facility? Probably very little--if anything at all. Someone fronted the stone and labor to drill the well the whole bucket rope system was a one time cost.
Years later, people got sick of this
The attempt for AT&T or Earthlink to blanket wi-fi is kind of like the last step in this equation. Except there currently are no town wells (with the exception of some establishments implementing free wi-fi). I think we need a 'town well' style implementation before we advance to full blown municipal need. There's plenty of people out there right now getting by just fine with no wi-fi, they don't know why they should pay $2.87 a month (that's just a guess, by the way) in taxes for something they don't think they need. Likewise, there were probably settlers drinking from streams that didn't think an intricate pipeline of water to every home was necessary.
So what's the solution here?
Enter mesh networks, something similar to how the OLPC is supposed to function. I submitted a story a while ago about Meraki, a startup that is threatening Google's push to blanket San Francisco in wi-fi. They are basically giving out solar powered routers for people to mount in their homes that will become part of a mesh network.
It's kind of like the town well approach: low start up initial cost that someone pays, at first it will be limited and a bit cumbersome, it will probably be very vulnerable to attacks, the people that don't think they need it will still get some low quality service for free, etc.
Will city wide mesh networks be the final answer & solution to the municipal wi-fi demand? I don't know. I would doubt it since I wouldn't see it working in the countryside very well and so I think the ultimate municipal wi-fi will indeed be local government run and include massive coverage via some sort of technology I don't know enough about.
I think it's necessary to have this intermediate stage because it will give businesses, people & institutions the power to experiment with the unlimited possibilities that a city WAN would provide. I think wi-fi as a municipal service is a great idea for everywhere but I acknowledge that I make a lot more than the average citizen of the world.
If I were Chicago or a large city government, I would be seeking the attempts of companies like Meraki that want to build mesh networks and look at ad hoc networks as a temporary or starting solution. They may not be the best but it something to experiment with and learn from before you implement the final solution.
My work here is dung.
Comcast hasn't dropped my broadband price a single time (they have raised it, however). That said, has anyone actually figured out exactly *how* to get the $10 DSL that was the FCC requirement of the BellSouth Merger?
With every day, I become more disgusted with the corporate greed stranglehold. Even more so, I amazed that consumers largely don't care.
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If Chicago managed a WiFi infrastructure, it would manage to cost the taxpayers $400B and give everybody cancer within a week or two, and even then the aldermen would find a way to stick up for it so long as Daley approved.
i guess it was safe to assume that the wi-fi system wouldn't work... mainly because they had been putting up signs saying it was coming for the last year...
in a similar vein, i believe they've been putting up signs for the last 2 years proclaiming that we have, in fact, won the 2016 olympics... which clearly isn't going to happen either...
i guess the moral is, don't trust signs in chicago... i mean everyone has already learned to ignore the traffic ones... how hard could it be?
now is the winter of our discotheque
If this had gone forward we would have spent something like $100 million, the work going in no-bid contract to Friends Of Daley, and ended up with a few "hot zones" in inconvenient parts of the city, with coverage conspicuously absent from any area covered by a commercial provider.
You say that "most people don't need wi-fi to survive". Actually, I'd say that nobody needs wi-fi to survive. In fact, wi-fi is really useless for anything important. There's simply no reason that our government should get into the business of becoming ISP's.
I don't respond to AC's.
[...]and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing.
Would like to see where prices go over the next couple of years now that a competitor has been eliminated...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
You state: Internet should be right up there with power, water, transportation, etc. It's already a given that it's a key component of growth and future development. Incorrect. The world works fine without the Internet. We were working fine in the 70's and 80's. We just work more faster and have become more productive with it. However most would say we've hit our plateau with the Internet. As for your comment on: "We need to start treating it more like that instead of a big giveaway to the monopolies that we're broken up in the 80's (at&t). So much for deregulation." There is little in terms of monopolization as many paint out on the Internet. From my POV I see little(r) companies complaining about bigger companies charging less and forcing them out but what about the complaints that hey, those bigger companies spent their own monies laying out the infrastructure. Not only did they lay out the infrastructure, some actually DO share it for the little guys. Its never enough though. If its that big an issue, some of those little guys should take out loans and build their own lines so they won't have to worry about being bullied. Bottom line.
Infiltrated dot Net
I don't live there any more, I live far, far away in a smaller city in Kansas. We have our own problems, just like any other city, but with the cooperative efforts of our city commission and a non-profit organization, we figured out how to make a successful, inexpensive, functional, municipal wireless ISP using a mesh network that covers the entire city.
Why can't anyone else?
http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2007/08/t he_earthlink_wifi_saga_waiting_for_the_other.html
Interesting commentary from Houston Chronicle technology writer Dwight Silverman. His suggestion is to socialize municipal Wi-Fi and have the city run it.
technical writing / development
Pittsburgh failed to create a WiFi network in '02 a while back. It cost a bunch of money for almost nothing done. Actually, some lady had her picture in the paper, and there was some hooplah for a day or two.
Then they hired some out-of-state company to install a little hotzone downtown, with two-hours of free access. This was after the other local players tried to bring some sense to whichever committee that was.
In fact, all of the local WiFi businesses in Pittsburgh have all left the city for the west coast, and other cities -- because they can't get any traction, or generate any local business.
Then this guy gets a bug up his ass, and starts installing Meraki boxes in his neighborhood. Didn't cost a fortune, didn't take forever, and he didn't have any help. Funny how one man with some money and initiative, can outperform a corporation funded with millions of dollars. Shadysidewifi.com
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This is the start of the Wi-Fi turf wars. Earthlink is going to host hotspots inside AT&T's territory. "They can't muscle their way in here. Everyone knows that we own the south side." Disputes will be settled with tommy guns. There'll be secret meetings with the leaders of the five telecoms. That's Chicago for you.
Price is falling BECAUSE of the talks as one of the reasons.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Just the fact that you are chatting happily on Slashdot indicates that you have Internet access, and you will likely not be a customer of any government-subsidized WiFi. The people who are NOT speaking here are the potential beneficiaries. Think more altruistically. Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean that other people don't.
That is like saying, "Why donate food and clothing to the homeless? I have all I need."
WiMAX is the way to go. WiFi isn't truley designed for long-range mobile access. Yes, I have seen plenty of WiFi mobile solutions, but in reality they just aren't reliable. WiMAX mini-PCI cards in notebooks is definately where we'll be at in a couple of years. Metropolitan area broadband deployment over WiFi is simply not the best solution, and is backwards thinking in my opinion. WiFi should stay at home and the work place for private networks and small hotspots. There is no reason why license free WiMAX can't be implemented. A licensed approach (although it involves the -evil- telco's typically) would be of higher quality of service (presumably) - but the cost of broadband is really not very high if it is implemented by responsible companies that haven't gone too greedy.
We're trying to offer WIFI at two motels, a campus, and a 3 mile run to a farm using wireless bridging on non 802 technology.
My god, support's a pain. Wifi router drops. Some moron opens up bit torrent and kills the pipe. Some idiot decides to run his own Wireless bridge and run on the same channels we use, but he's packet capturing the data.
The utilities decide to unplug our fiber. The AP quits handing out DHCP. The ISP goes down. Why can't I get Wifi in this one room? The news crew bounces microwave into our wifi bringing it down. The WIFI gets hit by lightening. The UPS battery needs replaced. The WIFI gets hit by construction workers, causing the directional Yagi to be aimed just wrong enough.
I can't imagine trying to support the entire Chicago area with Wifi.