The Hiccups of Free Wi-fi for Cities

smooth wombat writes "Several cities around the country are considering implementing free wi-fi for its residents. Currenly, St. Cloud, Florida is the only one that can make that claim. However, the 28,000 residents are still experiencing hiccups in the system more than a month after implementation including being able to see receivers but not being able to connect or connecting at different times with weak signals or not being able to connect at all. As a result, many residents are still paying for monthly landline connections. HP, which has been contracted to build the project and provide customer support, says it is working to resolve the issues by adding more access points to improve signal strength in isolated parts of the city. Despite these issues, HP says that there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service."

Wireless Remedy

[digitaldc]

Someone said they would get rid of the wifi hiccups, but then I was told, 'Don't hold your breath.'

Re:Only?

[955301]

even assuming that people are going to call every time there is a problem.

I don't see why they wouldn't. We're running a voip based call center - all they had to do was connect their notebook with our service, download a soft-phone and dial the number on the support page. What could possible prevent them from doing this? We even provide Email-accessible support for SMTP/IMAP issues ...

      - HP Support, St. Cloud, Florida

Re:A large scale project induces hiccups.

[Trigun]

Nice comeback, NineNine, and a decent way to pimp your site.

Re:Let's keep autonomy

[lelitsch]

It's probably a sign that many residents don't know how to buy or install a wireless card. Talk to some cable company istaller occasionally. They get called to plug in the cable in the back of the computer because customers don't know where it is supposed to go. Even though there are only one or two jacks an Ethernet cable will fit into and either of them works.