[Article] Philadelphia Considers Wireless Internet for All

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http://apnews.myway.com//article/20040901/D84R3KCO0.html

Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All

Sep 1, 5:08 PM (ET)

By DAVID B. CARUSO

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Forget finding an Internet cafe. For less than what it costs to build a small library, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.

The ambitious plan, now under discussion, would involve placing thousands of small transmitters around the city - probably atop lampposts. Each of these wireless hot spots would be capable of communicating with the Wi-Fi network cards that now come standard with many computers.

Once complete, the $10 million network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel - including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare.

The city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged for broadband delivered over telephone and cable TV lines, said the city's chief information officer, Dianah Neff.

"If you're out on your front porch with a laptop, you could dial in, register at no charge, and be able to access a high speed connection," Neff said. "It's a technology whose time is here."

If the plan becomes a reality, Philadelphia would leap to the forefront of a growing number of cities already offering or mulling a wireless broadband network for their residents, workers and guests.

Chaska, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, began offering citywide wireless Internet access this year for $16 a month. The signal covers about 13 square miles.

Cleveland has added some 4,000 wireless transmitters in its University Circle, Midtown and lakefront districts. The service is free for anyone who passes through those areas.

Some 1,016 people were logged in to the system at 2:20 Tuesday afternoon, said Lev Gonick, chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University, which is spearheading the project and paying for a chunk of it.

"We like to say it should be like the air you breathe - free and available everywhere," Gonick said. "We look at this like PBS or NPR. It should be a public resource."

But free citywide Internet access would appear to pose a competitive threat to businesses such as local phone carrier Verizon Communications Inc. and cable provider Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) Both companies have invested heavily in upgrading their networks to provide high-speed Internet connections for a monthly fee.

A free service might also hurt Verizon's wireless business, which is spending $1 billion to upgrade its network with a technology that will enable speedier Web access for laptops and mobile phones.

John Yunker, an analyst with Byte Level Research, said those companies could face a serious challenge if cheap, or free, Wi-Fi proliferates.

"When you see initiatives like Philadelphia's, you are conditioning people to expect free or very low cost Internet service. And that is going to be a problem for providers who have built a business model around charging a fee," he said.

While business users might be willing to pay extra for reliability or national coverage, a free service might prove more than adequate for more recreational Web use, Yunker said.

As it stands, a typical Wi-Fi transmitter like those used in homes, coffee bars and airports is at least several times faster than the broadband connection provided by high-speed cable or DSL over a phone line.

And thanks to surging demand, the cost of those hot spots and Wi-Fi computer cards has fallen sharply in recent years. At the same time, a glut of capacity on wired networks built during the technology boom has made it cheaper to deliver Web traffic to and from Wi-Fi hot spots.

Neff, for example, estimated it would cost Philadelphia just $1.5 million a year to maintain the system.

The main drawback to Wi-Fi is that the signal can only travel several hundred feet. But the "wireless mesh" technology being considered by Philadelphia and other cities essentially joins those individual hot spots into a network to provide service across entire neighborhoods.

Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street, a technology buff who carries a wireless handheld computer everywhere he goes, appointed a 14-member committee last week to work out the specifics of his city's plan, including any fees, or restrictions on its use.

Elsewhere, New York City officials are negotiating to sell six companies space for wireless transmitters on 18,000 lampposts for as much as $21.6 million annually.

Corpus Christi, Texas, has been experimenting with a system covering 20 square miles that would be used (for now) only by government employees.

Could you imagine? :eek:

jwt

And we're doing what exactly?

Depressing

Wonder how much it would cost here though given the rip off nature of Ireland

1.5 million dollars pa to maintain in the states, 150 million here plus the usual extras

john

Ripwave

jwt wrote:

And we're doing what exactly?

Depressing

Wonder how much it would cost here though given the rip off nature of Ireland

1.5 million dollars pa to maintain in the states, 150 million here plus the usual extras

The City of Philadelphia charges an Income Tax of about 4% on everyone who either works, or lives within the city boundary. That's on top of State and Federal income taxes. (And that's a straight 4%, with no tax free allowances).

I'm sure if everyone working in Dublin was prepared to pay a couple of grand additional income tax to the city, they might be able to afford a wireless mesh network!

DonegalMan

Ripwave wrote:

The City of Philadelphia charges an Income Tax of about 4%

That's irrelevant, Ripwave, the $1.5M would only be a tiny fraction of the 4%, it actually works out at $1 per person per year. And that's not taking into account the savings that the City Council would make on their own current expenditure on leased lines, etc.

This is the sort of progressive approach that we badly need in this country. Dublin is comparative in size to Philadelphia. To have a complete wireless network in Dublin at these sort of costs would be incredible value, especially when you look at the amount of money the Government has poured into unlit fibre. It would:

1. Make our capital city totally Broadband enabled and bring it up to world standards.
   
2. Reduce our dependance on ageing copper (and consequently screw Eircom )

Only downside is it would do nothing for us poor culchies out in the sticks

Ripwave

DonegalMan wrote:

That's irrelevant, Ripwave, the $1.5M would only be a tiny fraction of the 4%, it actually works out at $1 per person per year.

That's a blue-sky figure that nobody can vouch for, because nobody has every run something like this before. $1.5M would barely pay for the staff needed to maintain and service a network of that size, never mind ongoing maintenance, or actual bandwidth provision. And the Capital cost is projected at $10M.

The Philadelphia City Council has an annual budget of $3.5 Billion, for a population of 1.5 million (just Philadelphia County - the greater Philadelphia area has a population about double that) packed into 135 square miles - that's 11 miles by 12 miles. Dublin City Council has an anual budget of about €600 Million, with a consequently smaller area and population (the "Dublin Co Borough" has a population of just under half a million, but I can't find any information on land area). But it is responsible for a lot less than half the population of the Greater Dublin area, and it has a Department of the Environment to deal with that wouldn't let it look sideways at a project like this.

I've lived in Philadelphia, and I can tell you that $10M wouldn't pay for installing wireless along Broad Street, never mind the whole city. As a Donegal man, I'm sure you know far more people who have lived in Philadelphia than most Dublin people do (the place is full of Dunnies! :-)) - just ask one of them what they think!

And that's not taking into account the savings that the City Council would make on their own current expenditure on leased lines, etc.

This is the sort of progressive approach that we badly need in this country. Dublin is comparative in size to Philadelphia. To have a complete wireless network in Dublin at these sort of costs would be incredible value,

It would be incredible value. But it will cost a lot more than $10M, if it ever happens. Believe me, I'd love to see it happen. But I think these numbers are totally unrealistic and don't have any credibility.

DonegalMan

Ripwave wrote:

It would be incredible value. But it will cost a lot more than $10M, if it ever happens. Believe me, I'd love to see it happen. But I think these numbers are totally unrealistic and don't have any credibility.

Knowing RipOff Ireland you're probably right in practice if it was done by the Public Service.

That, however, does not mean it is inherently unviable, it would be nice to see the real numbers done.

Ripwave

DonegalMan wrote:

Knowing RipOff Ireland you're probably right in practice if it was done by the Public Service.

I wasn't talking about Ireland, I was talking about Phialdephia.

DonegalMan wrote:

That, however, does not mean it is inherently unviable, it would be nice to see the real numbers done.

My understanding is that Mesh networks make sense for the delivery of local traffic. But for a network that will primarily be used as an Internet Access network, most of the traffic is going to be funneled into one or two gateway nodes - that means that the mesh in the immediate neighbourhood of the gateway is going to be swamped. This might work fine in a small town with a couple of dozen, or even a hundred users, but I'd expect that there would be problems supporting tens of thousands of users on a city wide basis. (It's been a while since I read up on this, and even then it wasn't very technical coverage, but there must be scalability and density limits, especially when you're dealing with "leaky" wireless technology).