Muniwireless notes a couple of municipal wireless developments:
- The Colorado Wireless Communities (CWC), a group of 10 cities in Colorado near Boulder, are wondering whether they should continue trying to work with C-Com, a Boulder-based service provider, whom they picked to deploy the wireless broadband network. C-Com has not been able to raise enough money to fund the deployment of the network. The 10-city area covers 137 square miles, with a population of about 620,000. The CWC model is based on the “city pays nothing” model, the same one followed by San Francisco and Portland.
- Sydney’s free WiFi plan has been abandoned. The Minister for Commerce evaluated proposals from 15 providers but concluded it wasn’t practical based on technical and financial grounds. The free broadband initiative was first announced in November 2006, just before last year’s state election. But, “the overseas experience is that large-scale WiFi projects have proved ineffective in meeting the needs of local businesses and the community,” said the government’s Eric Roozendaal. Telcos now sell wireless broadband services in Sydney and it is the home of two pioneering efforts in commercial broadband wireless, Personal Broadband (using Arraycomm’s iBurst technology) and Unwired Australia (using Navini technology).
Some people say the “city pays nothing” model is dead. That pronouncement may be premature.
While ubiquitous suburban coverage with WiFi never made any sense to me (it costs too much), the “free” WiFi model — at least for downtown, high-density populations — does. The growth of the iPhone, MIDs and UMPCs could make “free WiFi” an idea whose time has come for city “hot zones”.
For wide-area suburban coverage, WiMAX using antenna techniques like MIMO, AAS, adaptive beamforming, SDMA, and uplink sub-channelization, may largely solve the problem of indoor penetration — at less cost than Wi-Fi per sq mile — with better reliability. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse explains the hows and whys of WiMAX.
DailyWireless disconnected our DSL line 6 months ago. We have researched and posted ALL stories on DailyWireless using ONLY the “free” service from Portland’s MetroFi.
Have I been frustrated at times? Sure. But it’s FREE!
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