Om Malik says the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, wants to push development of a city wide telecom to deliver free access to the Internet:
His intentions were first reported in Nouvel Observateur, quite a serious newspaper. James Enck says, “The article refers to a city-wide network, and also seems to suggest that the Mayor has aspirations of offering free narrowband internet access and local telephony to residents of more modest economic means.”The city has apparently launched a tender for the construction of this network, as per translation of the French language original. Instead of going for ADSL technologies, the city wants to build a fiber network.
Some 372 Paris Metro stations will get Wi-Fi. It uses the existing fiber network in the subway tunnels for backbones. Project partners including RATP and Cisco, will place two or three antennae outside each station, (not inside the actual subway, apparently).Underground wireless coverage for the New York Subway is down the road say transit officials. There are 702 miles of subway tracks in New York City, with 468 subway stations. Verizon has provided some service for D.C Metro but most subways in the United States lack service. Amtrak and AT&T Wireless (Cingular) have signed a five-year deal that will put Wi-Fi access points in six of the railroad’s busiest train stations. Inexpensive WiFi hot spots may get down first.
The Register reports that London Underground (Blog) is in talks with the four main mobile networks to allow mobile access on the Tube network. Cellular operator O2 provides underground cellular coverage in Newcastle and Prague, with coverage overlaping existing cellular service, allowing customers to move freely without losing a call.
In Berlin, Prague and Budapest, subscribers use the city’s U-Bahn subway system to chat and make restaurant reservations. In July, Andrew Corp. won a contract to provide a multitude of wireless services underground in Singapore. Separately, Glenayre Technologies teamed up with Shanghai Metro Telecom and is working on providing paging and messaging services in Shanghai’s subway system.
London’s 113 mile network of tunnels is likely to be a more challenging project. UK train operators GNER and Virgin offer WiFi as will Eurostar, the company that runs rail services through the Channel Tunnel. But not in the Chunnel.
A spokeswoman for London Underground said: “This is something we’ve been thinking about for some time – we’ve always been restrained by our customers, because they haven’t been keen, but that seems to be changing”.
Meanwhile, Boston’s Logan International Airport is trying to ban free WiFi from airline lounges so they can impose their own fee-based system. That’s angering consumers and a growing array of Capitol Hill lobbying groups, who say Logan could set a dangerous nationwide precedent for squelching wireless services, reports the Boston Globe.
”What Massport is trying to do is create a monopoly on unlicensed spectrum in the airport, and we think it’s blatantly contrary to federal law,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA, which represents wireless carriers including Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint Nextel.
It used to get cold in Delhi. In fact I always enjoyed the winters as a kid. Mom would fire up a little “anghiti” on which she would cook some great jaggery-filled parathas, and we would gather around to keep warm. The smoke from the charcol-fired stove would sting our eyes, as we huddled under coarse Army-issue blankets my grand father would get.
Still, all of us would stay put, listening to grandma’s stories about the old country. Dad and grand dad would quietly watch over the brood, never uttering a word; and then let me know, time to hit Wren & Martin for my english lessons. I would complain about the home assignments; and why I have to study, and everyone else gets to relax. (Well, 30 years later, we know why….)
Free broadband. It should be a right of every citizen on the planet. The U.N. could manage it.
“Chief Architect” of PixelCorps, Alex Lindsay is merging the old idea of a guild system with new media — for everyone, everywhere. Consider the iPod and Google video stores. The wave moves both ways.The easiest way to predict the future is to create it.
