Philadelphia Considering Municipal Wi-Fi 223
sebFlyte writes "The row over Muni Wi-Fi continues as cities and other municipal authorities consider building massive Wi-Fi networks to give lots of people low-cost wireless net access. CNET is running an article written by the CIO for the city of Philadelphia, explaining why she thinks it's time to break the telcos de-facto monopoly and for public agencies to start offering public services." We have previous covered Taipei's efforts along these lines to create a for-pay service
Wish my town... (Score:3, Interesting)
Starting the late 90's they were being very public about pushing to the front of being "wired"... even got a Yahoo! "Most wired city" award for 2000. That was all on an effort to get the city ringed with fiber. I guess once they got their high-speed net to all the city buildings and schools, their interest pretty much fizzled, leaving the city-zens still not quite on of the game... I still can't get DSL.
Philly Wifi?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to knock the idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not allowed? (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the law: There's nothing stopping a community organization from building one. I think the public broadcasting model would work for a mesh network: Like it? Donate! Get some companies to sponsor and we're cool. No muss, no fuss, no multi-million-dollar executive salaries or golden parachutes.
The law's ass-backwards anyway. I don't see anything wrong with local government competing with business. Hell, it'll make them get their shit together and offer something better than 3Mbps down/784kbps up with a dynamic IP.
I'm jealous of Swedes.
Re:What To Look Forward To? (Score:3, Interesting)
Monopolies exist; they're real; and they're annoying. I'm not saying that Mediacom is being anticompetitive; I don't have any evidence to that effect, and it may well be that we just don't have a large enough market for competitors to justify the cost of coming in here. But, given that Mediacom has the market to itself, they charge an arm and a leg.
Companies will charge users whatever they think they can get from them. It's just the way things are. Where I live, there's one cable company, one power company, etc. You don't have choices, and thus you pay a premium. I'd much rather have what is essentially a "nonprofit organization" (i.e., the local government) running it, even if they're less efficient (which I have trouble picturing in this case). Any money that they make either goes into local programs or reduced taxes. So long as they don't subsidize their service, Mediacom would still be able to compete - if they feel they can actually offer a fair price, that is.
What about channel overlap? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Wish my town... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is Qwest's worst nightmere. Now thanks to this project [utopianet.org] Qwest can kiss their monopoly goodbye. Qwest did [utahpolitics.org] their [deseretnews.com] best [ksl.com] to kill it.
Re:What To Look Forward To? (Score:3, Interesting)
bad engineering (Score:1, Interesting)
If you want to waste a lot of money without any results let the government run the program.