Cities have to bid bye-bye to free Wi-Fi [Telecom]

Cities have to bid bye-bye to free Wi-Fi

Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The free municipal Wi-Fi dream appears to be coming to an end for a handful of Bay Area cities.

MetroFi, a Mountain View wireless provider that had built its business largely from advertising-supported Wi-Fi networks, is just over a week away from pulling the plug on its nine networks including Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, downtown San Jose, Foster City and Concord, part of a larger pullback due to a lack of revenue.

Last month, the company informed local users and the cities it operates in that the system will go dark as early as June 20. MetroFi is putting its assets up for sale and has reached out to cities and Internet service providers, hoping they might buy these local networks. So far, four of the Bay Area cities have turned MetroFi down, while Santa Clara and San Jose are still evaluating the offer. The cities are being asked to pay anywhere from $60,000 in San Jose to $408,000 in Concord for the equipment.

Unless a third-party provider swoops in to continue service, MetroFi will begin dismantling its networks, ending what has been for many cities a valuable service for residents and a nice technology badge of honor.

The retrenchment by MetroFi mirrors a general retreat by Wi-Fi companies that had hoped to offer wireless Internet service for free in many cities. Early municipal Wi-Fi advocate EarthLink, which pulled out of a planned San Francisco network, has also said it is ending its service in Philadelphia and New Orleans. Many projects, like those in Milpitas, are scaling back. San Francisco, meanwhile, is relying on the generosity of San Francisco Wi-Fi hardwaremaker Meraki, which is slowly building a free network across the city as a showcase for its technology.

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***** Moderator's Note *****

That's a shame: public WiFi was/is the only Internet access for many low-income families. I've written before about Mel King's efforts to provide WiFi in the South End of Boston, and I hope some "angel" funding can be found to save these networks.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or I may never see it. Thanks!)

Reply to
Monty Solomon
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[Moderator snip]
[Moderator snip]

Riverside, Calif is 6 months behind in its deployment from the same people with the exception that at&t has money in it for its DSL subscribers.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

How can a low-income family have the hardware?

If they do a Juno $9.95 dial-up account works good enough for email and limited browsing.

***** Moderator's Note *****

The hardware is free. Anyone who needs a PC has only to go to a recycling center and pick up a Windoze box that someone threw out because it had a virus, or volunteer to clean out the company storeroom in return for one, or use the FreeCycle mailing lists, or the "Free" section of Craigslist.

The hardware and software curves crossed years ago: when 1 GHz or faster processors with 512 MB of ram are going begging on trash days, there is no problem getting a machine: it's the commercial software that costs too much for low-income families to afford. However, since open-source software is free-as-in-speech, they can get a recycled PC with GNU/Linux and Open Office for nothing.

Of course, when the kids want to surf the Internet or look up their homework, then a public WiFi network fills in the last, crucial piece that allows those at the bottom of the ladder to climb the first rung.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
Sam Spade

[Moderator snip]

I hear from the AP that Metrofi is now shutting their whole system down in Oregon, California and Ill. as of this Friday. I called Riverside, Ca. where I live and first they know nothing about it, then I was told that the system would be down for a while as they now have someone else taking it over, who knows, at&t is involved as is Starbucks. I liked it since I have at&t DSL and got to use the hight end of it free when I was out in the city.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

Free or close to it. There's a guy in my area that sells desktops for $50 and laptops for $100.

My old computers hardly ever make it to recycling centers since I wipe them, throw a Linux distro on them and use them as appliances for network and telecom purposes.

***** Moderator's Note *****

What's the minimum (both theoretical and practical) system needed to run Asterisk?

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
T

I would submit that the "free" WiFi is going away, because this country has been "running on empty" for quite some time. Now, it is really catching up with us.

So, while those at the bottom of your latter may fall off rather than climb, it will probably be a relatively soft landing. But, those a few rungs up that are trying to hang on, will either fall off or have to climb down before they fall. Let's hope they don't fall on your folks "at the bottom of the ladder."

Reply to
Sam Spade

Great question for an extended discussion; I suggest it be modified to address the issue 'how has feature creep changed the system requirements for each asterisk version'?

There have been projects to run a version of asterisk on consumer commodity routers (SIP and IAX2 but no other line hardware) and a few embedded asterisk commercial offerings that aren't publicly well documented, but the emphasis from developers seems to be on scaling up rather than down. I run a headless PIII-600 handling one FXO and currently only one FXS together with some SIP phones and front-ended by a separate SER box for external SIP UAs. This machine also streams video and audio (icecast) and handles other misc. chores; it also has no local mass storage and load has never exceeded perhaps 50 percent, however my asterisk version is pre-1.0 (built from CVS head in early 2005). I would like to see a fork that freezes features and aims to run efficiently on small systems, especially as a SOHO PBX handling some small number of FXO and perhaps several dozen analog FXS together with SIP UAs and IAX2 trunking.

Michael

***** Moderator's Note *****

Michael,

If _ever_ there was a subject that combined telephones and data, _this_ is it, and I could use a good introduction to the subject.

Please answer these questions for the readers: I'll think of more as soon as I hit "save", but these will do for the start: I'll send this to Digium and invite them to respond as well.

  1. What does it cost to set up Asterisk for an office with three or four incoming lines and a dozen extensions?
  2. Does Asterisk require VoIP or other special phones to work? What do they cost?
  3. Can Asterisk work with VoIP? For example, could I order service from Vonage and connect the data stream directly to Asterisk without using Vonage's special-purpose router?
  4. Will Asterisk support _any_ of the proprietary telephones now in use? In other words, can it be substituted for a Panasonic, Avaya, or Nortel PBX without changing phones?
  5. How much training is needed?

A. For attendents? B. For Users? C. For the phone guy?

  1. What features does Asterisk offer? I know that you're upset about feeping creatureism, but please tell us if Asterisk offers "basic" options such as

A. Voice Mail i. Dial-by-name ii. Remote retrieval iii. Stutter dial tone B. Camp-on-busy C. Auto-attendent D. Time-variable settings E. Transfer of outgoing calls F. Conferencing G. Called/Calling number logging, duration and toll tracking H. Toll blocking I. Dial in "WATS box" (tandem dialing) J. Voice or email alerts for low disk space, etc.

  1. What about remote offices? Can one Asterisk PBX serve offices at remote locations without added equipment?
  2. What are minimum hardware requirements? The "recommended" minimums? Can I shave features to save on hardware?

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
Michael Grigoni

From: Sam Spade

> ***** Moderator's Note ***** >> >> Of course, when the kids want to surf the Internet or look up their >> homework, then a public WiFi network fills in the last, crucial piece >> that allows those at the bottom of the ladder to climb the first rung. >> >> Bill Horne >> Temporary Moderator > > I would submit that the "free" WiFi is going away, because this country > has been "running on empty" for quite some time. Now, it is really > catching up with us. > > So, while those at the bottom of your latter may fall off rather than > climb, it will probably be a relatively soft landing. But, those a few > rungs up that are trying to hang on, will either fall off or have to > climb down before they fall. Let's hope they don't fall on your folks > "at the bottom of the ladder."

In our area (Baltimore-DC) libraries have been stepping up to the plate with both public use computers and 811b/g free internet service. There is also universal free access at Panera Bread restaurants and about a half dozen non-chain restaurants. Starbucks is freeloading WiFi because the corporate pay model didn't work in our county.

Mark L. Smith

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***** Moderator's Note *****

A. Because it disturbs the naturnal flow of a conversation. Q. Why is top posting bad?

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
Mark Smith

We [went] out to several people's homes that had less then 26 Kbps dialup. We visited several sites to test the actual end user experiences. CNN took about three minutes to load a page, likewise Yahoo mail.

At two or three minutes to load a page, I'd say dialup is pretty much useless.

Reply to
DTC

Asterisk is a little resource heavy meaning a half decent CPU and probably max out the RAM.

It'll run on a P2 @133MHz.

Reply to
T

DTC wrote: [about dialup performance on modern mainstream Web sites]

That assumes the Web is useless without CNN or Yahoo Mail. Many would beg to differ; I am sure with a bit of looking one could find free Web-based free email services and news sites which would work efficiently on a 26.4 kbps link (although one would have to skip the "multimedia" stuff; Firefox with NoScript is very helpful).

It is obvious the managers at CNN.com (Time Warner) and Yahoo along with their advertisers aren't interested in users limited to dialup access especially sub-V.90/92.

--

-Herb Oxley

***** Moderator's Note *****

I'll never forget how angry I was the first time I had to work on a computer that used AOL: back before the web, AOL was the only "GUI" available and some of my customers insisted on it.

I cured an issue with the customer's machine, and then she logged on to AOL to be sure it worked. After a minute, she logged off again, but AOL demanded that we wait while it was "Downloading information". After a couple of minutes, the connection was broken, and the "information" that had been downloaded came on the screen: an advertisement.

Suffice to say that I agree with Herb: the web has been subverted from a way to share information to a way to deliver eyeballs to advertisers, and all the bad things about the Internet come from that change. Although dialup users can get around _some_ of the cruft, they have to be very savvy Internauts to do it, and Internet savvy is in short supply amoung the working poor. Absent a separate "gated community" dedicated to providing educational material without ads, those who use dialup are condemned to wait for every page.

It wasn't always this way: does anyone remember Gopher? Is FidoNet still in use? There used to be a time when students could take advantage of the net without having to view ten or twenty advertisements for talking dolls just to (dutifully) learn the date of birth of Paul Revere.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
Herb Oxley

It seems that the economics no longer support municipal wifi systems with the lower prices on DSL that are now available. I see DSL available here for $15 to $20 per month. Lompoc, CA (maybe 30 miles from me) has a municipal wifi system

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for $16 per month: not a whole lot of savings over commercial services.

Would it perhaps be more economical to use something like a lifeline telephone rate to have the local government subsidize the cost of a commercial broadband connection to those who are below some income level instead of building a parallel network that attempts to serve everyone? For "roaming," I understand AT&T now lets their DSL subscribers use their wifi hot spots (including Starbucks) for free. I think this is a great idea. [It] really gives them a competitive advantage.

I'm also a big fan of

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com where broadband users share their bandwidth with other fon members. This sort of community can provide hot spots for community members for free. Unfortunately, the number of members is somewhat limited (in the hundreds of thousands wordwide with only a few in my city).

Harold

***** Moderator's Note *****

The economics may not support municipal WiFi, but I'd bet they don't support public libraries either. It's still a good idea to have libraries, and I think it's a good idea to have publicly-available WiFi as well.

If I had to bet on the reason that large ISP's oppose public WiFi, I'd say that it's because they don't want any government do-gooders steering the young and imressionable minds of the working classes away from UTube and toward Habitat for Humanity; away from their oh-so-crafty "Nag your parents until they buy this for you" appeals to pubescent insecurity and toward the notion that money isn't needed to think or to create or to make a difference in a local community.

Time-Warner bought AOL for a reason: the business model didn't work out the way they planned, but the intent was there from the start - to have a "Data coral" where AOL users saw only what somebody paid Time-Warner to present.

Thanks for the tip on fon.com. I'll check it out.

Bill Horne Temporary Moderator

(Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks!)

Reply to
harold

AT&T allows it here in Riverside, Ca. but the city Wifi system which is supported by AT&T is 6 months or more behind and may not even get up: they pulled the plug on in last Friday along with the rest of Metrofi systems. I just went to the Elite DSL from Pro and had major problems getting it up to speed because the telephone lines have been around since 1957; AT&T cable techs replaced the lines and put a new direct cable to my DSL allowing me to have it without filters on all the house phones; made speeds much better, they placed a single filter on the DSL line, I also put a wireless gateway in allowing me to move from room to room with out the need of another line.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

"Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

--British philosopher Lord Acton, around 1890.

"Dependence on advertising tends to corrupt. Total dependence on advertising corrupts totally."

--My personal sig file for a while, around 2008.

Reply to
AES

More than just a handful of non-chain restaurants. Numerous independent coffee shops and espresso bars in DC offer free wireless Internet. One near my office is Soho Coffeehouse, at 22nd & P Sts., N.W., and one near my home is Modern times coffeehouse, in Politics & Prose bookstore, at Connecticut and Nebraska Aves., N.w. Quartermaine's Coffee offers free Internet at its coffee shops throughout the area.

Reply to
Michael D. Sullivan

If you check my post carefully I was speaking primarily of email and limited browsing.

I have cable at home that gives me 10 megabits down and 1 megabit up. When I go to some remote locations in California dial-up is the only option. But, I get 28.8 up and typically 48 kpbs down. Good enough to stay connected.

Some folks are lucky if they can drive a 20 year old car, too.

Reply to
Sam Spade

When I was in Elizabeth City, NC there was a little cafe there called Muddy Waters and they offered freebie wireless too. I had to trek up to E-City from Edenton every couple days if just to upload photos to flickr and keep in touch with friends.

Reply to
T

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