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How to wifi-enable an entire city?

R

rsarno

Thank Me, Im Irish!
Wouldnt it be awesome if an entire city was enabled for open wifi? All different networks of course.

Maybe Google can think of a way to have Android phones act as Hotspots, but only for other android phones lol

So essentially every single phone would be an available network.

We would then need a better technology to bounce from network to network, and also technology to limit/throttle bandwidth given to any particular connection.

Tons of holes in that dream, but i think it would be awesome.

I wonder if Google was chasing this idea when they were collecting WiFi info a year or so ago?

That would also be a huge selling point for Android phones!! "Tap into the Android Wifi network by owning an Android Device! No longer need to pay cable company at home"

Yay!
 
Its actually a project that google is working on. They want to build wide area wifi that would be able to cover entire cities. The purpose of this would be to make it so devices would not need a cell radio and could make calls using voip.
 
Sounds like a great idea. I went to college in Moscow, Idaho, which at the time was the most connected city in America per capita at the time.

More wifi everywhere is the only way I could ever live with limited data.
 
chrlswltrs said:
Sounds like a great idea. I went to college in Moscow, Idaho, which at the time was the most connected city in America per capita at the time.

More wifi everywhere is the only way I could ever live with limited data.
Click to expand...

I have no data at all and I don't really see a need for it (in my case).

At home, I have wifi. University: wifi. Shopping center: wifi. Restaurants: wifi.

When I'm on the road, I have GPS plus offline maps. I just don't know why I'd pay exorbitant prices for data when I wouldn't even use it anyway.

There's even free wifi downtown where I used to live (that's right, even outside). Oh, and did I mention the free wifi when taking the bus? I could go on for hours. :p
 
having a phone act as a wifi hotspot all the time would annihilate battery life

so thanks, but no thanks; i'd rather hang a million routers from lightpoles and only access the network as needed
 
I know my home city of Bristol has free wifi throughout the city centre, paid for by local taxation. Only ever used it once though.

Probably takes a lot of investment to hang wifi routers from every street light and telephone pole in a large city. Thing is who's going to pay for it if it's free. Local taxation or private investor, if private it probably means it's going to be ad-supported. Maybe it won't be free and one has to pay for it. If that's the case I might as well use my own 3G.

Google seems to be in a position to do this as they've already done so in one place, but I have to ask what do they want in return for the investment?
 
mikedt said:
Probably takes a lot of investment to hang wifi routers from every street light and telephone pole in a large city. Thing is who's going to pay for it if it's free.
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the city (aka. local taxation) as an incentive for people to move in - same reason cities invest in sporting venues etc.

i'd much rather have city wide free wifi than a new hockey arena
 
Am I the only one who won't use free wifi most of the time? I have in the past of course, but I have an inherent distrust of open wifi access points. To me they are huge security risks to people who use them. Unless I'm in a rush to download something I'll usually go with 3G even when an open wifi is around. I have no concerns about properly secured wifi and will live off it if given the opportunity.
 
You say free wifi, I say government's excuse to pepper us with radiation/secret brain scanning.... /tinfoil hat
 
Would this be 802.11 wifi, or something like 802.20?

I think (depending on the city size) there could be an issue with IP addresses. You'd def need a class A address (10.x.x.x) for the local IP (assuming wifi). I'm not sure exactly how the .20 works, but I think it's a bit like wimax...
 
mrqs said:
the city (aka. local taxation) as an incentive for people to move in - same reason cities invest in sporting venues etc.
Click to expand...

Yeh and those sports facilities are not free to use though. I'm currently in Beijing which has excellent sports facilities, thanks to the Olympics, but they're not free to use. Whomever provides them, most likely wants to see a financial return on their investment. Will be the same for London next year.

mrqs said:
i'd much rather have city wide free wifi than a new hockey arena
Click to expand...

Thing is with city wide free unencrypted wifi now, aside from the murmurous secuirty issues, unless one is using a secure VPN. Is their any actual need for it? I mean if anyone wants to get on the internet while out and about, they're more than likely to have secure 3G or 4G internet access these days. I mentioned earlier that Bristol had free wifi in the city centre, which was installed in 2006. But I wonder if anyone is actually using it now? McDonald's and Starbucks provides free wifi, but every time I've seen people using laptops in those places, they've often got a 3G USB modem plugged in, or they're tethering their phones.
 
katherine2moon said:
there could be an issue with IP addresses.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be, presumably they're hanging actual wifi routers from the street lights and telephone poles, and so each one will have it's own pool of 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x IP addresses. Rather than just hanging antennas and passive hubs, that all goes into one big central router.
 
Philadelphia, PA tried it (free wifi for residents) and gave up because of money/engineering issues. I think part of the network still exists.
 
sdrawkcab25 said:
Philadelphia, PA tried it (free wifi for residents) and gave up because of money/engineering issues. I think part of the network still exists.
Click to expand...

I was in Boston, MA in 2007, I'm sure they had a city wide, free for residents wifi network, and it literally was wifi antennas on telephone poles. Does anyone know if the Boston public wifi network still exists?

There is the Fon network. I believe that's been quite successful, and didn't need any local government investment or engineering work. I know in the UK, anyone who has BT internet and has a BT Home Hub router, is a Fon AP. Which is free to use for other Fon customers.
http://www.fon.com/

The other thing with city wide wifi, is that one can't actually be moving too much and stay connected. It doesn't automatically hand-off to the next AP, like what cellular networks do. Wifi was never designed to do that. One has to reconnect each time. Forget trying to use it in a moving vehicle.
 
mikedt said:
I was in Boston, MA in 2007, I'm sure they had a city wide, free for residents wifi network, and it literally was wifi antennas on telephone poles. Does anyone know if the Boston public wifi network still exists?

There is the Fon network. I believe that's been quite successful, and didn't need any local government investment or engineering work. I know in the UK, anyone who has BT internet and has a BT Home Hub router, is a Fon AP. Which is free to use for other Fon customers.
Fon - A world of free WiFi

The other thing with city wide wifi, is that one can't actually be moving too much and stay connected. It doesn't automatically hand-off to the next AP, like what cellular networks do. Wifi was never designed to do that. One has to reconnect each time. Forget trying to use it in a moving vehicle.
Click to expand...


i havent checked it lately but back in the summer i remember boston harbor, boston commons, and the public garden all had public wifi so I think its still city wide. ill have to double check sunday.
 
I used to pm citywide wifi almost 10yrs ago. Before that another company was using a proprietary system to do the same thing. Problem is its expensive, 3g and now 4g makes it somewhat redundant, and many of the companies that tried it went bk due to their own incompentance or lack of desire to do more than gain some cash through investors which burned a few cities.

Sorry the idea isnt new and I dont see any city rolling out a complete system, just some city centers.
 
I think Hong Kong has to be one of the most wifi enabled places I've been in. PCCW have wifi enabled many of their phone booths, PCCW also have wifi in many malls, shops and restaurants, and the entire MTR subway. It's not free though, but it is cheaper than 3G data, so I believe it does get used. Although I think HK is somewhat unique because many people love to be connected there. One sees a lot of tablets been used in HK, some will be wifi only, without 3G.

The privately run wifi network in HK is fairly city wide and I think is profitable, but again I think this might be due to Hong Kong's particular circumstances. It maybe similar for places like Tokyo or Singapore, where many people love the lastest tech, they like to be connected and have very high population densities.

Beijing on the other hand, public wifi access can be very sporadic, usually it's confined to places like Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC, better classes of hotels and upscale malls. Basically because an establishment must have a government license to provide wifi internet access, and people using it must prove who they are to get access. Beijing Airport has free wifi for travellers, their system scans your passport or ID card, and then gives you a number and password in order to login for access.

In the mainland, China Mobile have wifi enabled many academic campuses, like schools, colleges and universities. Again this is not free, but it's quite cheap, certainly much cheaper than pre-paid 3G data. Many students and staff do use this from their wifi enabled phones, laptops and tablets.
 
Hate to say it but Hong Kong and south Korea ya whole other country in general would not represent most situations in the world. Wifi can be profitable but for an entire city it wouldnt payout quick enough for most cities to be worthwhile. I would be willing to bet in Hong Kong a bit of the infrastructure was in place by government with private help and operations.

It really is a shame where im from we are stagnant to an y improvements that may need some risk allocation to public all the while third world countries are leaping above in many areas..not that Hong Kong is third world but it wasnt too long ago that China was
 
mikedt said:
I think Hong Kong has to be one of the most wifi enabled places I've been in. PCCW have wifi enabled many of their phone booths, PCCW also have wifi in many malls, shops and restaurants, and the entire MTR subway. It's not free though, but it is cheaper than 3G data, so I believe it does get used. Although I think HK is somewhat unique because many people love to be connected there. One sees a lot of tablets been used in HK, some will be wifi only, without 3G.

The privately run wifi network in HK is fairly city wide and I think is profitable, but again I think this might be due to Hong Kong's particular circumstances. It maybe similar for places like Tokyo or Singapore, where many people love the lastest tech, they like to be connected and have very high population densities.

Beijing on the other hand, public wifi access can be very sporadic, usually it's confined to places like Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC, better classes of hotels and upscale malls. Basically because an establishment must have a government license to provide wifi internet access, and people using it must prove who they are to get access. Beijing Airport has free wifi for travellers, their system scans your passport or ID card, and then gives you a number and password in order to login for access.

In the mainland, China Mobile have wifi enabled many academic campuses, like schools, colleges and universities. Again this is not free, but it's quite cheap, certainly much cheaper than pre-paid 3G data. Many students and staff do use this from their wifi enabled phones, laptops and tablets.
Click to expand...
Eeeks! I don't much like the sound of that (having to provide an ID to use wifi...). But I guess certain measures are needed (besides the great firewall of china...)...?

And I was under the impression that the OP meant to create a single meshed network (;)). Guess that's not what we're going for. I have to agree that it seems expensive. Especially when mobile broadband technologies are really getting places. Imaging when 4g starts to hit all over, besides the extra radiation we'd always have super fast connections.
*thumbsup*
 
9to5cynic said:
Eeeks! I don't much like the sound of that (having to provide an ID to use wifi...). But I guess certain measures are needed (besides the great firewall of china...)...?
Click to expand...

At places like McDonald's it's little more than entering your name, email and mobile phone number. But then they're supposed to take your ID details when you buy a SIM card here, same thing with internet cafes. Although as a foreigner I've never been asked to provide ID, even when buying a 3G USB modem and SIM for wireless internet. In fact the only times I've ever had to provide ID for internet was at the airport, and that's a machine which scans your ID card or passport.
 
richphitzwell said:
Hate to say it but Hong Kong and south Korea ya whole other country in general would not represent most situations in the world. Wifi can be profitable but for an entire city it wouldnt payout quick enough for most cities to be worthwhile. I would be willing to bet in Hong Kong a bit of the infrastructure was in place by government with private help and operations.

It really is a shame where im from we are stagnant to an y improvements that may need some risk allocation to public all the while third world countries are leaping above in many areas..not that Hong Kong is third world but it wasnt too long ago that China was
Click to expand...

Hong Kong is very modern. There's another thing which seems to be peculiar to HK, many people will always eat-out, rarely at home. While they're having their meals, they want to be online.

Although much of rural China itself can be a very third world place. For the most part it's larger cities which are more developed. Most tourists probably just see Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Even in the cities I'm sure computer ownership is quite low, many people use internet cafes for their online activities. Just about everyone has a mobile phone though, even the poorest of peasants. China Mobile is the world's largest carrier.
 
Why it is a bad idea:

1. With many devices on one large network, someone can easily log on to an unsecure network and steal private info.

2. With a town government controlling the wifi, they can see everything you do on your phone.
 
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