Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Philadelphia's Wi-Fi Back Online, Privately

Posted by kdawson on from the asymptotically-approaching-the-correct-model dept.

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.

5 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. It failed because it sucked. by snarfies · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. I hope its not as bad as Portland, OR by LM741N · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I hope its not as bad as Portland, OR by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      That's an interesting perspective. When there is Windows only software, I'd think most people would be more concerned with Mac OS X being locked out than Linux (given their relative market share) let alone BSD. Unless, I suppose, one classifies OS X as a BSD.

      OS specific ads seem pretty pointless. There seem to be well proven technologies to inject ads into Web content, regardless of OS.

  3. Great idea, until your neighbor fires up P2P by Toll_Free · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  4. The triumph and tragedy of wifi, and what it means by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.