UK cities argue about metro Wi-Fi claims
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British cities and their Wi-Fi providers are sniping at each other over who is really putting out Wi-Fi service and who is only putting out press releases.
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A British city known for its concrete  cows is set to become one of the most technologically advanced  in Britain after it said it would to be the first UK town to  boast a high-speed WiMax wireless broadband network.
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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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A SWATHE of east London is to be turned into a giant wireless internet hotspot.   BT is to pay for and construct the network in the coming months by fitting wireless transmitters to lamp posts and other street furniture.   It will spread for a mile around the Walthamstow market area.
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Can Wi-Fi signals make you ill? Newshounds pore over the available literature, but miss something interesting about the claims
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Prague OK too, with modifications The EU has ruled that Wi-Fi deployments in Wales and Prague do not constitute state aid, as neither will compete with commercial hotspot deployments.â¦
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Broadband gets faster in the UK but some customers are not reaching speeds that firms advertised.
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Pah - we sneer at your global economies of scale! More dismal news for the US consumer. After the simultaneous failure of Municipal Wi-Fi projects in three major US cities - something we predicted four years ago - faster, cheaper mobile data looks further away than ever.â¦
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Agency gives phone companies more leeway in sharing connections. Also: Broadband over power lines gets green light.
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Residents and visitors to London will now be able to access the Internet from parts of the city for free thanks to a new Wi-Fi network now live along a 13.6-mile stretch of the River Thames.
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Private companies only Dublin has abandoned its plan to blanket the city with free Wi-Fi as it thinks it might breach EU law on state aid, and they haven't got the â¬27m it's going to cost anyway.â¦
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San Francisco city officials could bring the city&#39;s proposed Wi-Fi network closer to reality at two meetings this week as a key leader proposes significant changes to the plan.
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Many U.S. cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries  of failure, resulting in millions of wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight
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New York is on the verge of becoming a wireless city, but not everyone is happy about the prospect.
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(InfoWorld) - Portland, Oregon, became the latest city to launch a municipal wireless network, starting a free, ad-supported service featuring localized content and services from Microsoft Corp.'s MSN. The network, being built by MetroFi Inc., went live in a few central neighborhoods on Tuesday and is intended eventually to provide Internet access in 95 percent of the city's indoor and outdoor spaces. Cities and counties around the U.S. wantÂ to build wireless networksÂ to promote business and tourism, provide Internet access to residents who can't get or afford wired broadband, or add another choice to the usual options of cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). Municipalities in some other countries, including Taipei, are also part of the trend. Traditional carriers have opposed city-owned networks. But many municipalities, including Portland, are simply contracting with private service providers to build, own and operate their systems. Portland's is the first service to feature local content from MSN. It will appear on a special MSN home page for Portland that will always appear after users start up the service. When they first try to use the network, users will see a MetroFi page that asks them three anonymous demographic questions, such as whether they are male or female. Then the network will remember the client device's MAC (media access control) address, and the next time the user goes on the network, there won't be any questions, according to MetroFi. There are no plans now for services or ads that use the subscriber's physical location in the city. MetroFi has built municipal wireless networks in several cities, including Aurora, Illinois, and Cupertino, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Foster City and Concord in the San Francisco Bay area. It uses mesh technology in which a Wi-Fi access point can reach the Internet partly through other access points rather than needing a direct wired connection. The service in Portland will deliver speeds comparable to DSL, according to the company. To pay for the service, banner ads about 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) deep will appear continuously at the top of the user's screen, Van Haaften said. MetroFi has already secured a handful of local sponsors and plans to add more over time. The City of Portland will act as an anchor tenant, with public-safety and other employees using the network for improved connectivity in the field. MetroFi may offer the city a special grade of service, Van Haaften said. The service became available Tuesday in Pioneer Courthouse Square and in much of the Buckman, Lloyd and Kerns neighborhoods. The network, using access points mounted on street light poles, is scheduled for completion by mid-2008. To improve reception inside homes, MetroFi recommends indoor modems from Ruckus Wireless Inc. that can amplify the signal from the service.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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UK city wins a government competition to find ways for technology to tackle social exclusion.
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By CHRIS WETTERICH STAFF WRITER  Did the city of Springfield move too fast to scuttle a proposed downtown wireless Internet network?   One member of the group that planned that network said last week that may be the case.