TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Citywide Wi-Fi Link Considered / Internet Virtually Everywhere

Re: Citywide Wi-Fi Link Considered / Internet Virtually Everywhere

Tony Pelliccio (kd1s@yahoo.com)
25 Oct 2004 14:46:50 -0700

This would be a sweet thing to have here in Providence. The city is
only about 20 square miles and has plenty of places to put WiFi nodes.

The interesting part of this is that as a condition of its franchise
agreement in the state I believe Cox has agreed to wire all state and
municipal agencies for the bubble. So could the municipal use their
Cox IP feed to dole out to citizens for a small fee, or even for free?
It would be interesting to see how this would pan out.

Tony

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote in message news:<telecom23.512.3@telecom-digest.org>:

> NEWTON

> Citywide wi-fi link considered
> Internet access would be virtually everywhere

> By Matt Viser, Globe Correspondent | October 24, 2004

> Several Newton officials are looking into blanketing the city's 18.5
> square miles with wireless Internet transmitters, which would make the
> city one of several places in the nation -- and the only one in
> Massachusetts -- to offer the service on such a wide scale.

> The plan, which an aldermanic committee began discussing last week,
> would involve mounting routers on telephone poles throughout the
> city. Anyone within 100 yards of one of the routers would be able to
> access the Internet using a password. The city would charge about $10
> per month to use the service, which could begin to be available in as
> soon as six months.

> Installing the routers throughout the city would cost between $370,000
> and $740,000, according to initial estimates.

> http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/10/24/citywide_wi_fi_link_considered/

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here in Independence, authorities have
> considered the same thing, but the scale is quite different. Our town
> is only two miles long by two miles wide approximatly, with between
> 8000-9000 residents, but I do not think it has ever gotten beyond the
> talking stage as of yet. Independence High School and the college have
> both pushed for it, but no one wants to supply the money needed. PAT]

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My next question on this thread
pertaining to proposed 'city wide' WiFi setups is this: Suppose San
Francisco, or Newton, MA or Independence, KS or any of the more
enlightened communities installs such a thing. What then prevents
'hackers' or spammers or kiddie porn downloaders (to name just
three species of no-goods) from doing their thing and charging it all
to the city authorities who installed it to begin with. I would
suppose there would have to be 'passcodes' based on the MAC addresses
of the citizens would there not? The WiFi base would have to be told
to only respond to the MAC addresses in its files and somehow keep
track of who did what which brings up a lot of privacy concerns. Then
you talk about people sniffing at things: there sure would be a lot
of sniffing around for MAC addresses to spoof wouldn't there? PAT]

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