wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

One thing that I do believe deserves emphasis is that there are interesting prospects on the horizon.

For example, many advocates of city-wide wifi seem to believe that this company, Meraki, holds real potential for closing the digital divide. Meraki's approach is decentralized and bottom-up in that it depends on customer to
customer connections, not city routers on poles.

Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company has jumped into the void in San Francisco with a program it calls "Free the Net." It sells low-cost equipment that can be placed in a person's home to broadcast a wireless signal. The company also sells inexpensive repeaters that can be placed on rooftops or outside walls to spread the original customer's signal farther. The combination of the two types of equipment creates a mesh of free wireless in neighborhoods. The company says it has almost 70,000 users throughout San Francisco.

I think hip_hop_says has a great idea about neighborhood associations taking on small, community wireless networks. It's absurd to think that there might be a one-size-fits-all solution for a city as big and diverse as New York. On the other hand, there are a lot of things the city could do to promote these neighborhood projects: seed funding; opening up infrastructure to public access, either the wireless network Andrew Rasiej mentioned or fiber optic cables, since any wireless network needs to connect to wires somewhere; or getting Time Warner and Verizon to loosen restrictions on neighbor-to-neighbor sharing of accounts, at least in neighborhoods with low levels of Internet access. Regardless of what the city might do, though, we need to be involved on the neighborhood level in order to make it work.

The PBS show Exposé-American Investigative Reports did a show in their first season on the upgrading of the country's internet infrastructure, which you would find illuminating. I just checked their website and they are in the process of archiving the earlier seasons. A plug if you haven't seen this show, it is worth it.

I like what hip_hop_says says. But I think the the Universities ought to be the ones to run it. It's not only to their advantage but helps the neighborhoods (and beyond) and contributes to the educational needs of students around the city. It's time they big Us give back. I'm surrounded by the most abusive NYU and Cooper Union among others who take land to build and give back nothing that i see.

I was looking forward to the Minneapolis network for 6 months, finally went with qwest a week before they finally came up in my zone. I know one friend signed up, she loves it.

Isn't there great security risk to people who would be logging on to this massive wi-fi network?

Fon has a better way.
http://www.fon.com/en

it's disappointing that wi-fi is being hijacked by for-profit enitities. after reading the nytimes article i wondered if the only way wi-fi could happen is through neighborhood non-profit efforts (a throwback to block associations). wi-fi was always meant for small coverage but through multiple hot points you were able to expand on the coverage....neighborhood associations could form non-profits raise funds for hardware and employee a part-timer for system admin stuff. this keeps 'government' out of our private lives builds free wi-fi for all and ultimately builds stronger communities (you end up having to get to know your neighbors ...your neighborhood).