The trouble with hooking up [Telecom]

The trouble with hooking up

Free municipal wireless sounds like a great idea for Boston or any city that has already invested heavily in high-tech infrastructure. Too bad there's no more money to pay for the last link of the chain.

By Hiawatha Bray | August 2, 2009

Brian Worobey stands on the roof of the Tobin Community Center in Boston peering through a telescopic sight, the sort that fits snugly atop a sniper rifle. Spread out before him is a target-rich environment: the town houses of Mission Main, the Alice Taylor homes, the Franklin Square Apartments -- residential space for thousands of Bostonians. From where he is standing, Worobey figures he can hit them all with radio waves capable of carrying Internet data.

The sniper scope is to help him spot a work crew perched on the roof of the Beatty Hall library at the Wentworth Institute of Technology a quarter mile away. That crew and Worobey's are doing the same thing: installing digital radio devices to wirelessly connect computers in homes and businesses to the Internet. Two electricians are setting up a big white box festooned with antennas, wiring it to the city's fiber-optic network.

Worobey points southwest toward Mission Hill, another prime target. "We've got the hill covered reasonably well," he says. "When we light this up, we'll get this whole area covered." This box -- it's one of about 100 wireless networking devices that his nonprofit has installed in Boston -- is yet another step toward Worobey's goal: a city where Internet access flows in the air and where it might eventually carry the same price -- zero. As chief executive and president of OpenAirBoston, Worobey has spent the past three years working toward that goal. In 2006, when he was vice president of information systems at the Museum of Science, he was on a task force established by Mayor Tom Menino to figure out exactly how to set up such a network. The task force report, issued in July of that year, figured the job would take 12 to 18 months and cost $16 million to $20 million. By now, you should be able to stand on any corner, anywhere in town, whip out a wireless-equipped laptop, and get on the city network. Try it in Jamaica Plain or Southie, Allston or Back Bay, and you're in for a disappointment. But try it on Westland Avenue in the Fenway district, or Warren Street in Roxbury, and you'll see that the efforts of OpenAirBoston haven't been entirely fruitless. In about 2 square miles out of Boston's 48, less than 5 percent of the city, you'll find wireless capability, up to 1 million bits per second, that the nonprofit manages. That's not much for YouTube videos. But it's plenty for e-mailing a client or researching homework.

it turns out that building a wireless network that provides coverage to all of Boston is going to take more time -- not more money, though that point is moot since the city doesn't have it budgeted -- than the mayor's task force predicted. In fact, this kind of project has thwarted government leaders and technologists in cities from coast to coast.

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

In 2002, I worked with the Cleverminds company, helping a group headed by Mel King, a former Boston City Councilman. King led an effort to provide free WiFi access to the citizens around Tent City in Boston: he founded the South End Technology Center at Tent City. King deserves credit for showing that public WiFi could be done - and on a shoestring budget, at that - which is always the most important part of getting public projects moving - and I'm very surprised that Bray's article doesn't mention his name.

Cisco donated Access Points made for outdoor service: it was my first exposure to Power Over Ethernet (POE). The Boston Linux and Unix User Group

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had an "Installfest" as Tent City, showing the Tent City techies how they could leverage their stock of donated (and old) computers without having to buy software they couldn't afford. At the center of it all, Mel King worked the political magic needed to get access to private rooftops, access to Internet connectivity, and access to enough money to buy what couldn't be begged, borrowed, or repurposed.

Bray is right when he says it's not enough bandwidth for utube videos (although utube wasn't a factor then), but it _was_ enough to allow bright and curious minds in the inner city to catch a glimpse of the libraries, histories, and opinions available outside Roxbury.

Reply to
Monty Solomon
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We have both free and paid WiFi here in Riverside. It was started by the city to give free access, but was run by the same company that had set up systems in Seattle & Portland, and I believe [also in] some cities in the mid west and New England, but [they] went under and all those systems went down. Ours went off for a while, but AT&T contracted to run it in both free and paid [modes]. If you are an AT&T Wireless customer or have AT&T DSL you get to use the paid part of it, which is higher speed, [and] they also have a plan to pay a daily rate. I have used it a couple of times but find it too slow even for my simple needs.

Reply to
Steven

Speaking of free WiFi, I came up with this idea. From a technical standpoint it would work, but I'm not sure about the finances of it.

Build solar-charged street lights and at the top of them put a WiFi hotspot. Perhaps get some stimulus money or something as it's a green effort. Blanket the streets, boulevards, and Interstates with these street lights. Homes and businesses would still need a paid ISP as the signals from the street lights probably couldn't penetrate, plus people would want their own networks. Allow customers to install equipment and subscribe to some bandwidth by pointing an antenna at the streetlights. The Road Runners and AT&T's of the world could offer the service perhaps? Work a deal with Google where companies could sponsor some of these hotspots in exchange for a top ranking. Example you're hungry, type something into Google and voila, there's a restaurant just around the corner.

I think it could work, but I know the telcos have fought efforts to install free WiFi tooth and nail. There was a bill before the Texas legislature a couple of sessions ago that would've effectively banned them. It didn't pass.

John

Reply to
John Mayson

It appears efforts to blanket cities in Silicon Valley with WiFi have, for the most part, failed with one exception: Google WiFi'd the city of Mountain View CA per .

The big issue is signal coverage as revealed in this FAQ answer:

" Google WiFi will be strongest when a user is outdoors. It is unlikely " that a WiFi enabled laptop or a computer with a conventional WiFi card " will work indoors in most locations. If you want to use the service " indoors, we suggest purchasing a WiFi modem. An exception to this is " the Mountain View Public Library, where we have installed WiFi access " points inside to ensure good coverage throughout the building.

Note Mountain View is "flat" with no hills and an elevation variation of probably one foot from a mean elevation above sea level of 105 feet over its 12 square miles.

Reply to
Thad Floryan

Over the years, I've heard of various free municipal wifi projects failing. There's one a few miles from where I live

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I've heard they've had growing pains, but guess it's working ok now. It's not free, but certainly low cost.

One approach to free wifi is a community funded (instead of government funded) project like Fon

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). Fon offers free access to its members who provide access to other members. For non-members, it offers low cost access (something like $4 per day). IF there were a very large number of users, this could be quite useful for travelers. When I've been traveling, though, I've generally not found Fon access points, or, those that I found were dead (I could see the SSID but could not reach the Internet).

Another interesting approach for travelers is what Starbucks offers. If you get a Starbucks card, you get something like two hours a day of access to AT&T wifi network per day for free. You have to do some transaction on the card within the past month (putting money on the card or spending it). I was in San Francisco (where I found the dead Fon access points). My Starbucks account had expired. I bought a cup of coffee and had access within a couple minutes.

So, I'm not convinced government funded wifi is a great idea. It's a good project for a non-profit to take on, perhaps getting right of way access from the government.

Harold

Reply to
harold

It helps to have a large rich sponsor. Fon works great in the UK, because British Telecom builds it into the routers they give to their DSL users. I just had to check a box on one of their web pages to opt into it. The implementation was very nice, it was a completely separate wifi network from my regular one, with preemptable capped bandwidth.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

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