Will Philly's Wi-Fi Project Fail?

Why did they choose wimax in the first place?

Because they are unqualified to make decisions relating to areas they know nothing about?

The use Wimax comment removes all credibility to the journalist. This is a trash article executed by a non-techie.

What a surprise it is. Notice there is nothing for the Greater Northeast Philly area. We are forgotten once again. We pay the highest taxes and the lower income areas get more done for them yet again. I will never understand how we are only considered to be a part of Philadelphia only when we have to pay taxes but for services we are not considered a part of Philly.

Jay

They (city) did not! It is the Journalist suggestion that they should have used WiMax. Did you read it right?

Don't feel bad. The same thing happens here in Atlanta. The city of Atlanta lies in Fulton County which stretches for several miles north and south of Atlanta. The northern part is home to the more affluent suburbs while the southern part is more low-income and the city is, well, the city. The taxes off the northern burbs is pretty much used for the pet vote-buying projects for the county commissioners whose district falls in the city and southern suburbs.

One of the northern burbs is actually incorporating into a city so that they can stop having their tax money used to pay for services and projects in Atlanta and the southern part of the county.

I see they pulled the corruption card.
Question: what industry isn't corrupt. err what government is corrupt. Any way you slice it we as humans are evil

This thing will fail for one major reason...$20 access for most people. I live in Philly and Verizon DSL is currently $30 a month. Say they drop that to $25...who is going to pay $20 to get city-run internet with who knows what type of tech support when an extra $5 gets you an ISP that at least knows what they're doing and has experience doing it?

It sounded like a great idea when they were saying it would be free or $10 at most but now the truth is starting to come out it's lost it's lustre.

I agree with lost lustre.
But $20/month for net access wherever (relatively) you go or $25/month for access within 20 feet of your house? Sounds like the City plan would be better!

Now if VZ put up hotspots all around the City, say where their payphones are/used to be - so if you have a VZ account you can roam wherever those hotpots are...that sounds better (and I don't doubt VZ will do it if the Philadelphia Experiment actually works).

City-run tech support versus Verizon tech support? Could it be any worse?!
KM

Did you even read the article?

Naa, no corruption in Philly, something like %95 of the skybox seats in the new stadiums goes to the Mayor's cronies, his (the Mayor's) brother gets a no bid contract at the airport, and well, I could go on, but why bother.

Sure, corruption exists everywhere, but Philly takes it to a new level. Before Street leaves office, he will take a perp walk. The FBI is just waiting for the right time.

PA is, as a whole, a pretty corrupt place, and Philly is the epicenter of that evil.

Funny, Comcast's headquarters is there. What a coincidence!

our town is actually doing this on a much smaller scale. I have high hopes but am definitely in the "wait and see" camp for now...

They have made no bandwidth promises yet but have set the rates. $20/monthly and $5/daily...they seem too feel they can target the business user who travels here because of work at Vandenberg AFB.

My concerns are how will places such as Starbucks with there WiFi from t-mobile react...will there be some "concessions" that will prevent any service to the area where Starbucks is located.

I have fairly active rheumatoid arthritis but still keep working as a contract developer...but it gets harder everyday to remain in place at a desk so the ability to wander around, say walk to the park with the laptop and work for an hour or two would be a huge help. But if the service is spotty it would be a waste for $$$.

So, thanks for this thread about the pitfalls to watch for...I will say that our town is our own electric company and we have a great service then again there is no tech support for electrical...

oh, here is the site for the future service...maybe someone could talk them into a forum on these boards?

»www.lompocconnect.com

Wimax does not exist yet. I guess that is why they did not use it.

Who says ANY of you are qualified to pass judgement on what the city does. You pay philly city wage tax?

[city wage taxes]

ever wonder why Bala Cynwyd has so much business going on? Move your office right across the street and get a raise!

Normally, I'd jump all over someone for mentioning WiMax as a reality right now. But there is a ton of pre-WiMax equipment awaiting the certification method to be finished so that their devices can be certified.

Since Philly plans to be operational in over a year, planning around WiMax (which the plan incorporates contrary to what the linked-to article says) makes sense because using either something like WiMax or WiMax certified devices themselves will be the most sensible way to handle backhaul to the mesh nodes of the network.

WiMax needs to reach economies of scale that is enjoyed by Wi-Fi. Most laptops shipped are coming one and you can have Wi-Fi kits as low as $15-20 if not.

Perhaps WiMax could be an alternative mechanism to access once it is become available but there is nothing wrong in deploying the access network based on Wi-Fi, a technology that is cheaper and widely understood as opposed to unknown set of problems, issues and interoperability problems that will be enjoyed among early deploymentrs of WiMax.

I think the article says, "they should have used wimax." Not that they used it.

Current Pennsylvania Governor Rendell and ex- mayor of Philadelphia left the city with a surplus and a thriving center city hotel-conventions business boom. Enter now Mayor Street (his name says it all) and all his thieving cronies and we now have a recession of center city hotel business and restaurants. Many on his cabinet and his lawyer were indicted and are on trial for corruption. We still don't know if he will be indicted on corruption. And this is the guy in charge of Phila. WIFI Project. Not only are they too busy defending themselves in City Hall, but if you want to do business in Philadelphia, you have to grease some hands.

So the service and tech support will be inferior just cause is provided by the city or at least that is what your implying. If Verizon's ISP support is anything like Qwest, I wouldn't exactly say they know what their doing either.

Besides, by the time you add all the 'fees' on that Verizon line, it is nowhere near $30 your claiming, not to mention that with the wi-fi you won't be confined to just a single location. I still think is a viable alterative.

For their sake, I hope it works. Anything that gives the consumer more options is a good thing. For the longest time I only had one choice and one choice alone, Comcast. Had another option open up to me, I would have left them long time ago. Much sooner then it took.

I also like the idea of local ISP's and local networking. Some how the idea of it local, bring up the idea to me that it could be cheaper, more secure, and offer better support. It's one thing when you're just another number to a big company, while you may really have a name & face within your town.

I hope this project pans out and is successful. Pretty much all the rest of the US is counting on this project to be successful, for, should it not, this just rings a death bell on any other muni project.

I for one do not see why all the comments are negative dealing with end user support. What are you saying? That the city cant hire capable technical workers?

I don't see why they would have to work around T-mobile and other hotspots. Starbucks coffee shops are located all across the country. If you travel at all, then as a business user you are for sure highly IQ challenged if you cancel your T-mobile hotspot account, even if the majority of your traveling is in the city of Philly.

Now, do I live in Philly? No. Do I care whether or not the project is a success? Yes. My name says it all. My major is wireless, and I for one would love to go to work for a WSP or for the city if they chose to implement such a project.

As far as the complaints on the low income users receiving access for cheap, remember that not all low income persons are miscreants who are detrimental to society. The majority of low income persons are just as moral as the higher income person, or perhaps more so. Also, the internet HAS reached the capacity of where it is a necessity, and that necessity is broadband. With the amount of multimedia available for educational use, it is hard to find some well known site that doesn't use flash or have embedded video. Any 500MHZ computer can utilize the internet fairly well, and I know that $100 computers can be built for such a purpose. OS? Use linux, its free, and KDE desktop feels fairly similar to windows. Use a basic cheap ass DVD-ROM, floppy drive, 5GB HDD, 128MB RAM, and presto, you have a computer that is perfect for internet usage. For wireless needs, 802.11B works just fine.

Anywho, I hope this project works. If it does, then let the competition go forth, because I for one am tired of paying so much for broadband access, while these companies sit on their asses and are slow to roll out better services.

NE Philly is the wrong color for the current elected officials in City Hall. What they do is called wealth redistribution. Tax the middle class in the NE to pay for all the welfare families in North Philly.

The first question is how much did Verizon pay the reporter to write the article. Of course Verizon will try to sabotage it. How else will they sell their new EV-DO wireless for $80.00 a month to Philly area customers.
Plus, I bet the city will use it for their mobile city network network users and Verizon will not like that.
Heck at $20.00 month, I would buy it for backup and mobile use on a laptop if I lived in Philly.

Sorry dude, but you don't pay the highest taxes- Center City does. And the lower income areas are not getting the Wi-Fi, Center City is. And check this out, northeast Phila is not greater, it's just another dumpy neighborhood of Phila bordering on becoming another lower income ghetto type. If you don't understand, then ask somebody.

Trust me.
I have more leverage on this project than you could imagine.
It won't fail if some big money who cares about the lower income residents of Philly has their way.
My employer has the ear of "Fast Eddie" as well.
Some people give a sh|t about the residents of their city and I am damn glad to work for them.

what??? corruption in philadelphia politics?? please say it ain't so??? actually, the word "corruption" would be defined in webster's illustrated dictionary with a group photo of mayor street & his city council. pure as the driven snow-----------not!

I do

Funny but every time a new FBI report is issued about yet another corrupt Philadelphia official it insists the Mayor Street didn't know. Are they implying he is too stupid to know about the day to day operation of his machine?

Actually there are so many empty office buildings surrounding the "202 tech corridor" near Chesterbrook it's very sad.
There has been a migration of business back into Philadelphia lately AFAIK.