Minneapolis: Citywide Wi-Fi Success Story 95% of the city to be connected by March 11th Saturday Feb 23 2008 12:43 EDT The news about citywide Wi-Fi in major cities tends to be bad. Philadelphia continues to wait on word from Earthlink about its plans before it can move forward. San Francisco, once a leader in this area, hasn’t made headlines (or headway) in months. And the only success stories we see seem to be in small towns. However, Minneapolis hopes to change all that when its municipal wireless system goes live on March 11th. Parts of the city have been receiving wireless service for months as the city has worked on rolling out the network in a six-phase plan. The last of those phases will be complete in a couple of weeks, at which time 95% of Minneapolis will be connected. There have been some complaints that the city and its wireless provider haven’t provided enough updates to citizens. Additional complaints come from those “challenge areas” that are having a hard time getting connected. However, over 8,000 residents have signed up for the service. It is being offered at three different speeds – 1 Mbps @ $20 / month, 3 Mbps @ $30 / month and 6 Mbps @ $35 / month. Unfortunately not all of the state’s municipal projects are going so well; smaller towns surrounding Minneapolis have faced ongoing problems trying to get their networks set up. |
ChiyoSave Me Konata-Chan Premium Member join:2003-02-20 Salisbury, NC 1 edit |
Chiyo
Premium Member
2008-Feb-23 1:07 pm
now roll out to the suburbs!I have a co-worker who paid 1 year up front and got the second year free!
They should roll this out to the suburbs too. | |
| Ben Premium Member join:2007-06-17 Fort Worth, TX |
Ben
Premium Member
2008-Feb-23 1:17 pm
What Good Is It?The prices quoted sound just good enough to compete with DSL.
Who's the telco there? | |
| | WeSRT4 join:2000-11-20 Mobile, AL |
WeSRT4
Member
2008-Feb-23 1:34 pm
Re: What Good Is It?It's wireless! You can use it throughout the city instead of being fixed to one location. | |
| | | Ben Premium Member join:2007-06-17 Fort Worth, TX |
Ben
Premium Member
2008-Feb-23 1:42 pm
Re: What Good Is It?said by WeSRT4:It's wireless! You can use it throughout the city instead of being fixed to one location. Of course! I can't believe I didn't think of that very obvious thing. Personally, if I wanted broadband on a laptop I'd use EVDO Rev. A through Sprint. I know their customer service is bad but at least they don't have caps on their EVDO. I'd also be able to use it in most other cities as well. | |
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WuTang36
Anon
2008-Feb-23 4:58 pm
Re: What Good Is It?Come on city of Miami get it together and roll into the 21st century!!! | |
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to Ben
if you want all the benefits of Sprint EVDO RevA network w/o the hassle of actually dealing with Sprint, consider what many here have done and look into Millenicom. Small and growing ISP that sells access over Sprint's EVDO network for just $50/mo WITHOUT any contract.
They even toss in a USB EVDO modem, Franklin CDU680 in the deal. They do charge a $50 setup fee and if you cancel you need to save the box and all materials that came with the modem to avoid any added fees. And the bandwidth is truly uncapped, I use it almost exclusively on the road and often at home over my much faster DSL but I average 30gb-50gb/mo usage.
You can find reference to them in either the Sprint Wireless forum here on DSLR/BBR or a forum dedicated to them under ISP/OTHER/MILLENICOM here on DSLR/BBR. Almost every person has had nothing but positives for the service and even the time the Millenicom spends helping address any help needed to get the a usable signal in fringe areas.
BTW, I switched to Millenicom because our Muni Wifi projects bit the big pee-pee and I can never get connected...anywhere. I do have a new Nokia N800 so I might try them again as they promised me a free month if I ever wish to try again. But after over a year I am leery of dipping a toe into it...though it would mean I would not need to carry that extra battery pack to power my Cradlepoint CTR350 (yes, I know about the CTR300 and will likely get one soon too).
Just wish our Mini Wifi, btw, in Lompoc CA, was more complete...simply insufficient nodes to service the area. They have made some changes personnel and management wise so maybe we'll see something improve. The new tech support guy is pretty sharp and does seem to want to get it to work. After 3+ years the system should be done and cover the whole city but I doubt 40% of the city has coverage that can be used on demand.
I will say when it worked the speeds were wicked good. At minimum 1500dn/1200up...to me that pretty much covers all my needs...plus for the $15.99/mo 'family' plan you can connect up to three systems which makes this equal to a 4500/3600 connection as each connection is independent. Problem being there is no connection far more often then there is a connection. | |
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| CodeeCB Premium Member join:2001-10-01 Minneapolis, MN |
to Ben
said by Ben:The prices quoted sound just good enough to compete with DSL. Who's the telco there? Qwest. They don't even seem to try anymore around here... | |
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Re: What Good Is It?What have they - Qwest - not done that you are looking for? FTTH is not going to happen as they just announced they are going with FTTN instead. | |
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Can't call it a success yetSince it won't go fully live until March, it's too early to call it a success. WiFi in not intended to work beyond 300' and is not the right solution for city-wide service. It says it won't work for buildings over 3 floors. I have major doubts performance will be good indoors for most people.
I can see over 30 hotspots in my condo building. Sometimes I accidentally connect to one and I'm lucky if I can get 1Mbps. And that's only a couple out of 30, so probably only when very close to me.
EVDO and WiMAX are much better solutions for city-wide access. It's designed for it.
Cities may as well fund WiMAX providers, or at least offer telephone poles. | |
| | eggboard Premium Member join:2000-11-18 Seattle, WA |
eggboard
Premium Member
2008-Feb-23 5:07 pm
Re: Can't call it a success yetsaid by xenophon:Since it won't go fully live until March, it's too early to call it a success. WiFi in not intended to work beyond 300' and is not the right solution for city-wide service. ... EVDO and WiMAX are much better solutions for city-wide access. It's designed for it. Cities may as well fund WiMAX providers, or at least offer telephone poles. Good points, but the "300 foot" concept was absolutely just an estimate, and is really a diameter measure. You can push Wi-Fi using high-gain omni outdoor 1,000 feet or more without obstructions. EVDO isn't a better solution: too limited by spectrum (despite Wi-Fi's obvious spectrum limits, too). WiMax makes more sense, but both EVDO and WiMax are controlled by those that own the frequencies. That's what made Wi-Fi appealing. | |
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Re: Can't call it a success yetquote: Good points, but the "300 foot" concept was absolutely just an estimate, and is really a diameter measure. You can push Wi-Fi using high-gain omni outdoor 1,000 feet or more without obstructions.
However the end user device would also need to be more powerful, wouldn't it? quote: EVDO isn't a better solution: too limited by spectrum (despite Wi-Fi's obvious spectrum limits, too). WiMax makes more sense, but both EVDO and WiMax are controlled by those that own the frequencies. That's what made Wi-Fi appealing.
Doesn't really matter in the end. This city service is still a paid service, not a free one. EVDO works in most any city and performs well indoors, and still offers 1xRTT in small/rural areas when traveling, which is still better than dialup. | |
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Re: Can't call it a success yetsaid by xenophon:However the end user device would also need to be more powerful, wouldn't it? Yep. Thats why something called "wireless bridges" are sold. Basically either a high tx power and possibly high receiver sensitivity USB wifi adapter with 5 inch omni, or a router style box ment to be placed close to a window/outside wall again with big omni and high tx power. The router approach backhauls through wired ethernet to a customer's router or computer, or it creates a private wifi network for the customer inside their home whose internet comes through the public wifi network. | |
| | | | CMoore2004 Premium Member join:2003-02-06 Jonesville, MI |
to xenophon
I don't think so. The high-gain antenna should have the same Rx gain as the Tx gain.
EVDO's a fine solution, but won't offer the same bandwidth that WiFi is capable of offering. In a city like Minneapolis, I'm sure the towers don't cover a very large area, so they can obviously reuse parts of the spectrum. With any luck, I'll never be in Minneapolis again, but if I am I'll see how my Sprint Mobile Broadband performs. | |
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to eggboard
WiMax can also work in the 5.8 band which is unlicenced. Unfortunately when working in that band it will run into the same limitations as WiFi since it is an unlicenced band | |
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eggboard Premium Member join:2000-11-18 Seattle, WA |
eggboard
Premium Member
2008-Feb-23 5:05 pm
Not 8,000 subscribers8,000 people have expressed interest; a couple thousand are subscribers. But they expect to break even with the full rollout in March (the city is largely done now) because they'll fully market the service, and many people held back before they had the full footprint in place. | |
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