MuniWireless

Somerville, Massachusetts (pop. 77,000; 4 square miles) has issued a Request for Interest (RFI) for its municipal Wi-Fi network. The city wants to achieve three goals:

improve public service: give city personnel access to data while they are out in the field, enhance public safety; bridge the digital divide: inexpensive wireless broadband access for all residents; and encourage more economic development and innovation.

Companies and non-profits that send in proposals must ensure that their plans encourage competition and consumer choice, and…

Fifty-two Danish communities, including Copenhagen, will be getting free citywide WiFi service next year. Gratis Danmark, the project manager, is also working to get free WiFi in bus and train stations. Part of the costs of maintaining the network will come from advertising (we’ve seen this model before). Danish trains run by Arriva already provide free WiFi to passengers.

Related news:

Free Wi-Fi service on trains in Denmark

It made sense to us that small-to-medium-size businesses might be some of the early adopters of mobile WiMax services in the U.S., especially companies with “local nomads,” workers who roam a lot but in a somewhat local region (which could be covered by a single metro-area WiMax service). Seems like the Clearwire folks are thinking the same way, as evidenced by this new page touting business-specific service plans for their Portland, Ore., network.

While the in-office broadband prices seem competitive —…

I’ve been writing about WiFi-enabled buses in London, Estonia, Latvia and other parts of the world but now a very enterprising couple have outfitted school buses in rural Arkansas with Wi-Fi to provide Internet access to kids on their 90-minute bus journeys to and from school. The WiFi project by the Aspirnaut Initiative has been met with the usual “your brain will get fried from WiFi signals” complaints, but on the whole, giving kids more to do during their 90-minute…

The French Parliament, in a recent law called “Modernisation de L’Economie” ordered ARCEP, the telecom regulator, to study the impact of “local collectives” (local government cooperatives) on broadband coverage and speed in France. ARCEP released the results of its study just before Christmas. It is considered to be legacy of Paul Champsaur (president of ARCEP) and Gabrielle Gauthey (ARCEP member), both of whom are leaving at the end of the year. During the last six years, Gauthey and Champsaur have…

With the prospect of two new appointees to ARCEP (the French regulator) to replace Paul Champsaur and Gabrielle Gauthey, both of whom were instrumental in bringing more competition into the French telecommunications market, a war of words has erupted between ARCEP and the French operators, notably, France Telecom.

During the tenure of Paul Champsaur, who has been president of ARCEP for the last six years and is retiring at the end of the year, France has seen a significant increase in…