Comcast and T-Mobile USA today announced the first-ever outdoor Wi-Fi wireless Internet service. It will be located at Philadelphia’s historic Headhouse Square Plaza and use Comcast cable for the backhaul. Philadelphia-based Comcast, with over 21 million subscribers, says the launch will create “one of the nation’s largest Wi-Fi “hotspots,” covering most indoor and outdoor areas of the plaza, covering Second Street between South and Pine Streets.
“The launch of wireless broadband service in this neighborhood is the next great revolution for our city,” said Philadelphia City Councilman Frank DiCicco. “Headhouse Square began as a marketplace some 250 years ago and, with the help of dedicated corporate partners, we’re continuing that spirit of innovation and commerce today.”
T-Mobile will charge, of course, although free Wi-Fi service at Headhouse Square Plaza will be available for approximately six months. Terms and conditions apply.
According to Joe Sims, vice president and general manager for T-Mobile HotSpot, Headhouse Square Plaza is T-Mobile’s first outdoor hotspot. “Our partnership with Comcast in Philadelphia continues T-Mobile’s efforts to offer Wi-Fi in high-traffic locations where people go as part of their daily lives. At Headhouse Square Plaza, we’re helping people declare their independence from the home and office.”
It’s not the first time cable operators have tried to charge for air. Time Warner Cable uses Airespace in their “Road Runner Speed Zone” city cloud in San Antonio, Texas while Wayport wants to organize cable and phone companies to provide hotspot clouds.
WiFi Planet reviews “free” Linux-based projects:
There are a number of freely available tools that will enable you to create and manage a public access hotspot. There are three projects in particular that are under community development and in use today that are deserving of mention: Sesame Wi-Fi, ZoneCD from Public IP and the Less Networks Hotspots Server (popularized by the Austin Wireless City Project in Texas).
The Sesame Wi-Fi is perhaps the most difficult of the three projects to get a grasp of for those that fear getting their hands dirty. The free version unfortunately does not have much English language documentation. The complexity of configuration and lack of direct easy integration with a payment system are obvious drawback of this otherwise highly functional project.
Public IP’s ZoneCD is a simple Hotspot on a CD solution. Like the LiveCD Router, it’s a bootable CD-ROM Linux distribution, but with the graphical tools needed to freely create a hotspot in minutes. If you really wanted to, you could also download a version of the ZoneCD without the GUI (for those that live in terminal windows and the command line).
Recent articles in the press have helped to popularize the Less Networks Hotspot Server’s use in Austin. The project currently provides Wi-Fi hotspots in 50 locations across the city to over 8700 registered users. The project does not have commercial aspirations and is intended to provide free access to registered individuals. Like ZoneCD the hotspot itself can have its own unique branding to create whatever login experience a hotspot operates want to create. Unlike ZoneCD however, at present the Less Networks solutions is not CD based and required installation on a dedicated machine.
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