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Philadelphia's Wi-Fi Back Online, Privately
muellerr1 writes "A group of local Philadelphia investors is picking up where Earthlink left off last week. Earthlink abandoned their effort to provide municipal Wi-Fi access because they couldn't lure enough paying customers. The project won't use any additional taxpayer dollars, and the new investors are thinking of using advertisements and fees for business use to support free access for ordinary citizens." The private group won't estimate when the network might be completed (it's at 80%), saying it will take months to assess where the project is and what it needs.
I heartily applaud their attempt to get free coverage. But even if they fail there's still a lot of great stuff on the horizon. The coverage of commercial services like FON is increasing fast. At the same time, the new G3 phones are coming online (new iPhone, anyone?) and tethering is starting to look like a more and more attractive way to get high-speed Internet on the go. I'd love it if Internet were free everywhere, but I'll take iPhone tethering (yes, it's probably against the TOS) as a fallback.
Kudos to them.
It's private! Don't you guys have any respect?!
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
According to the Philly local news radio (http://www.kyw1060.com/ owned by CBS) the existing Wifi connections are now available free. Anyone with with a wireless B card can get Internet connectivity in the areas were Earthlink already covered.
If Earthlink didn't get to your area... well, I think the article said "months" before they even know what they want to decide.
Local article:
http://www.kyw1060.com/Local-Investors-Take-Over-Citywide-WiFi-Project/2428017
I was unemployed 8 months ago, and while I had plenty in the bank I was looking to find ways to make it last, so I experimented with Earthlink's wifi service. I got their adapter in the mail and put it in my window.
The signal swung wildly between full strength and no signal at all, regardless of where I placed the adapter. Even when it was at full strength, though, the connection would constantly stall, requiring me to log back in (did I mention you have to log in to the service, just like oldschool dialup?). When it DID work, it was quite slow. In short, it wasn't worth dropping Comcast for, and I sent it back after the first week.
What possesses people (Reuters) to use JavaScript for the next-page links in articles? It breaks opening the link in a separate tab, it breaks the link for anyone that has JavaScript disabled, and it keeps search engines from following the link. I realize this is off-topic, but is there some benefit to this that I'm not seeing?
The Portland network looked pretty decent in the beginning. The ads weren't too obnoxious. Then one day people found out that the only way they could use the free service was to download some Windows-only program that spewed out ads by the dozen. Linux and BSD users were locked out. Believe me, they should be happy to be locked out.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
City of Brotherly Love indeed. And hey, if you can make it pay...
...not businesses. The whole idea of municipal Wi-fi is that everyone can have it, profit or no profit...tragedy of the commons and all....and since Earthlink abandoned their effort to provide municipal Wi-Fi access because they couldn't lure enough paying customers...it just goes to show that non-public corporations do a lousy job providing public services. The internet is akin to a utility, and should be regulated in the publics best interest, not some investors bottom line.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It shows that not enough people were interested in buying into another internet service being happy enough with their current service.
My problem with municipal wi-fi is, where is the need? Most businesses and even people living there have service. So this benefits who? The poor and down trodden? Most could care less about internet and those who do and are going to the library and getting good access there in a clean and friendly environment. Why would they want to divert monies they could use for shelter and food towards a computer and other hardware needed for the net? The net isn't a priority, providing for family first is. I don't understand why so many people here see the net as opening doors. The problem is that for many of the people who you claim it will open a door for don't even know they need one and many probably don't.
The internet is not a utility. The last thing I want is it to be under the control of our government, local, state, or federal. We are harp on verizon and such caving in or going to extremes we find unwarranted at every little hissy fit one state or another throws. Can you imagine how damn regulated and filtered your net will be if totally in the hands of the government and the cronies appointed by the powers that be? Think freedom of speech will protect you? It might for what you say but it will not gain you access to what you want. It will also be reduced by "for the children" laws. Combine that with actually trying to get someone to fix your service when its down and out. Its not a life threatening application its not going to be addresses fast. Hell the nearest city to me can't even keep the road patched. They have a leaky water system they haven't been able to fix in ten years. Like hell if I want to trust my internet connection to them.
The internet should not be treated as a utility, its not a right, it is not essential to life.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As a Philadelphia resident, this service is one of the most annoying things ever if you are an iPhone owner. Everywhere I would go in the city, it would either attempt to connect to this network I didn't want it to, or I would haphazardly tell it to and I would reach a login page. I get the feeling that this leaves many people feeling jaded about this service, and probably hurts their long term sales. It's like when you go into a Barnes and Noble with a laptop and you're like "sweet, a WAP.. let's connect," only to find out moments later that you have to pay $X for Y hours of connectivity. Imagine that EVERYWHERE. It's quite frustrating. A potential solution is to either hide the ESSID or provide ad supported for free, and ad-free for payment.
Just my 2c...
What happens when you're using it, and your neighbor fires up bittorrent.
Wifi is nowhere near the point of replacing broadband. Hell, cable modems have more bandwith to share between customers than wifi.
It's a good backup, though. I'll give it that.
--Toll_Free
Drexel is OK, but I went to Drexel CS and believe me, it sucked big time.
Earthlink had offered to give a non-profit $1 Million in cash plus roughly $2 Million in brand new equipment. Most of the network had been built using first generation Tropos equipment, at the edge, which based on the time the first radios were installed puts them at more than 2/3rds through their usable life. While there is blame enough to go around for everybody involved, the reality is that Earthlink has now decided to focus on dialup, a plan that most of us here would look at as a long term solution - depending on what you define as long term and what solution you would like to see Earthlink come to. Good luck, Philadelphia, because trying to use the equipment you have is going to sink this network faster than it did last time.
I think that there is a broader message to be seen in the fairly numerous stories of wide area wifi deployments meeting with limited, at best, success.
Lesson 1: WiFi actually pretty much sucks for this type of job.
Lesson 2: We try to use it anyway because open spectrum allows amazing stuff to be built. Unfortunately, WiFi isn't all that great, and neither is the 2.4gHZ band. And yet, by virtue of being pretty much the only open spectrum networking technology with wide availability(There is also bluetooth; but that is explicitly slow and short range), it is amazingly useful.
The moral of the story: We need more and better open spectrum. If WiFi can do as well as it has, shoved in with microwaves and cordless phones and baby monitors and cheap RC toys and low end wireless mice and whatnot, imagine what we could do with some real open spectrum.
Now, I realize that our chances of prying spectrum loose from the grip of the plutocrats currently "monetizing" it are incrementally worse than nil; but that doesn't change how nice it would be.
Good news for iPhone1.0 owners? Wi-Phi should be faster than AT&T's 3G..... and AT&T's EDGE coverage blows in Philly.
Around town we all heard they would be using some form of ad-supported net access. I hopped on it (using an old 802.11b equipped iBook) to see if it really was free and open, and it was. I was not in a place with good coverage, but it was pretty usable. I know where the base stations are, and I was located *just* at the edge of where they stopped putting them up.
I didn't see any ads, but i was using Safari with ad blocker installed. Not sure if that removed them or they just didn't put them in yet? Maybe the ads thing is a rumor. It also let me run iChat without a hitch.
If there are details about the new system, i have not seem them yet. One report on the radio said the new company will be selling wired broadband to businesses and that will subsidize all or some of the network? This article says companies would have to pay for their employees to use the otherwise free Wi-Fi? Not sure what that's about, or how it will work out. People seemed to get very different info from the same press conference. 80% of the city is already covered in (802.11b) base stations. some neighborhoods will give you the ability to see half a dozen networks.
You must be from China.
Seriously, who in their right mind would want the government controlling their access to the internet? Nevermind the fact that the only way government can provide thongs is to STEAL from others.
This is exactly why it sucks that Obama is going to be our next president. His plan for change is filled with this kind of thinking... on the Federal level, which is far worse.
Yes, we all know that free internet access to the poor along with a sub 200$ Linux couldnt be of help to the single mother of two who works to shifts to clothe and feed her kids and has no money left for mac Airs and Touchy mp3 players.
No, no,... some overhyped locked in cellphone sounds so much more useful.
I was at Philadelphia international airport in May and was able to connect to free public wifi after agreeing to some legal document that I didn't read. I had about a 1mbps connection that I used to run instant messaging, check e-mail, surf the web and remote desktop to my torrent box 1000 miles away. They had no problems with my mac address being 00-11-22-33-44-55. Had I lived in the area I may have purchased a directional antenna.
The government provides thongs?
licet differant, aequabitur
Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has an article on it:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20080618_Investors_picking_up_wireless_Internet_plan.html
I think the problem is that they were slow to get this set up. The big corporations already had footholds in the business (as opposed to old school local dialup ISPs). There are also too many ways to provide internet access... and frankly, the government would screw it up anyway. The only reason we see speed increases now is that cable modems fight DSL and FIOS and maybe eventually WiMax and whatever else.
At least here in Philadelphia, there was major opposition to the project coming from corporations like Comcast (who has their HQ a few blocks from City Hall). They were crying about how it might cost them some customers that wouldn't want to pay $50/month for hardwired internet access. It's possible Verizon was crying too.
Add to that *some* source of misinformation that this would cost the taxpayers tons of money, and that's why the whole project took forever to get going.
As of today, Philadelphia taxpayers didn't put up $1 for the project. We always had free access in many parts of the city, like the Convention Center, Reading Terminal Market (same building complex), City Hall, Love Park and along the Parkway down to the Art museum. I think other parks were included.
Hopefully they can pull this together. I would probably keep my higher speed wired access at home, but it will be nice to have the option.
Welcome to the United States of PAAAARTAAAAY!
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
I just graduated from there last week. The classes aren't amazing, but they have a good rep and the co-op program landed me a sweet job after graduation.
By steeling them, apparently.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Honestly I wouldn't have bothered, except some anarchist-leaning mods gave you +5 insightful for being totally wrong. But as is unfortunately often true, in this case the anarchistic position has the effect of being a shill for Big Telecom; what you're suggested is exactly what their monopolies want. And don't mistake me here for a big government advocate in the broad scheme of things - I believe in the power of the free market, and I want things to be cheaper and more efficient for everyone which does not USUALLY mean done by the government, but does in some cases. And it also means the government has to be involved to keep a check on monopolies which are NOT part of the free market and keep the marketplace fair and predictable, ... without those checks you don't have a free market.
First of all, WiFi per se might not be a utility, but Internet is a utility now for many people. And it SHOULD be treated exactly like a utility. It may not be as life-critical as some, but everyone else's - and the law's - definition of utility includes cable TV. For that matter different places have different utilities - some people don't get any. Being a utility has nothing to do with it being a right. By the way, you don't have a mandated right to ANY utilities, except that usually your heat can't be cut off during the winter. More farther down.
Importantly, if you have broadband your government IS involved. Let's face it, practically speaking, broadband in the US means DSL or cable for now. You can't just go laying cables wherever you like - the government grants a license (to an easement) - with varying levels of exclusivity - for utility companies (such as phone and cable) to arbitrarily tear up property within certain limits to establish the service. Consumers don't get to consent to having the lines strung across their property, except through their government. Without infringing on all those real-property rights - and without the government penalizing people who cut down cables that run across THEIR land - you can't HAVE utilities, including cable and phone.
In the case of phone, tax dollars paid for the installation of all the lines until pretty recently. The phone company DOES have a monopoly on these lines. It was believed, accurately imo, that it would make the country better and stronger and be better for all the citizens, overall. I think this was accurate. Tax dollars are still taken specifically for keeping phone service in rural areas. Doing this for Internet communication makes total sense to me; it makes us more competitive in the global marketplace.
Now I'm going to talk about why we have utilities. Let's talk about another common municipal service - garbage collection. There are private ways to deal with this, but basically every municipality has garbage collection because a) it's much more efficient and cheaper if we all get in on doing it together and perhaps b) because some people think they benefit from making sure their neighbors have easy access to it. So we all get together and start a garbage service. In many medium sized places, this doesn't mean the town actually administers this service, but it means they contract with someone (usually Waste Management, now) to do it - at a bulk rate for the whole town. And on at least some size level it's optional - it's common for large apartment buildings to contract privately instead of as part of the municipal contract, presumably because they think they're big enough that they can find a better deal. But it not be optional to pay at least part of the taxes that support the service. That's how municipal services work.
If you're really an anarchist you should go live on a boat or oil rig by yourself in international waters without a flag. While that's inflammatory, I'm not JUST being inflammatory - if you live in a city the POINT is to be by other people and have access to municipal services. If you don't want to participate - which means getting those services and paying those taxes, and be
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