Whatever Happened to Municipal Wifi?

[Eater]

Our skepticism about this was apt. Community-driven wifi is still relevant today.

 

 

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Whatever Happened to Municipal Wifi?

via Reason Magazine - Hit & Run by gill...@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) on 12/30/08

Who killed the great municipal wifi bandwagon of the early '00s, when every city worth its name was going to supply free (free, I tells ya!) or cheap wireless service for every resident? George Mason prof and Reason contributor Thomas W. Hazlett has answers in a provocative piece at Ars Technica. A snippet:

In 2005, Philadelphia's Chief Information Technology Officer, Dianah Neff, lectured: "Just as with the roads of old, if broadband bypasses you, you become a ghost town." The Philly CITO surely did not know that, by 2008, well over 100 million U.S. subscribers would be linked to the Internet via advanced data networks, wired and wireless, virtually every one of them supplied by unregulated private competitors, none via municipal wireless. So, yeah, Philadelphia. We get it.

Whole thing here.

 

 

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[Kevin Webster]

Whatever dude.

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[Sam Kuonen]

So... I've gotten re-excited in CFn after discovering open-mesh robin builds. Too bad the chipset in the WRT54G isn't supported. It'd already be installed.

[0x0000]

Muni WiFi was killed by the cell phone companies about 5 years ago. Verizon et al will not allow free, ubiquitous WiFi because to have such freely available everywhere, combined with VoIP, would be THE Killer App. That is, it would kill the cellular company's ability to continue their obscene gouging for things like long distance, data access, and the entire rest of their con-game grab-bag of fraudulent billing practices...

Cell companies must evolve or die. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way, please. More government regulation of private citizens is the only possible result of their recent and current lobbying.

The problem right now is: It's a dead issue. No municipalities are in a fiscal position to buck the legislation which has gone into place at the State level(s).

Nice to be re-inspired by the h/w updates - I'd suggest you take it underground and start learning the black-market for these kinds of things - it's the future.

0x0000


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