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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 is the particular technology of wireless communications so important?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Minneapolis has complete downtown coverage now.
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/wirelessminneapolis/
Actually using it right now to post, doesn't really seem like a dead idea from here!
I am allergic to Wi-Fi.
And it causes cancer.
It probably contributes to global warming too.
The problem I've had with it is that each access point I've encountered usually requires a login and/or a fee to use. For example, Wifi in Starbucks requires a monthly fee from AT&T (or T-Mobile, can't remember). Across the street the library is free. The McDonalds next door charges $2.95 an hour, along with the Wendy's across the corner. The lobby in the hospital is free but requires a login that only the clerk at the front desk can provide. There is Wifi in the mall that is free.
I think that most people would prefer an all-or-nothing approach. Give me one Wifi experience or forget it. Having to keep track of a new login method every 200-500 feet is a hassle.
On a parallel topic, practically every home router now comes with WPA2 on by default.
I'm surrounded by a sea of BT home hubs which are probably idle, and can't even connect.
Outrageous.
Living in a "wifi city" (Minneapolis) I would like to comment on our municipal wifi and its utter failure. The signal is simply terrible in 90% of residences despite the massive unsightly box on the telephone poll out the window. Frankly this is thanks to the terrible range of B/G wireless. To get a decent signal we will need better tech like WiMax or some form of 4g. As it stands it is nearly impossible to get signal to everybody who wants it.
WiFi has a limited future anyway so who cares? The future is becoming increasingly clear ... over the next 10-20 years most existing air protocols are likely to be phased out in favor of GSM LTE. LTE (and the "Advanced LTE" which is likely to become the actual deployed 4G technology) offer speeds in the hundreds of megabits/sec range and latency in the ~millisecond range. In fact LTE is very close to the theoretical limits of what is physically possible to do, speed wise. LTE is also being designed with support for femtocells in mind right from the start, in fact, there seems to be growing consensus that 4G mobile networks will primarily be deployed through LTE gateways in the home first with traditional cell-tower style macrocells coming much later.
LTE offers some compelling advantages over the mixed 3G/WiFi tech we use today. Firstly, authentication and billing are solved problems. WiFi is made significantly less useful by the way every public hotspot has its own random billing infrastructure, often with pages that don't work well on mobile devices. Because GSM/UMTS sim cards are secure devices, the same convenience that 3G offers today will be possible everywhere, with operators either paying for the ADSL backhaul on their own, merging with cable/DSL companies to become vertically integrated radio/landline companies, or simply paying people who run LTE femtocells for the cost of the backhaul.
Secondly, LTE is a natively IPv6 based protocol. That means that if you use an LTE/4G enabled NetBook in combination with a home femtocell, there won't be any crap related to WiFi NAT routers as long as you're connecting to an IPv6 site. The devices will probably be controlled and leased by the operators and so won't suffer the same featureitis that has made home internet so flaky and requires so many bizarre workarounds like UPnP today.
Thirdly, hand-off actually works in mobile protocols. 4G/LTE devices will be able to transparently hand-off from your personal home femtocell to a macrocell when you walk outside, to a 3G or even GPRS/2G cell if you roam out of range .... all without you even noticing. Try that with a WiFi based system!
Finally, the LTE protocols include support for true single channel multi-cast. For this reason it can not only replace 2G/3G and WiFi, but also digital terrestrial TV broadcasts, as well as digital and FM radio with no loss in spectrum efficiency due to needless retransmissions.
LTE + IPv6 is the most efficient and user-friendly way to use limited spectrum, period. 20 years from now other air protocols will seem like an anachronism.
I'd bet on it killing it's self. I've worked with wireless (WiFi) for 5 years implementing them in RV parks, Hotels, and Apartment complexes. There are a lot of issues with just the nature of wireless that cause people to fret away from it.
One of the first reasons is there's no seamless way to roam from one access point to another, if it were possible to shell out a few thousand dollars and make all access points go to one gateway using a fiber optic underground network, then it "might" stand a chance but yet again you'll run in to the problem of your radio's not being aggressive enough to roam from one AP (access point) to another on the customer's side. Me and a few of my coworkers in the past have tried many different methods of making it seamless only making it 'kinda seemless' by using 2-3 different radios.
Second reason, is the very nature of wireless it's self, this 2.4ghz, or even 5ghz isn't good with distance as well with going in/around objects that get in it's way, You could be in an RV with an AP less than 20 t, with a 10+ db radio and get 1 bar of signal, but move to a window and it'll go to 4-5 bars? Buildings aren't made to let WiFi go through it. Being in Portland and watching their wireless city project die was sad but they couldn't shell out the support they would need in order for everyone to get connected, and stay connected. We're talking hundreds of brick buildings with very tiny windows. I'm sorry the makers of WiFi never expected it to ever be used in a city-to-city setup, and that my very well caused it to die. Wimax, and G4 networks, are made to tackle city's and City WiFi will never compair.
This is a Mac, what you have there is an embarrassment to your fellow computer users.
http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/municipal_wireless.htm
Wifi won't be killed so easily. As demand for 3G grows in America, the carriers will have to upgrade their network, and we all know how serious they are about that. They'll slack and lag behind (dragging down everyone's 3G speeds).
It will be at least 10 years before we have 3G coverage on even one carrier that can handle enough of a load to completely replace Wifi and have good coverage IMO.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So long as 3G providers continue to charge $50/month on top of already overpriced voice plans and cap data usage at 5 GB/month, wired internet connections won't be going anywhere.
3G is no substitute for a proper data pipe.
A buddy of mine lives in Minneapolis in a stucco house. The chicken wire mesh used to hold the stucco onto the house acts as an EMI cage. So he has to be sitting next to a window to get the city WiFi. In this case I wouldn't blame the vendor specifically. But others commenting might be correct about other flaws in the system. I just think the house design for much of residential MPLS might be a contributing factor.
Who says its stealing? I keep mine open on purpose- if I'm not using the bandwidth, someone else might as well. I pay the same anyway. If its something I don't want snooped, I encrypt it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
They wanted to, but they had no wi-fi coverage in the pub where they wrote the article, so they couldn't get on to Wikipedia.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe