City's WiFi Plan: Access for All: Lower-Income Residents Could Be Among Top Beneficiaries of Mayor's Proposal
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By Alexis Grant, Houston Chronicle  Feb. 25--Mireya Zenil isn't used to going to the library every time she wants to use the Internet.
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With a rash of muni Wi-Fi projects collapsing, companies and cities realize their initial approaches to providing ubiquitous, free network connectivity aren't working. The problem is Wi-Fi is too expensive to deploy, and there's not enough user demand.
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(InfoWorld) - San Francisco is going to kick the tires of an alternative to theÂ citywide Wi-Fi planÂ from EarthLink and Google. The budget analyst of the City and County of San Francisco agreed on Monday to study to financial feasibility of a wireless network paid for and owned by the city. The agency expects to finish its report by December, a representative said at a meeting Monday of the Board of Supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee. The city's Wi-Fi plan and the process of developing it has come under fire from several quarters, not least from some members of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Jake McGoldrick formally requested the feasibility study after criticizing the way in which the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom settled on theÂ EarthLink-Google plan. It calls for a network to be built at no cost to the city and owned by the two service providers. "It really got rammed and jammed and fast-tracked," McGoldrick said in April. If the city owned the network, he believes it would have more control overÂ issues such as user privacyÂ and prompt upgrading of the technology. The analyst's plan to deliver the report by December satisfied McGoldrick, who talked with representatives of the agency at Monday's meeting. The city also expects to wrap up its negotiations with EarthLink and Google in early December, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst for the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. The department has no position on the plan for the feasibility study, he said: The budget analyst's report will give the supervisors more information to decide whether to go with the EarthLink-Google deal, he said. Also Monday, a nonprofit organization said a city-owned network would pay for itself in just over four years. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) released the results of a feasibility study report that was sought by Media Alliance, an Oakland, California, group that has pushed for broader access to technology. ILSR envisioned San Francisco building the network for an initial capital investment of about $10 million, to be repaid over five years from services revenue. The city would create a nonprofit body to sell access to the network to service providers wholesale. Upgrades would cost about $9 million over ten years, the group said. The plan is similar to onesÂ advocated in some other cities, such as that of the Boston Wireless Task Force. ILSR said its estimates, which in part assume that 10 percent of households and businesses would become paid subscribers at about $15 per month, were conservative. A better plan would be for the city to expand its current 43-mile fiber network to eventually reach all homes, while deploying wireless in certain areas in the meantime, ILSR said. Fiber costs more to deploy but less to maintain. The city didn't provide enough information for a complete analysis of this plan, ILSR said.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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City will build the world's largest mesh Wi-Fi network to spread Internet access.
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Municipalities that plan to use new Wi-Fi networks being built in their cities will likely drive future growth of the citywide Wi-Fi movement.
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Two key votes on the municipal Wi-Fi project have been postponed and a city leader wants to amend the deal.
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Philadelphia officials have laid the groundwork to provide wireless, high-speed Internet access anywhere in the city, but their plan could be scotched under a state bill that could be signed into law on Tuesday.
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More than 300 communities consider launching local high-speed Internet service.
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A year ago, it seemed like just about every major U.S. city was drawing up ambitious plans to build wireless Internet networks so more people, both rich and poor, could have online access wherever they wanted.
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Boston's plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet connections is set to pick up speed this month as companies jockey to play a role and a pilot WiFi project gets underway in a square-mile area of the Grove Hall neighborhood.
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By The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson  Jun. 1--The idea of creating a low-cost wireless Internet network across  Tucson has great appeal, but we urge city leaders to make sure that the system  will, first and foremost, work well, and, secondly, be used by residents.
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After Earthlink and Google scrapped plans to offer wireless in the city, many weren't so sure. But a start-up is promising to finish the job.
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Councilor John M. Tobin Jr. envisions a Boston Utopia, with greater public spirit and a more robust sense of community. And he says he knows how to achieve it: WiFi.
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A Philadelphia model, if successful, could spark a movement to make broadband access affordable in every municipality.
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By Kris Hundley, St. Petersburg Times, Fla.  Sep. 7--On the day St. Petersburg took a giant step toward eventually  providing citywide wireless Internet capability, a familiar face said it was  already providing wi-fi capability, at least in parts of the city.
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Verizon's agreement with Philadelphia brings new life to the city's WiFi plans.
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The city of Philadelphia plans to invest in a new wireless mesh network based on the Wi-Fi 802.11b standard, and officials hope to turn the 135-square-mile city into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.