AT&T Scraps Napa Valley Wi-Fi Plan Utility poles were too short, says company... AT&T's plans to offer free Wi-Fi in Napa Valley, California have been scrapped. According to the Napa Valley Register, it's because the region's utility poles just weren't tall enough: When new safety clearances for high-voltage lines were added up, there wasn’t enough room on Napa’s 30-foot poles for Wi-Fi, said Damon Wei, AT&T’s general manager for Napa. “You have no room left to install anything,” he said. Nothing can be hung on the bottom 16 feet of a utility pole, Wei said. That leaves just 14 feet on a 30-foot pole for up to two levels of electrical lines. The Wi-Fi devices would have intruded into the PUC’s mandated safety zone, he said. AT&T's plan was to spend about a million dollars to place two-foot-high antennas, roughly the shape of small beer kegs, atop of the poles. The company recently ran into similar trouble with light poles in St. Louis.
|
  ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4 |  Forget WiFi; start getting ready for citywide mobile Wimax
And by the time everything gets moving mobile Wimax will have been tested in more locations. | |
|  |  wifi4milezBig Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY | Welcome to 2003! I find it hard to believe that cities are even still looking into this. Wifi work great in most residential situations, but thats where it ends. Wifi enabled devices suck power like and thirsty elephant. Every consumer device under the sun interferes with wifi. Wifi's limited range mean you need AP's every few hundred feet.
Its almost 2008 people. We have Wimax, 3G, 4G, and many other solutions that are far better suited for cities. Get off the wifi bandwagon and get with the times.
--
я люблю Денди! | |
| | | | Re: Forget WiFi; start getting ready for citywide mobile Wimax Yeah, I feel sorry for cities that have been suckered into a technology designed for a 300' radius, thinking it could blanket a city.
If cities are willing to subsidize 3rd party companies to do WiFi, they may as well subsidize part of the WiMAX rollout in their cities. | |
| | | | Wimax is on the horizon...we've already got AT&T beating down the City and County Government doors looking for avenues to deploy it in 2008.
Wifi, on the other hand, will still serve it's purpose. For the near term, it's still much more readily available and significantly less expensive. From the long distance point to point links (we operate in the less crowded unlicensed 5Ghz bands) to the 2.4Ghz unlicensed spectrum (which is quite crowded these days, but suitable for shorter distance and indoor operations), don't discount wifi just yet.
AT&T tells us Wimax will be targeted initially as a mobile solution and most likely deployed in a grid scenario. | |
|
| | No Napa WIFI = Good People go to Napa to get away from it all to relax. | |
| |  jester121Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL | Re: No Napa WIFI = Good Most of the snooty people in Napa are far too (self-)important to be "out of touch" for an entire day. It would have been a hit. | |
| | | | Then again... It's nice to have choices anywhere you go. | |
|
 MrMoodyFree range slavePremium
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | 30 ft pole So what they're saying is, they wouldn't touch it with a 30 foot pole. Ba-dum-bum. | |
|  PopePremium
join:2001-08-05
Napa, CA | No more Wifi This makes me sad. Oh well.
There are a number of public hotspots in Napa anyways.
Pope | |
| patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
kudos:1 | lazy Why not use a chunk of plastic fiber as a opto-isolator, and a big fuse on the ground, so if there is a arc through the equipment, it disconnects from ground? You can always engineer around the problem. | |
|
| |
|
|
