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Should WiFi Be Public Infrastructure?
I never liked living in Philly too much. I went to business school there in the mid-80s.
I spent most of my time in NYC hanging out with the Gotham Gal and getting into the venture business as a part-time associate at a firm called Euclid Partners.
But now Philly is doing something that I really like. They are going to turn the whole inner city into a WiFi Hotspot. Presumably it would be free. That's smart, really smart.
According to Technology Futurist and cNet, the cost is about $10 million initially and about $1.5 million per year to maintain it.
That's because WiFi equipment is cheap and getting cheaper every day. If the amortized cost of the upfront expense is about $2-3 million per year, then the total annual cost is about $4 million per year.
There were 1.5 million people in Philly in the 2000 census. So for about $2.67 per person per year, everyone can have free WiFi in the City of Brotherly Love. I bet that the city can figure out how to make this work without taxing its citizens. The sponsorship opportunities alone should make this a profitable venture.
I hope they do it and it works. Because I'd like all cities to do this. I think WiFi should be public infrastructure like roads, bridges, and tunnels.
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» Will New York Follow? from Tom Watson
So Philadelphia is considering a $10 million investment to make the entire downtown of the city a Wi-Fi hotspot. Seems like a terrific investment to me- free access will bring more people, more businesses, more growth. Fred thinks that "WiFi [Read More]
Tracked on Sep 5, 2004 3:43:22 PM
» Free city-wide Wireless computing. First Philadelphia, then San Francisco. Now, how about Vancouver? from Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist
Fred Wilson over at the A VC blog originally noted sometime back in
September that Philadelphia had launched an initiative ... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 22, 2004 4:26:17 PM
» Phyladelphia, San Francisco... ...and Paris from Occam's Razor
Fred Wilson originally noted sometime back in September that Philadelphia had launched an initiative to provide wireless internet access across their entire city. Now he has written about San Francisco undertaking a similar venture. In Phyladelphia, ac... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 23, 2004 3:35:41 PM
» Wi-Fi as Public Infrastructure from Venturpreneur by Gordon Smith
Almost a year ago, I blogged about Utah's decision to construct a fiber-optic data network connecting 17 Utah cities. My point was that such projects are one way in which cities and regions are competing for people and businesses. Fred... [Read More]
Tracked on Oct 25, 2004 11:57:07 PM
Posted September 5, 2004 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Portland, OR, where my wife and I are moving next year, is doing something very similar: http://www.joejava.com/wirelessasgood.htm
Posted by: Thomas Lockney | Sep 5, 2004 4:55:16 PM
hermosa beach, where i live, launched its free wifi on august 11th.
i rambled about it on my blog. I think it's very exciting. WiFi has the possibility to offer a new backbone for communications and media, with VoIP, video-conferencing , online radios, video streams. For virtually low-to-no-cost, any resident could start a broadband TV station. Local News! Block News! Or a high-quality radio station. Basically all the things that are now emerging over the Internet but are often impractical or of low-quality because of bandwidth/latency restrictions ... taken to a whole new level on a *local* high-bandwidth network. It's crazy.
The fact that wifi enables a city to connect its users to the Internet at large is indeed a cool thing. What I find cooler is the local, "mini-super-fast-internet" it creates, and the way it could progressively grow in coverage, potentially connecting multiple cities together.
Posted by: chris holland | Sep 6, 2004 4:46:54 AM
Fred - On July 7th I posted "Cities, Not Companies, Must Run Hotspots": http://bigben.blogs.com/first/2004/07/cities_not_comp.html
FYI.
Posted by: Ben Casnocha | Sep 6, 2004 12:44:18 PM
Tony Alva, Chris, and myself werer discussing WiFi, and how it's current development will/could benefit us, and we're looking foreward to the day when Tony can sit in his back yard with a laptop, mic, and guitar, and record tracks for common projects in real time with us. It's very exciting, very soon it won't just be Barbara Streisand who can afford to hear mixes and do vocal takes in real time from her house in Malibu, while her studio is 3000 miles away in New York.
Posted by: jackson | Sep 8, 2004 12:35:05 PM
Yes... also... http://www.wireless-internet-broadband-service.com talks about tools for Cloning your office...
Posted by: robertk@evdo-coverage.com | Nov 3, 2004 9:09:30 PM
"I totally dissagree. Wifi has been around long enough for other
technologies to beat it's speed, reception, and security by miles...
litterally... EVDO is the newest wireless protocol that gets you about
25MILES radius of reception from every cell tower... just like cell phone
reception. I found a really clear comparison of pros and cons of all sorts
of WIFI vs EVDO vs DSL an more at
href="http://wireless-internet-broadband-options.com">http://wireless-intern
et-broadband-options.com and
href="http://wireless-internet-broadband-service.com">http://wireless-intern
et-broadband-service.com"
Aidan Quinne
http://wireless-internet-broadband-options.com
evdo.coverage@gmail.com
Posted by: Aidan Quinne | Dec 29, 2004 5:00:10 PM
"I totally dissagree. Wifi has been around long enough for other
technologies to beat it's speed, reception, and security by miles...
litterally... EVDO is the newest wireless protocol that gets you about
25MILES radius of reception from every cell tower... just like cell phone
reception. I found a really clear comparison of pros and cons of all sorts
of WIFI vs EVDO vs DSL an more at
[url]http://wireless-internet-broadband-options.com[/url] and
[url]http://wireless-internet-broadband-service.com[/url]
Aidan Quinne
http://wireless-internet-broadband-options.com
evdo.coverage@gmail.com
Posted by: Aidan Quinne | Dec 29, 2004 5:01:07 PM
I like the idea of free internet through a city, problem lies with when the person leaves the city, then does the conection switch to the next service, this is when the evdo card is worth its weight in gold. check it out at our site. http://www.wireless- internet-broadband-service.com
Posted by: chris wireless internet fowler | Apr 7, 2005 4:43:56 PM
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