dailywireless.org » Big City WiFi Clouds

Big City WiFi Clouds

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade, with a hundred and ten cornets close at hand. They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos, the cream of every famous band! - Professor Harold Hill

The City of Chicago is planning a metro WiFi network that would allow residents and visitors to surf the Web from anywhere, reports the Associated Press.

Chicago’s chief information officer, Chris O’Brien (left), said Thursday that the city will invite technology companies to submit proposals this spring and that the system would be paid for by whatever private vendor is chosen to build it.

He says service could not be too expensive and would have to be available in all areas of the city.

The City Council first discussed citywide Wi-Fi last year, says the Chicago Tribune, and then held conversations in several neighborhoods to get community input, according to O’Brien. The city concluded it would be best to keep its request for proposals open-ended to give vendors flexibility.

At the time, O’Brien told aldermen that citywide installation would mean about 7,500 small antennas on light poles about every two blocks. He also estimated the cost of networking the city at $18.5 million.

Many of the largest cities in the United States are now considering”city clouds”, after the pioneering work by Wireless Philadelphia.

Boston Unplugged: Mapping a Wireless Future (pdf) charts the progress Boston has made towards city-wide WiFi. Mayor Thomas M. Menino, however, may have pre-empted and devalued the Boston Foundation study with an announcement that he is creating a 22-person WiFi task force.
New York’s WiFi cloud was profiled by WiFi Planet:

It hasn’t happened yet. There are 600 Wi-Fi hotspots from a variety of providers dotted around New York. Wi-Fi Salon, a local company with a community development focus, has worked with limited success on projects to put Wi-Fi in some parks around the city. Wi-Fi Salon founder Marshall Brown declined to talk to Wi-Fi Planet for this story because he didn’t want to tip his hand, he told us. There is also a much-delayed project – run by the state for some reason – to put Wi-Fi in the city’s subway system. While the subway network might ultimately be folded in to some larger municipal network, these disparate initiatives do not add up to a city-wide solution.

The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) issued an RFP (pdf) for the implementation of a public access Wi-Fi network in downtown Los Angeles, back in July, 2004.

In addition to getting the network up and running, they want to put together a qualified list of vendors for future City of LA Wi-Fi projects. They want to use the Pershing Square Wi-Fi network as a platform extension their website (www.experienceLA.com) which will also be used to help promote public access Wi-Fi in downtown LA and other selected areas.

Here’s an excerpt from LA’s RFP:

The Pershing Square Public WiFi District Project (“Pershing Square WiFi”or “Project”) is a development of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (the “Agency”) and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) in cooperation with the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.
The demonstration Project is proposed to be developed in downtown Los Angeles at the Pershing Square Park which is bounded by Hill Street, Olive Street, 5th Street, and 6th Street. DWP’s proposed conceptual plan is to mount two (2) or more small wireless transmitters on top of the standard perimeter light poles (that are under the jurisdiction of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting) that will then connect via wireless to a small transmitter (with electrical power from the same source providing power to the light fixuture) that is located on top of the Pershing Square park office.

Here’s the “unwired” Pershing Square (Flickr photos), below.

Nice public art. I still like the idea of Access Points as Giant Pencils. More literary.

Houston, Texas is releasing a draft RFP before they release their final RFP for a citywide wireless network. Houston, the fourth largest city in the US, plans to cover 630 square miles and serve over 2 million residents. Texas Gov. Rick Perry began a multi-city tour this week to announce the expansion of high-speed internet service to 71 of the smallest rural communities in Texas. The governor is promoting streamlined video franchising for Verizon and SBC/AT&T.

San Francisco’s TechConnect RFP (pdf) seeks to provide a universal, affordable, wireless broadband network throughout the City and County of San Francisco. Responses are due Feb. 21, 2006. San Francisco’s 49 square mile “cloud” is expected to cost $10 million to $18 million, similar to Philadelphia’s 135-square-mile cloud, projected to cost $15 million to $18 million. San Francisco’s hilly topography makes coverage more expensive.

Portland is currently choosing among three contractors to build a citywide, privately funded wireless network. The Oregonian says MetroFi appears to be the leading candidate in Portland, but the city is also considering EarthLink Inc. and VeriLAN Inc. Portland hopes to name a contractor by spring and wants network construction to begin soon afterward.

MetroFi is dropping fees for wireless Internet access in Santa Clara and Cupertino, California. Now everything is free. MetroFi, which uses SkyPilot mesh gear, used to offer two choices; a $19.95/month, 1 Mbps wireless access service (without advertising), or a free 1 Mbps wireless access service (with a half-inch advertising strip at the top of their Web browser).Now, apparently, only the advertising version will be available. MetroFi now reaches 178,000 of the 300,000 residents in Cupertino, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, through a network of 500 transmitters spread across 25 square miles. More transmitters will be added by late April, raising the population served in the three cities to 246,000.

In Portland’s Request For Proposal, equal access to competing wireless ISPs would be required. The operator can be both a wholesaler and a retailer of internet access to end users (if they so choose).

Cities such as Houston, Corpus Christi and Portland increase revenues with city-wide clouds via automated meter reading and smart parking meters. Cellular networks cost some $35/month for parking meter backbones. WiFi could cut costs in half.
The three finalists for Portland Unwired are:

Earthlink: Likely proposing similar architecture to their winning Philadelphia bid with Tropos mesh gear and Motorola’s Canopy for backhaul.

MetroFi: Their SkyPilot gear, now reaches about a third of the 130,000 residents of 24-square-mile Sunnyvale. Free online access is available using MetroFi’s half-inch advertising strip at the top of their Web browser.

VeriLAN: Built metropolitan wireless installations in Portland in 2003 using “pre-WiMax” and Vivato gear. Their proposal uses Cisco’s dual radio mesh gear. VeriLAN will be a wholesaler.

Kevin Yin of the city’s purchasing department, told DailyWireless that oral interviews have concluded and that a decision will be forthcoming, towards the end of February.Will users be “locked” into an advertising model — whether they want it or not? That sounds like trouble.
Right here in River City.