Since I have been talking about government provided broadband, I thought I’d pass along a BBC News story about the government WiFi project in Philadelphia. That city is taking the position that broadband is an essential service like street lighting or sanitation. “A citizen will pay a base fee of $10 or $20 depending upon their income status, for access to the network,” explained the city’s chief information officer, Dianah Neff.
Verizon came down hard on the cities efforts but was ultimately unsuccessful in stopping Philadelphia from proceeding. It did, however, get a law passed that prevents any other area in Pennsylvania from doing what Philadelphia is doing. There was also an explanation of some of the mechanics:
The routers, usually mounted on street lighting fixtures, can be placed anywhere high up where there is a power supply. Some 3,000 of the devices will eventually make up a mesh network.
“What is very different about a mesh, versus a cellular network, is that we get the radios very close to where the customer is,” said Chris Rittler of Tropos Networks.
“What this does is actually pretty amazing. It enables off-the-shelf devices such as laptops, PDAs and wi-fi phones to connect easily. It also really reduces the requirements on those devices.”
The hardware requirements seem relatively dirt cheap given that existing structures can be used, no right of way or cables seem to be necessary. I don’t know if the radio spectrum is already available. And, of course, security, programming, and the pipes going out of the city to connect to the Greater Internet might be a more significant component of the cost.
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