Minneapolis | Citywide Wi-Fi

[monsoon]

One of the items that cities get involved with that cause us to take notice here at UrbanPlanet is the implemention of a municipal Wi-Fi network. It looks as if Minneapolis might be one of the larger cities to take this one as indicated in this article. It should be noted the former Bell Operating companies and other incumbant telephone companies love to go to court to stop these types of networks and have even lobbied several states to pass laws preventing cities from building their own system.

What do you guys think will happen on Minneaoplis on this issue and for that matter the tone of the article.

[Snowguy716]

One thing that wasn't clear was whether everybody in the city had to pay the fee...

If not, I say go ahead. Internet is an integral part of future, and why not make it available to everybody wirelessly.

And yes, I've heard about congress passing laws forbidding cities from doing these things. What a backward way of thinking. But again.. congress likes to bend over backwards for their lobbyists' interests. Politics as usual.

[MrSmith]

Oh yes Qwest is oppossed to this. However, Minneapolis is not building their own system --they are contracting with a firm to establish a citywide network. The phone company can sue, but i doubt they will win with this type of set-up. Afterall, the cable company has similar contracts and other companies are certainly allowed to compete and sell high speed internet.

Because the city is not building the network themselves, it will be up to the provider to make it work and make a profit. It is completely fee based and their is no risk to the city. You will not be required to pay unless you sign-up for the service.

[City_of_Lakes]

Family of mine in Chaska are happy with the city run system there.

Hopefully the company that wins the bid to "wire" Mpls can uphold their end of the deal.

If the network is up and running here in 18 months as projected I'll check it out.

[mnpulse]

I'm glad to hear that there won't be any fees involved.

[nickmgray]

I'm most posative that there will be fees involved with the wireless system. Granted it will be a lot less than cable but I would say the access fees will be around the price of DSL. $25-$30 a month for a wirelsss connection is not a bad plan at all. My only concern is that there are multiple cities that are in the process of doing the same thing. If one fails there could be a domino effect and other cities decide to pull the plug. The up side to this is that a city wide wifi system would force cell phone companies to lower thei prices for their high speed data plans which will be good for everyone.

[AvianKeahi]

Did anyone see the StarTribune story on Internet access speeds? Time Warner (which offers pretty much state-of-the-art cable speeds for the U.S.) is delivering less than 4 Mbps and is calling it "high-speed."

At the same time Japan, parts of China and portions of Europe offer 100 Mbps speeds at about half the cost of what we're paying.