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Orlando Cancels Free WiFi Project
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 22, 2005 08:36 PM
from the no-internet-for-you dept.
from the no-internet-for-you dept.
EvilStein writes "According to local news, the City of Orlando has cancelled the city WiFi project. The 6 month pilot program ran for 17 months instead of the planned 6, but in the end, it was costing the city too much money and very few people were using the service. Might other municipal WiFi projects go the same way?"
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Noooooooo they can't (Score:5, Funny)
not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: But city officials said that only about 27 people a day took advantage of the program -- not enough to justify the $1,800 the city paid every month for the service.
Maybe naively I've been waiting for the propogation of wireless to be everywhere and always available and if not free, at least very inexpensive, and ubiquitous. The quote above snapped me back to reality. Sure wireless everywhere is the buzz these days, but how many people really need, or want it? I would venture even in the techno-elite slashdot crowd many wait for wireless everywhere but only a relatively modest subset of those would actually use it, and of all who use it, it would not likely be at great volumes everywhere (as in, that's kind of what it needs to be to sustain and maintain the infrastructure).
Wireless internet isn't the same as cell phones in the sense that wireless access to the internet is nice, but doesn't drive communications as does telephony. Wireless internet access is a nicety but until wireless folds neatly into existing or expanding other necessary infrastructure (e.g., cell phone) I wouldn't be surprised to see other experimental free wireless internet sites suffer the same fate (really the question asked by the article).
If a city as large as Orlando didn't sustain the experiment there are many other cities that would point to that as justification for not even bothering trying, at least not in the near future.
(Doesn't mean I don't want it, just means it's too niche-y a market right now.)
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would I want to surf the net at a park?
I used to think of all the cool things you could do with wifi everywhere but in reality I do not see all that much use for it.
Parent
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid, my parents bought their first cordless phone, replacing an old rotary phone in our living room. My Mom would always sit right next to the cordless basestation when she used it- not because she doubted the technology; it was just what she was accustomed to doing.
I think you see my point. Orlando was just a little ahead of the curve on this one..
Parent
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, I asked a number of people I know in Orlando if they knew this was even there and they have all said no.
Parent
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:3, Insightful)
My point is that, unfortunately, this is one of those things that requires time for people to
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point in time, small wireless network hotspots are not all that useful except in certain situations, such as your home, your office, or a type of business such as a fast food joint.
WiMax (or an equivalent solution) is, of course, the only way that something like this will become effective. If user realizes that wireless access will be available ANYWHERE, not just some half block area, then more than 27 users will take advantage. Plus, when this happens, it will pave the way for VOIP services for mobile phones.
I have yet to make up my mind if this is a service that should even be provided by the government. It may be better left to private organizations to ensure that the government does not restrict or monitor information across the network.
Parent
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Cell phones only became a universally accepted technology once coverage was good enough that you could be assured of getting a signal in just about any urban or suburban area, and most rural ones as well. Going a bit farther back, I believe the same is true of TV, and before that, radio. It would be absurd to look at a small-scale experiment like this and conclude "municipal wifi doesn't work."
Parent
Re:not economically feasible not a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
I hope this doesn't disuade other cities from trying public WIFI. It would be a shame if Orlando's poor implementation of a good idea might doomed municipal WIFI.
On the other hand, perhaps Orlando is a bellweather of sorts. Municipal WIFI might fail for incompetence. On the other hand, without a municipality cluttering up the spectrum, interested residents of downtown Orlando might have the incentive to set up a cooperative ad hoc network. Er...right.
Parent
This is why (Score:3, Insightful)
Free WiFi? (Score:4, Funny)
Vague Article (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does government need to do this? (Score:5, Funny)
Understand (Score:5, Insightful)
A city running something like that would give me the willies anyway. Who's to say they wouldn't be monitoring every piece of information - and/or someone sitting there with AirSnort doing the same..
I live in Orlando... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not? I'm a technically inclined 20 something who would have used this, had I known about it.
I think that is the real problem here. Their target demographic didnt even know about it!
"Free" and "Cost Too Much" ah, the irony (Score:4, Interesting)
It's Great In Theory, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because... (Score:5, Informative)
Seems to follow the no-progress trend. (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't see much of that anymore here in America. Few people have the time or interest to go beyond the mundane around them. The concept of progress has become the idea of people selling things to people, with little else involved. Science and education just aren't that important anymore, except for expanding markets.
Am I surprised this experiment failed? No - who is going to have the time to use even free bandwidth to try something new? Not many people anymore. We're just not interested.
That's not to say that it's a truly bleak picture - but we as a population do seem to be stuck waiting for progress to come to us, rather than going out and making the progress ourselves. We need science, social thought, meaningful public education, healthy debate and journalism, and a much greater interest in human progress.
It's not about liberalism versus convervatism - it's about humanity doing something to make the world better, so it's not such a horrible place. It's about doing something to outpace the destruction we're causing, at least on some level. It's about seeing beyond dollars, and using our vast resources towards creating a future where we all know more, not just avoiding the terrors that will never stop coming in new forms.
It's not experiments like these failing that we should be depressed about - it's that we have so very few experiments like them at all anymore (relative to population increase over time).
Ryan Fenton
blah (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:blah (Score:4, Interesting)
Face it, free wireless is neither a high priority nor a fundamental necessity of life to the vast majority of people, and that will be true for the foreseeable future. If it's really that important to you, you can get it from a commercial provider (at a cost, but hey, it's really that important, right?).
Parent
Scope (Score:5, Interesting)
This failure is clearly because of a poor location choice. The main branch of the Orange County library is only a block away from Lake Eola park where this project was centered, but no signal was available in the library when I was there earlier this year.
bad area, poor service (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope they didn't kill the wireless in the library downtown though; that works quite nicely and is a great benefit when visiting for relaxation or research.
Mickey Mouse Project (Score:5, Interesting)
How much could they have spent getting people to know about the service, known to everyone in business as "marketing"? And with that kind of tiny coverage, what possibility could it have had to be meaningful as "citywide"? None at all. Philadelphia's project will cost over $10M, complete coverage for 1.5M people. And it will not just be some "hotspot startup", it will be a complete coverage, so people can forget about the network, and just get access to Internet content, services and people. That has a good chance of success.