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."

Poor Quality?

[kwiqsilver]

On a government provided service? Shocking!

But at least they have the comfort of knowing they're paying more for the service than they need to. And since it's a tax- (or debt-) funded service, they get to keep paying too much for it, unless they can somehow find a politician who will vote to reduce a budget.

Wrong, not if it is done correctly

[brunes69]

In my city [teamfredericton.com] not only is the Wi-Fi free, but it actually turns a profit for the city, who resells bandwidth on it's fibre ring that powers it to local companies.

In essence, the city is acting as an ISP. The ISP offers free bandwidth to residents, and leases surplus bandiwdth to other companies.

It can also be seen that, even if a city did not turn a profit on it's own network, the increased tax revenue from people migrating to the area because the WiFi is there couldpay for the cost of the network.

I am not saying that this is the case in this particular city, I am just pointing out that free Wi-Fi can be a win-win situation for all residents if you have smart people in charge of the thing.

Stupid idea

[realmolo]

Anyone that has ever tried to setup a WiFi network to cover a large municipal area knows that it's essentially IMPOSSIBLE to make it work well. WiFi is just to sensitive to interference. Trees and building stop WiFi in it's tracks. The only solution is to flood the area with access points, which is so expensive to do that it's not practical.

Supposedly WiMax has better coverage, but honestly, until the FCC opens up some of the lower UHF/VHF frequencies, wireless internet access "for the masses" is never gonna work right. 2.4Ghz is just too high a frequency to push through stuff.

WIFI is the wrong technology

[Urusai]

From what I gather, there are only 3 practically usable channels (1, 6, 11), it has an inefficient collision avoidance method, its bridging capability causes exponential bandwidth decay with the number of hops, and it uses open frequencies that are also used by wireless phones, etc., thus being susceptible to interference.

Just give us fiber to the home already. We've already paid for it in the form of tax breaks to the telcos.

Re:Free as in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not free, but pretty darn cheap.

Using your numbers and the ones in the article:

$2,000,000 / 28,000 residents = $71.43 per a resident initially.
$400,000 annually / 28,000 residents = $14.29 per a resident annually.

Spread the cost of the initial investment over a year and the next year's cost over a year and determine the per-month cost:
($71.43 + $14.29) / 12 months = $7.15

Cost per a month after initial year's investment:
$14.29 / 12 months = $1.20

I rounded all numbers up.

So you're trading a cheap meal at a fast food restuarant for city-paid wifi access all the time if you spread the initial cost over a year. Pretty darn good investment I think. After that you're trading a 2-liter of soda or some breath mints for city-wide wifi access. I don't remember the cost to build 1 mile of freeway but I'm pretty sure it is in the millions for one mile of freeway. Compared to roads, wireless access is dirt cheap. Of course, more numbers are necessary (like the city's full budget) to see how much money they are really spending compared to other things.

Re:Poor Quality?

[kwiqsilver]

Agreed!!

Fortunately cable & phone monopolies are slowly going obsolete, because of competition from satellite, cell phones, phone over cable, tv over phone lines, etc.

Just goes to show what wonderful things the market can do, even when burdened by government backed monopolies.

EULA and Privacy of a municipal network?

[thedletterman]

Do these cities with free wifi access have an intrusive monitoring policy, is there an EULA for usage, or is it basically, you are using the government's shit and we can do whatever we want on it. This is why communications has always been a privatized industry. As someone who has helped design municipal communications architectures (Emergency band, New York City), I'm not a big fan of making them available to the public.

Re:It's as free as the roads

[cayenne8]

"As much as I like technology, I don't think wireless Internet access is something taxpayers should be footing the bill for right now. "

I hear ya. There are MANY more important things to spend money on than free wifi. Housing problems, bad roads....poor schools, etc. Problems in many cities.

The internet isn't as much a necessity to living as those other things I've mentioned. And if you can't afford a connection...you probably need to be out getting an education and a better job so that a $40-$80/mo bill for a nice broadband connection isn't gonna break the bank.