MuniWireless

Three articles I want to point out to you that should get you thinking about the future of Wi-Fi:

(1) Andy Abramson’s long and thoughtful piece about sponsored Wi-Fi, sending party pays and the future of media in which he argues:

“Public Wireless” really takes hold, not from the telcos, or even the cable companies, but from the likes of Google, who understand how to monetize “free” better than anyone, and who also have the delivery billing system in place to bill…

I’m afraid the news is good and bad. Viviane Reding, proponent of structural separation, enemy of the incumbent telco and EU telecoms commissioner for many years, has been promoted to vice-president of the European Commission and the head of justice and internal security.

Neelie Kroes, who has been the EU’s feared competition czar, will take over Reding’s former job. Judging from what I’ve seen in the past few years, Kroes is not as anti-incumbent as Reding, but we shall see. Reding…

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved a $5 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC).  The grant pays for 10% of the cost of a $50 million fiber optic trunk line network planned for Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties on California’s central coast (for more details, click here).

According to Steve Blum of Tellus Venture Associates, the  project will build “a 428-mile fiber optic backbone linking unserved and underserved areas…

Altoona, Pennsylvania (10 square mi., 25 square km; pop. 50,000) has deployed a municipal wireless broadband network that combines Wi-Fi (using 2.4 GHz) and licensed wireless (4.9 GHz) for public safety use. The network was deployed by BIG Wireless, a systems integrator based in York, Pennsylvania.

The network will be used initially by the Altoona police and fire departments. Altoona police will connect to the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET), Informant reporting software, field reporting and mapping applications. The fire department will…

Worksnug is an iPhone application that uses “augmented reality” to help you find the best place in a city to sit and do your work — i.e. a cafe with Wi-Fi, co-working spaces, and more. You use your iPhone to scan the surroundings and Worksnug superimposes comments on the screen telling you if the Wi-Fi works well, whether a cafe has a warm and welcoming atmosphere, etc. It is available for London and company’s website says it will soon be…

Swindon (UK) is getting a municipal Wi-Fi network, thanks to a joint venture with a local firm. News reports say that the network will cost £1 million and require 1400 access points, but details are sketchy and there is skepticism about the ability of Swindon and the service provider to pull this off.

Despite that, The Economist felt compelled to weigh in with its own opinion about muni wireless:

Unlike many of the American municipal Wi-Fi schemes, which aim to bring the internet…