Big Wi-Fi Project for Philadelphia
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What would Benjamin Franklin say? Philadelphia plans citywide free Wi-Fi Internet access for computer users.
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Pennsylvania may block Philly's Wi-Fi plan. [News.com Extra]
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For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.
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Municipal Wi-Fi, full of promise and hype over the past two years, has hit the wall of reality in the U.S. because of economics, politics and even the technology.
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By The Dallas Morning News  Feb. 24--By 2009, Houston expects to boast a wireless broadband network allowing anyone to connect a laptop computer to the Internet from virtually anywhere in the city.   It's no small undertaking.
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Wireless networking startup Meraki plans to deliver free wireless Internet access across San Francisco by the end of the year.
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Companies, including I.B.M. and Cisco Systems, announced plans for a vast network that will be the largest of a new breed of wireless networks being built across the country.
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VENICE -- The idea sounds good on paper: Build a mesh network of wireless Wi-Fi base stations and let users roam around an entire city instead of providing limited connectivity in a handful of hot spots. But will it work? The City of Philadelphia hopes so.
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Wi-Fi enabled phones, like the iPhone, will drive demand  for fast wireless broadband networks like the ones cities want to build using Wi-Fi.
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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.
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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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By DAVID B. CARUSO    PHILADELPHIA  -- For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot...
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Amimon gets its chips out for wireless high dev
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HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov. 30 -- The city of Philadelphia and Verizon Communications Inc. struck an agreement Tuesday that would allow the city to provide wireless Internet access as a municipal service even if Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D) signs legislation to give Verizon the power to scuttle the project.
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By M.K. Guetersloh, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.  Feb. 25--BLOOMINGTON -- Twin City officials would like to see more people wired. Make that wireless.
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Meraki Networks&#39; plan to cover San Francisco with free Wi-Fi, with residents&#39; help, could be a way around the political and business barriers some municipal wireless projects have run into.The startup, partly funded by Google, believes it will succeed&#160;where EarthLink and Google did not: Building Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco at no cost to the city. It expects to finish by year&#39;s end, filling the whole city with 1Mbps coverage.The catch is that Meraki is footing the whole bill on this project so that&#160;it can learn how to roll out such networks for profit elsewhere. The good news, if the plan works, is that it could do so for less than $5 million, lower than the cost many other municipal wireless projects have run into. That&#39;s partly because of intelligence in access points and software, making the network more robust with fewer nodes, according to Meraki spokeswoman Erika Shaffer.Meraki will build the backbone of its network with solar-powered rooftop access points and fill out its coverage with smaller repeaters to sit in windows or on balconies. Both will be designed and built by Meraki and provided free to residents and businesses that agree to house the gear on their property in return for better coverage. All the nodes will be meshed, so Meraki won&#39;t have to get wired broadband links everywhere its access points go.The idea has potential in developing countries with little broadband, where Meraki sees its biggest market, but also in highly wired cities such as San Francisco, analysts said.A key advantage is that by asking users instead of the city for mounting rights for its gear, Meraki will bypass the rancorous political fights over contract terms like the one that slowed down EarthLink&#39;s initiative last year. But seeking volunteers also makes sure that however fully Meraki has actually covered the city by the end of the year, it is pretty sure to have coverage where people actually want it.&quot;You know exactly where your coverage needs to be, because someone just asked you for a repeater,&quot; said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua.Meraki believes it won&#39;t have any trouble getting people to host repeaters in their homes, based on its existing test networks in parts of San Francisco, Shaffer said. There are about 500 repeaters today, and about 40,000 people have used the network, she said.Another problem that would seem to solve itself, assuming the network and distribution system run smoothly, is the difficult issue of indoor coverage, said Craig Settles, an independent municipal network analyst at Successful.com. EarthLink&#39;s network was to be built largely on streetlights and electricity poles, which are well suited to mobile outdoor coverage, but not so good for providing home broadband to residents who can&#39;t afford wired alternatives, Settles said. Meraki&#39;s small repeaters are designed for indoor coverage in the home where they&#39;re located as well as to flesh out the whole network.On the San Francisco network, which Meraki will treat as a research and development cost, the company will test advertising as a possible revenue source for future deployments. When it approaches service providers that want to charge for access, it will also offer a billing system. Meraki has trials going on today with carriers in developing countries, Shaffer said.In places where most people don&#39;t yet have broadband, Meraki&#39;s approach could be an attractive low-cost alternative, analysts said. However, WiMax, which requires far fewer base stations than Wi-Fi because it has a longer range, also has relatively low costs and is already a competitor in those markets, Chua said.&quot;I doubt that Wi-Fi would be the dominant access medium in emerging markets,&quot; Chua said.
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The University of Calgary in Alberta is on its way to achieving of deploying 1,500 wireless access points with plans  for an even more ambitious deployment that would allow staff and students to carry their wireless access over to other institutions.