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Google Wiring New York City's Chelsea For Free Wi-Fi
Nerval's Lobster writes "On the heels of rolling out high-speed broadband to Kansas City, Google is bringing more connectivity to another American municipality: New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, which will receive Wi-Fi in outdoor areas courtesy of the search-engine giant. The free Internet zone will encompass an area between 8th Avenue and the West Side Highway on the East-West access, and 19th Street and Gansevoort Street on the North-South. It will cost $115,000 to build and $45,000 a year to maintain, according to Bloomberg, with costs split between Google and a nonprofit neighborhood development group. Internet access will come free of advertising, aside from a provider message from Google, and not require any sort of password. Under mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City has encouraged the development of a sizable tech sector; in addition to dozens of startups, Google and other behemoths have opened headquarters in Manhattan. In theory, this 'Silicon Alley' will contribute mightily to the city's tax base and diversify the local economy."
Sid Vicious would have fucking loved this. Nancy too.
Hipster Web.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
First they have this billionaire oligarch, then they just buy whatever players they want, then he keeps sacking managers...
We're talking about the same Chelsea, right?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Chelsea is much larger than what the article relates. It encompasses the area (roughly) from 9th St (and that weird triangle area with Gansevoort) up to about 28th and from 5th Avenue to 12th (there is a 13th Ave but it's no longer accessible).
As someone further up suggested, Hipster Web.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dear Google,
How do you plan on overcoming internet dropping out for blocks around everytime someone wants to make some hot pockets?
Sincerely,
Unregulated Spectrum
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
more fucking radio waves and electrical fields
WTF, "diversify the local economy" of NYC?!? The only place I've ever been that has more for sale than NYC was Phnom Penh, Cambodia where I could buy B40 rockets and hashish.
People from abusing this service.. p2p, spamming, snooping, etc... ?
So no problems with providing free wireless with no authentication when complaints start coming about copyright infringement?
why should they care?
that's usually an issue of people abusing the service, not an issue of rolling out the service.
Wait, so they are wiring up the city in an attempt to make it wireless? Genius!
Google is wiring Chelsea with wireless?
THAT should take too long.
Internet access will come free of advertising, aside from a provider message from Google, and not require any sort of password.
and so began the great Pringles famine of Chelsea.
Good people go to bed earlier.
While it says that it will come free from advertising, it DOESN'T say that you won't be monitored while connected. I'm certain they will recoup costs this way. Nothing is ever free.
How about wireless access for a lower income area of the city instead of one of its wealthiest? Most of the companies and residents in the area can afford high speed connections, so why not open up other neighborhoods like Upper Manhattan to neighborhood investment and in the interest of helping kids in low income areas gain access to broadband services for free?
Anyone else worried at what all this radio saturation is doing to our insides? Bluetooth, Wifi, Cellular?
I'm looking at all the stuff on my desk and wondering how much of it is sending me to an early grave.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
I expect more and more re-emptive move like this by Google: they know that rogue ISPs not respecting net neutrality and unable to provide their users the bandwith they paid for are their biggest threat.
That said I'm pretty sure there are countries like France where local corrupt politicians in bed with rogue ISPs (like free.fr, created by a "socialist" who's partly owning the biggest socialist newspaper lemonde.fr) would do anything they can to try and stop Google.
No matter how superior the service offered Google would be compared to rogue ISPs who can't even deliver YouTube videos properly...
'nuff said, yo.
My father in law has a Google wireless node outside of his house in Mountain View. He pays for DSL, because he hasn't found the signal to be strong enough, and the service hasn't been reliable or robust enough when he could get signal. Yes, he tried setting up a repeater, but that only got him the latter results. :\
I guess ya gets what ya pays for.
Let's see... they are sharing the cost with some neighborhood group but you can bet that Google will receive 100% of the market research data, tracking data and web advertising benefits from this. All the while the people are using this thinking that it is a free service given to them gratis out of the goodness of a multibillion dollar giant.
Right.
Google has found a way to monetize the Internet in interesting ways that either haven't occurred to others yet or aren't available to others because they do not have the market reach. This allows them to give valuable stuff away apparently for free while all the time raking in huge amounts of money. Some disclosure might be nice here - like how much Google will make the first year of doing this. If this information became public it might inspire other companies to do likewise until everyone had their fill of apparently free stuff with huge hidden costs in privacy and tracking. Rolling out a city or two a year isn't going to show people the real downside to this tactic.
For people not familiar with the building, it's 15 stories tall and fills the whole block, and has more total floor area than the Empire State Building. When the Port Authority outgrew this building, they built the World Trade Center to hold their offices.
If you fire up Google Earth for 111 8th Street, you will see that the service area for this wifi is all within 3 blocks of the building, and nearly all direct line of sight. An old cynic like me would say they did this so the Google staff could stay connected while going out to lunch or shop in the area. Google put in free wifi near their Mountain View headquarters too.
Why does it cost so little to build, and yet so much (relatively) to maintain? Just over 100K to built, and almost 50K annually to maintain?
So this will be a free (as in beer) and anonymous WiFi? I wonder how there are going to cope with abuses.
Sounds like he has had much better results then I do with Google's wireless in Mountain View.
I've lived at 3 different places in Mountain View, Google's free wifi is complete garbage.
This really depends on *where* in Mountain View.
In general, I agree with you. Any well populated area in MV - it's crap. However, one of the hotels I stayed at had free wifi - and Google's wifi from the outside was *way* better. Full power from Google's wifi, and very, very fast and nice access.
That was the only place in MV I was able to connect to it, though. Very happy that it was so strong from my hotel room though.
Grindr for all!