Time Warner, Cablevision Offering 'Free' NYC Park Wi-Fi

At least New York did not do what San Fransisco did with the purposed free city wide system Google wanted to install in San Fransisco The city council bargained like a bunch of legendary rug merchants. Google was going to install and maintain the system for free, and access was to be free but the City Council acted like Google owed the city for being a successful business with all kinds of demands that caused Google to drop the whole thing. New York at least got a Wifi system that might be expanded, who knows but it is a start. I personally think .99 cents a day is a bargain. Good show New York.

for the type of banwidth that could be consumed in a PARK of all places.. it should've been free, unlimited for what the cable companies got in return!

nyc is selling out to businesses at TOO LOW A PRICE! in return the people of nyc got screwed.

has the taxpaying New Yorker all shook up?
Is he also concerned that taxi cabs make money off taxpayer funded streets?

TW And cablevision are FOR PROFIT Companies..not charity organizations. The point of what they're doing is that they're putting up front 10 million dollars so that people can have a service in the parks if they want it and if they choose to use it.
That doesn't and shouldn't make it be a free service.

The fact that they're going to spend the 10 million and allow everyone a free 30 mins a month on the service is well intended I think and targets the casual user who might want to check their email ..maybe get directions if they're a traveler or whatever. It's not about providing someone a 24/7 connection to replace their home connection. And, if that's what they want..99 cents a day..priced PER DAY mind you..is also a very fair price to ask for such a considerable upfront investment.

It's great that NY will have this. And the price and terms are fair.

There are hot dog / soda carts in the parks. I assume the vendors are there to make a profit. We pay money to get a Coke; why should WiFi be any different?

From where I sit in the High Plains of Wyoming it would seem to me the People of New York City are getting screwed on a daily basis by the City anyway. The tax system in New York City to my point of view is so Byzantine it is running people and business out of the city. With this WiFi system a person and sit back with their iPad and plan their vacation, perhaps to Wyoming where they can sit with their backs to a log pole pine taking in the wide open vistas, and relax.

For what it's worth, Cablevision already offers FREE WiFi across parts of Long Island. The SSIDs on the WiFi stations also advertize Comcast's Xfinity and Time Warner SSIDs with the intent being that if you are a Cablevision/Comcast/Time Warner subscriber you roam for free on the other MSOs network.

What the article is probably not saying is that service will be free for subscribers of Time Warner and Cablevision (And probably Comcast) but people without subscriptions will have to pony up a dollar for a day. For people who travel internationally, a dollar for a day's worth of internet access is very cheap.

And the terms are still being worked out on this....

This would be a great thing for Tourists. To what ever device they have they could download maps, restaurant locations, museums, etc. It just adds one more information source.

I keep thinking of what San Fransisco could have had. Google was going to have a push advertising system, it would have kept track of your location and then offer up ad's for businesses in your intimidate area. You see an interesting restaurant across the street and you refer to your smart phone or Touch and look for that eatery and pull up their menu. I remember the Businesses in the City were absolutely clamoring for it. Alas San Fransisco was more i interested in Blackberry's for Bums then helping out their tax base.

I think you missed the point.
Those hotdog sellers have to pay for inventory. To provide wifi access, all an ISP has to do is setup some APs and run an internet connection to them. After that, the service runs itself. You only need to send people out for maintenance. ISP's do NOT pay per amount of data, they pay for the speed of data (assuming they don't have a backbone of some kind). Which I'm sure when the smoke clears, they will have some sort of cap for that .99c simply because they want to continue the illusion that they pay per byte.
So, some of the costs would be:
+ Equipment (one time)
+ Maintenance
+ Cost of the speed of bandwidth/month
Which, to an ISP the last item is pennies compared to the amount of profit they can get from this deal.

NYCwireless is forgetting that the cable firms are already paying 5% of gross revenue as a franchise fee. This is a side deal over and above that.

I'm curious about whether TWC/CV/Comcast customers get free park WiFi. If so, the deal's even sweeter. Folks with FiOS pay 99 cents per day, people with cable get the service for free. The $10 million is NOT taxpayer money so I see no problem with this.

Y'know, if OptimumWifi also had the 99 cent per day access fee...well, that would be really useful since I hear it's all over the place in NYC, but is currently limited to OOL/TW/Comcast users (no FiOS).

No kidding. So if you're paying $50 per month for internet $2.50 of that goes to NYC gov't. Pretty sweet deal for them (the gov't).

I don't understand what your point is. Since it's a free service to subscribers, opening it up as a commercial enterprise MAY result in an insufficient infrastructure being in place and not being able to handle the load. Much like AT&T complains about iPhone users.

There are other business purposes to have WiFi available for B2B applications.

NYCWireless appears to be upset that they didn't get to dine at the table and suck up more taxpayer funds to provide [more of] their so-called "free" service.

(It ain't free. Contributions to their 501(c)(3) deprive the Treasury of tax revenues.)

Cable modem service or internet service in general is not subject to franchise fees. This is based on a FCC ruling.

True - $0.99/day is a bargain, assuming there's no upfront user cost.

$0.99/day would work out to ~30/month... hmmm not much different than a hard line, or a 'cheap' 3G connection.

Not opening it up for free...opening it up for pay. More people would get on the network, sure, however only those folks who don't have cable already can't access it anyway...

Ah k.

lolwht...?

For that price, you can get a cell phone data plan and have access while moving and in places other than the parks.

Neither hot dogs nor bandwidth is free.

I thought they only paid for the amount of data, not necessarily the speed.

Those vendors pay the city for the right to sell in the park. TW isn't being charged for this by the city.

Why do so many people insist on everything being free on the internet? If you don't want to pay ONE DOLLAR, then conduct your internet related business at home before you leave for the park. DONE, end of story.
Nothing is free, and it shouldn't be. If the cable companies are willing to light up 32 parks, they should at-least recoup their equipment,labor and up-keep investment.
If you don't want to pay a dollar to surf the web in the park on a nice day, then pay $4 for a latte, sit at a tiny wobbly table and get online that way, or go to the library. Better yet get a JOB.
The funny thing is, I'll bet the same people who complain about paying a dollar for Wi-Fi, are the same people with overpriced phones and data plans.
-Sorry had to get that out.

sigh ... I like to be as connected as the next person. It is annoying enough when I visit the park to have to seek out places where I am not sitting next to "she who must spill all of her gripes at the top of her lungs" cellphone girl - or "he who must yell at subordinate for not pulling his weight" cellphone man - or "she who must yell at her boyfriend for fill in the blank" cellphone woman.

While you do see laptops now - most people seem to get - parks should be a haven to get away a bit. With wireless I guess that means even more people will be toting all sorts of this and that on their "picnic" blanket.

I look forward to seeing someone perched in a tree with the laptop up there

Yes ... I know this is not the point of the conversation ... and Yes ... I know "bizness" ... is business ... but I am annoyed anyway

I know everybody is PRO FIOS around here and bashes the cablecompanies every chance they get but how come this part was left out?

"In addition to WiFi, the cable companies agreed to provide more than $30 million in new upgrades to the city's communications infrastructure and to increase the number of Public, Educational and Government (PEG) Channels available on their systems to 17 from nine.

Time Warner also agreed to set up 40 community broadband access centers in local neighborhoods, while Cablevision agreed to work with the Department of Education to establish media centers in certain public schools.

"

Timewarner and cablevision as part of the deal will help upgrade The cities communications infrastructure for the city government, aand education .

nycwireless.net has the Cable Franchise Media Briefing and it says there on page one (right after the 99 cent bit):
"Fee waived entirely for TW/CV broadband subscribers"
Klaus Ernst NYC

Since thats the typical municipal extortion of cable companies.

I'm sure the ISP's can squeeze at least 1Mbps from their Tb/sec backbone.

..not to mention most ISPs get a discount for getting a huge pipe. What frustrates me is some charge by the byte when they're getting charged by the speed.

And the hot dog vendors don't give away three free hot dogs per person per month.
Apples to oranges.