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Is City-Wide Wi-Fi a Dead Idea?
An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those projects to cover cities with Wi-Fi? The BBC wants to know what happened to them. When it comes to underground wireless data access, there are obvious issues regarding implementing a wireless infrastructure in underground stations and tunnels, but above ground the BBC suggests that it may be other advancements, such as Wimax, that have made Wi-Fi a less attractive solution. PCMag, on the other hand, suggests that public Wi-Fi isn't dead at all and will make a comeback due to the increasing popularity of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. So, will city-wide Wi-Fi make a real comeback, or have other technologies, such as Wimax or 4G, killed the concept for good?"
Why cant they simply use Ethernet over powerline to get internet to the trains then have APs retransmit inside the train? makes more sense than all the wireless stuff mentioned in the article (as a bonus, due to the variable latency its pretty useless for phone signals :D )
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Dont forget to include at least $5/mo for text messages too. After all, text messages aren't data, they are 123 byte packets containing ascii, right?
It is absolutely absurd how expensive these data plans are. Not absurd in a capitalistic sense, but absurd in that I friggen want a nice phone, but cannot justify $30/mo + $10/mo for data/text. The fact I can't have what I want at a price I'm willing to pay pisses me off :-)