Category: Municipal

Once again, RSA security took a wardrive through downtown London and found open access points belonging to businesses. This is the 5th year they have done this survey and the number of detected networks went from 1,751 to 2,747 with 26 percent wide open. Still not a very complete survey, but it certainly mirrors statistics...

A plan to develop a citywide wireless network is moving forward in New Orleans and Philadelphia. The New Orleans City Council as well as Philadelphia mayor John Street gave their consent to begin the project, which will be managed by EarthLink. The company said access to the New Orleans network at speeds of up to...

Early attempts to deploy citywide wireless Internet access have run into unforeseen problems. Contractors have been forced to place more access points than planned, and subscribers need to attach signal boosters to their homes in order to receive Internet access. Help may be on the way in the form of Wavion, a San Jose, California-based...

BT Group intends to install a network of Wi-Fi hotspots in 12 U.K. cities, including Leeds, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London's Westminster area, by the end of 2006. Steve Andrews, BT's chief of converged services, clarified that the plan only constitutes the first phase and that the company expects to expand its coverage. In...

John Muleta (former head of the FCC's wireless bureau) and cable executive Milo Medin (creator of AtHome Networks) have founded M2Z Networks Inc. with the goal of offering nationwide high-speed Internet service via a vacated slice of airwaves. The unused airwaves, 2155 megahertz (Mhz) to 2175 Mhz, have been allocated for advanced wireless service, and...

Downtown Phoenix is jumping on the municipal WiFi bandwagon. While not as ambitious at San Francisco, the plan will try and cover all of the Copper Square area. The plan does not include a free service option. The plan seems to be aimed at business people on lunch and tourists. The project is still at...

No one ever said it would be easy. The plan to blanket San Fracisco with wireless is not a matter of flipping a switch. San Francisco is full of hills and tall buildings, things that usually are problems for wireless networks. The network will probobly require $15 million and 36 nodes per square mile. It...

Philadelphia's municipal Wi-Fi network is soon to be a reality; a city subcommittee recently signed off on the new project, with Earthlink being awarded the network contract. Wi-Fi connections are hoped to reach throughout the city, but it's a no-go until the project passes full city-council approval. Via [wirelessweek.com]

Nortel and Russian Internet service provider Golden Telecom have joined forces to establish a Wi-Fi mesh network in Moscow. The network, according to the companies, will utilize 5,000 Nortel-supplied access points to service some 3.9 million homes in the city. The partners assured that the network will be secure and can support VoIP and location-based...

Google will not join the competition for the establishment of a Wi-Fi Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said the company has no intention to respond to a request for proprosals for the $200 million project, which is due on June 30. The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force is looking for one...

A Philadelphia city council committee gave its nod to a WiFi project that will see Earthlink's equipment installed on 4,000 city-owned utility poles. The full city council is set to vote on May 11 and the decision is expected to favor the project. Once it gets the final approval, Earthlink plans to start construction a...

Municiple WiFi seems to have a problem. Millions are spent to set it up, but no one wants to pay to use it. This is the problem faced by some municipal and city-wide network installations. The solution seems to be with third party partnerships that allow for advertising and pay-for-higher-speeds plans, as is the case...

ISP's are facing a problem. Dial-up is dying and broadband is levelling off. How do you get new customers to continue growth? Well, for Earthlink, they are betting thier chips in WiFi in San Francisco, hoping that they can make a go of it. After many years of renting other companies infrastructure, it will be...

People like free stuff, and that goes for WiFi services too. A survey of users show that 58% of users only use public hotspots when they are free. The rest presumably are willing to pay. Another interesting fact is that lack of necessity to go online and lack of equipment are bigger reason than price...

As with any new project nowadays, privacy is becoming a concern with the Google-Earthlink plan to provide free WiFi to San Francisco. The debate stems from Google's plan to pay for the service with targeted ads based on the users location. Since the system will know who's signed on through user ID's and will also...