Dublin City Council may provide free wireless web access

SkepticOne

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008865.shtml

Didn't they turn this down in the past?

lucernarian

The Dublin City Council plan was mentioned on the 6.1 news this evening. It's just a re-release of some news months old. I even remember the €20 million RTÉ mentioned, being discussed on boards somewhere. I doubt it will come to anything much and in any case, it's a lot of money to spend on a service like that. Mabye they should focus on areas like public transport stations and the large bus-stops. The IFSC and St. Stephen's Green and Temple Bar also spring to mind.

Do purely residential areas of Dublin city need a WiFi municipal service when every house is now guaranteed of some form of broadband (at least 1Mbit)?

thebman

It was on the radio today (I think with the guy most for it).

They want to provide a basic 256KB/S service and they want it to cover all of Dublin and be free of charge.

They don't expect that the city/tax payer will fork out the 20 million Euro but that they will follow similar efforts in other places where Google and earthlink (I think) funded some cities in the US to install the service and Earthlink provide higher speeds for a cost.

OfflerCrocGod

brim4brim wrote:

They want to provide a basic 256KB/S service and they want it to cover all of Dublin and be free of charge.

Surely giving something like that for free will mean it will just be abused like mad :eek:

DublinWriter

I heard that Manchester City Council are piloting this at the moment.

It makes sense really. When you look at it, net access is about as essential to commerce and leisure as road access is in the modern world.

1huge1

ya I remember hearing of this before and it was turned down for some reason, would be great if they could do it but im sure its not a priority by any means to the government

Urban Weigl

FYI, there was an article about this in today's Irish Times. On the front page no less.

seamus

Damien was chatting to Newstalk this morning about it. Good work Damien.

damien

0715
*ring ring*
"muhhhh"
"Hi this is Newstalk, we're wondering do you want to come on and talk about some citywide ..."
"muhhhh"
"about 7.40am"
"muhhhh"
*click*
0735
"Hi this is Newstalk again, so just to confirm you are SomeoneElse and you work for MediaPublication"
"Eh no, I'm Damien Mulley from IrelandOffline."
"Oh crap, we rang the wrong person to come on. Oh well, too late now. "

Tom Young

Not intending to blow trumpet ...

Have the sums done on this as well as rolled out three MAN wireless networks in the US. Financially it can make sense and the various city vantage points could be utilised. I suspect though that the EU radio/CPE standards might mute the project slightly, as well as a need to backhaul capacity for decent Internet connectivity. Lamps are a great source of power too.

There should be low charges for such services, additionally the municipal resources can benefit from such a rollout:

1. Traffic light telemetry backup
2. Emergency service via IP in the event of (God forbid) a major issue
3. Push-to-talk radio
4. Other things .....;)

New Orleans used radio to get emergency services back up and also restore telephony in places, as the Internet kept working when the coppers had all stopped due to flood damage.

Some Irish people involved in this space include Cicero networks, the award winning dual mode mobile developers and others.

Ericsson have a great product as to Tropos.

I wish them well, but the design is key and I think a nominal charge for use (via prepaid card or flash provider with credit card logon) and free access to socially disadvantaged areas is more tasteful. In fact it should be included. I've not bothered to read the above appended press release to I apologise if I repeat something.

Also, and I guess Bob may back this-up, WiFi/Max spectrum can be subject to awful interference from higher/stronger frequencies.

Tom

Blaster99

How can a free service make sense financially?

thebman

The idea is people get a taste of free but slow broadband & then want faster broadband & will pay for it.

damien

Some FG guy from the City council said on the Last Word last evening that it would be 256k/s download and would be for web and email only. He reinforced it would not compete with the commercial crowds. He said you could only get a signal outside.

Then when someone texted in saying it was a waste of taxpayer money he tried to go on a rant and said the people of Ballyfermot can't get broadband so they were somehow doing for them and all of the other people who can't get it. I guess they'll just all need laptops and to sit outside in the always fantastic Irish weather to enjoy it. :rolleyes:

thegills

Most of the Local Authorities are at some stage of rolling out free WiFi. In Carlow e- net are working with the Local Authorities and the network is now on trial.
The Google WiFi trial was a disaster as it operated in the unlicensed space and suffered badly with interference. The same could happen in Ireland and more so in Dublin where interference will be more pronounced.
thegills

Blaster99

brim4brim wrote:

The idea is people get a taste of free but slow broadband & then want faster broadband & will pay for it.

So the rate payer, parking permit payer, parking meter payer, toll bridge user will contribute €20m and who will get the money for this faster broadband?

thegills wrote:

The Google WiFi trial was a disaster as it operated in the unlicensed space and suffered badly with interference.

Yeah but surely this only works with 802.11b/g in practice? What visitor to Dublin is going to buy a special wireless card to access this service?

I think it's a good idea. I guess the hotspot operators out there won't be thrilled.

bk

I've used the Google free wifi service in San Francisco.

The service was pretty slow, only good enough for some light surfing and email. You certainly wouldn't replace your existing BB service with it.

However as a tourist in SF, I found it very handy for checking maps, events. etc. and I quite enjoyed sitting in Union Square in the sun, with a free band playing beside me and surfing the web for interesting events and sites to see. I wasn't the only one, in fact the Square was packed with people using the service.

So it would be a good service for visiting tourists and business people and would be fine for some light surfing by Irish people out and about. Also handy as a backup when you Eircom/NTL/whatever service goes down. I think it is a good idea.

Victor

Tom Young wrote:

1. Traffic light telemetry backup

The City council is one of the largest fibre owners in the city. Pretty much every set of traffic lights (probably not individual pedestrian crossings) is connected back to the traffic control centre, as are CCTV cameras, etc. Anytime the comms companies put in a duct over the last few years, the city council usually had their own duct put in also.

The council are likely to stick with only a basic service as they use stautory powers to force the phone companies to do certain things and to a degree are in competition with them.

By extension on could have optical sensors on street lights to see when the bulb blows, connected back through the network with a WiFi antenna on every street light.....

oscarBravo

Victor wrote:

...a WiFi antenna on every street light.....

Can you say "interference"?

thebman

Well firstly he said that they were going to use the unlicensed spectrum because the council didn't want to get involved in licensing issues.

Blaster99 wrote:

So the rate payer, parking permit payer, parking meter payer, toll bridge user will contribute €20m and who will get the money for this faster broadband?

Well the idea is the company that is going to get the money pays most of the 20 million and the government puts up a certain amount so that they provide free broadband to everyone and people can pay if they want faster service.

I don't know much about it, I'm just telling you what the representative for the council said about it.

SkepticOne

I see that Tommy McCabe of TIF is opposing it.

Surprise surprise.

OfflerCrocGod

brim4brim wrote:

Well firstly he said that they were going to use the unlicensed spectrum because the council didn't want to get involved in licensing issues.

Wont that require specialist hardware?

crawler

Tom Young wrote:

Not intending to blow trumpet ...

Have the sums done on this as well as rolled out three MAN wireless networks in the US. Financially it can make sense and the various city vantage points could be utilised. I suspect though that the EU radio/CPE standards might mute the project slightly, as well as a need to backhaul capacity for decent Internet connectivity. Lamps are a great source of power too.

There should be low charges for such services, additionally the municipal resources can benefit from such a rollout:

1. Traffic light telemetry backup
2. Emergency service via IP in the event of (God forbid) a major issue
3. Push-to-talk radio
4. Other things .....;)

New Orleans used radio to get emergency services back up and also restore telephony in places, as the Internet kept working when the coppers had all stopped due to flood damage.

Some Irish people involved in this space include Cicero networks, the award winning dual mode mobile developers and others.

Ericsson have a great product as to Tropos.

I wish them well, but the design is key and I think a nominal charge for use (via prepaid card or flash provider with credit card logon) and free access to socially disadvantaged areas is more tasteful. In fact it should be included. I've not bothered to read the above appended press release to I apologise if I repeat something.

Also, and I guess Bob may back this-up, WiFi/Max spectrum can be subject to awful interference from higher/stronger frequencies.

Tom

agreed, agreed and agreed - except wimax - wimax in the main will be licensed...or at least, should be.

interesting exercise for anyone interested - sweep Dublin for ANY clean channel in 2.4, 5.4 or 5.8Ghz spectrum with good spekky anny - clean channels = Zero.