The latest NETGEAR open source wireless router is the WGR614L: the open wireless router platform of choice for serious developers and newer users alike. Flexible and powerful, the WGR614L can support many popular third party firmware applications, including DD-WRT, Tomato, and Sveasoft.

As most new consumer routers do, it also supports guest access via a separate SSID. All this starting at 69 USD.

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If an utterly trivial movie like Sex and the City can recognise how important technology is - and how we are increasingly reliant on being connected in order to do business - isn’t is a shame the state government can’t see it the same way.

Maybe I should go see it then…

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that citywide wireless Internet access is slowly becoming a reality despite political infighting - and that 144,000 residents will be surfing the Web for free by the end of the year at no cost to the city.

He’s talking about the Meraki network of course:

Newsom is calling the idea Wi-Fi 2.0 - a nod to his high-profile but unsuccessful first attempt to bridge the “digital divide” between San Franciscans who take Internet access for granted and low-income people who can’t easily log on to e-mail, find job listings or surf news sites.

The mayor’s office is working to ensure that single-room-occupancy hotels and public housing projects are some of the first to receive the devices because residents there typically don’t have Internet access. Five public housing projects now have the technology, and 13 more are expected to have it by the end of the year, Newsom said.

As large-scale, for-profit projects falter, innovative new models emerge, as John Cox writes on NetworkWorld:

Strictly speaking, the community networking projects don’t require municipal involvement at all. They are self-organized, self-funded local movements that use a variety of technologies, both open source and modified commodity products, to share existing broadband services, such as DSL connections. And they use the unlicensed radio bands for wireless access.

“We need to get back to the original rationales [of] why we should be building these networks in the first place,” Sascha Meinrath, research director, Wireless Future Program, at the New America Foundation says. “Personally, I’m business model agnostic. I’m far more focused on how these models meet the social and economic justice
needs of the communities they serve.”

The article further covers 10 interesting muni wifi projects, including San Fran’s Meraki network, PTP, a wireless crime-fighting video network, and others.

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The article is quiet lengthy, and again, shows that flashing a device is not for the faint hearted (or regular Joe on the street). That’s why we need projects like Open-Mesh and CUWin to give us preflashed open source meshing devices, though we also need them to get the Australian/NZ C-Tick to be able to use them.

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There will also be an introduction to a UTS post-grad project: iWiFi:

Course director Linda Leung : “The goal of the iWiFi project is to create a business model and technical framework for a free wireless hotspot at Bondi Beach. In conjunction with the hotspot, the group has also developed a portal for information about Bondi Beach that is accessible via laptop and mobile devices.

“The group - Caroline Chung (Australia), Winnie Yang (China), Joy Huang (Taiwan), Urs Kemmann (Germany), Dave Kaplan (USA) and Ranjeet Elkunchwar (India) - believes that WIFI technology will soon become an integral part of our daily lives enabling systems based on internet-on-the-go to make spontaneous decisions.”

Come check it out if you can! See you there.

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In Portland, as in other cities, Metrofi offered a $19.95/mo tier (without ads). But MetroFi’s free, ad-supported, WiFi tier set the company apart and was undoubtedly the most popular option.

The latest numbers released by Metrofi stated some 20,000 people a month were using the system. CEO Haas claims that 150,000 out of 540,000 people had access to the service.

Digging a bit further those claims of reaching about 30% of the city seem to have been dodgy, with plenty of access points not operational or not broadcasting, or are calculated overly optimistic:

We have previously estimated that on a spatial basis their existing network covers only about 4.2% of the 134 square-mile city’s outdoor areas to the “90% probability of a connection to a 30 mW client device” standard.

MetroFi has said that the City and MetroFi are using a 500-foot radius, but even assuming that, you only get about 11-15% of the area covered. To get to 30% on a population basis, roughly speaking, you’d have to assume that the population density of the covered areas is twice as high as the city as a whole. We wonder if that’s true.

The article also includes a letter from MetroFi to the City Of Portland, with some interesting facts:

The City of Portland network is comprised of 598 access points and is used by approximately 16,000 residents and visitors per month. April had 306,000 hours of use. Our operating expenses include pole attachment fees and power, the BAP locations, backhaul transport via microwave the Pittock Building and Internet transit. These expenses are approximately $15,000 per month.

The network uses Microsoft SideGuide, “the best advertising platform we have for Wi-Fi revenue generation”. Users must download and install Microsoft’s SideGuide to continue accessing the free WiFi service. If you’ve got a PC.

DailyWireless.org has a nice roundup of US city-wide WiFi projects, covering deployment of smart metering and other municipal services on municipal wireless systems, enabling local fire & police departments, the Peronal Telco Project, synergy between community efforts and municipal policy goals:

There are hundreds of thousands of broadband connections [in the city]. We could unwire Portland tomorrow if enough people got on board.

True, so true.

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The city provides drinking fountains to quench our thirst.That still didn’t stop anyone from opening a cafe, bar, pub,… and make money out of it. The government provides (relatively) cheap public transport, and public roads.That didn’t stop anyone from providing a service of driving a car or a minibus and have people pay for that. So when will free, open Internet access be considered a part of the public service offered by (local) government? Well, it won’t be any time soon for Sydney and NSW unfortunately as the NSW Government decided to abandon any plans for a free wireless broadband network for the CBD areas in and around Sydney.

Eric Roozendaal said the Government had evaluated proposals from 15 providers keen to build the network but concluded it wasn’t practical based on technical and financial grounds.

From an SMH opinion piece:

This came almost a year after Mr Roozendaal said the Government was in the “final approval stage” of selecting a supplier to build the network, which would provide free internet access to anyone within range.

And apparently Unwired, which by the way has a business model of selling wireless broadband internet access, was happy to do it:

Unwired rejected Mr Roozendaal’s core justification that it would expose taxpayers to tens of millions of dollars in losses, saying its proposal would require next to no extra Government funding. Unwired’s chief executive, David Spence, said all the company required from the Government was access to building infrastructure such as rooftops.

Unwired already has more than 100 free wifi hot spots dotted across Sydney - running under the uConnect brand - and would use this existing infrastructure while funding it by advertising. The uConnect hotspots are only available between 5am and 7pm though. Another initiative similar to uConnect is CafeScreen, a wireless billboard system which also offers free wifi at independent cafes. As CafeScreen puts it:

Cafés are the new meeting rooms, living rooms, study spaces, and as such have become a natural point in which to expect WiFi Internet access outside the home and workplace.

So businesses do see value in providing free wifi. The New York Times has a nice article on the business of free/paid wifi.

Some people though don’t “see” it just yet, probably the same people who didn’t see a use for mobile phones either. It certainly is debatable if any and how much taxpayers money should be spend on free internet access. But pointing to overseas failed projects, which often were too ambitious or where bureaucracy made anything impossible, and then decide to quite the whole project, not even trial in a single CBD? That displays an obvious lack of vision. A vision of a modern, interconnected city which has to compete with not only world cities like New York and London, but also closer with Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai for business, tourism and innovation.

And with the US as an example, for failed projects according to the NSW government, Wired has a nice overview:

Dozens of lower-profile locales are launching government-sponsored networks. Most are smaller cities and counties, where bureaucracies are less onerous and costs are lower.

Do check out the map, or download the pdf from the print article! They are not all free, sometimes requiring a small monthly fee.

Anyway, we’ll keep on going grassroots style, promoting the bottom-up approach (”Share your wifi!”), from the outside in, from suburb to CBD. At one point in time government might catch up, business might jump on board (even more) and we all meet up.

Again, can you imagine your world without the Internet? I can’t. I wouldn’t be in Sydney if it wasn’t for the Internet. It changed so much, touching everyone every day, in ways you probably don’t even know. I won’t iterate what it means to me, but just imagine what it could mean to have Internet access everywhere, for free. But we don’t know what we don’t know. Innovation happens in the strangest places. But it might not be Sydney (for now).

(edit) More success stories…
Free WiFi in Estonia :

And the whole effort has been and still is driven largely by just one man: Veljo Haamer, a technology geek who conceived this dream of wiring - or rather unwiring — his country about 6 years ago. “I realized way back in 2002 that, for Estonia, the Internet could be just like electricity,” says Haamer, who along with a group of volunteers, created a non-profit association WiFi.ee. He started being a technology evangelist and started promoting free access to the Internet as a human right. “I took upon myself the task of convincing everyone I could that the benefits of Internet are enormous.”

Or BBC’s Tiny Estonia leads Internet revolution.

Boston launches Wi-Fi pilot; at least they launch a project.

And Boston Banks on Non-profit Model

While many in the muni Wi-Fi world are skeptical about a non-profit model, Boston is soldiering on in its attempt to “bridge the digital divide” by offering free or low-cost Wi-Fi to its residents using donated funds and equipment.

Singapore’s Wireless@SG:

Wireless@SG is a wireless broadband programme developed by IDA as part of its NextGeneration National Infocomm Infrastructure initiative. It will be run and developed in the next two years by three local wireless operators who will deploy a wireless broadband network in Singapore. Users can enjoy free, both in-door and outdoor seamless wireless broadband access with speeds of up to 512kbps at most public areas.

Closer to home, myKP:

at myKP we recognise that our local communities are our future and we are using the internet to stimulate economic and social growth in these communities. myKP are working with local governments and businesses to improve the general climate of our local communities with economic growth and create a positive environment for users.

myKP provides free wireless internet access in community centres, with a focus on providing users an opportunity to conveniently access the internet free of charge in their local community hotspots. in addition this provides local businesses the opportunity to take advantage of inexpensive online advertising that will help attract new customers to their business.

Lane Cove ALIVE signs with myKP to provide the Lane Cove Village area free wi-fi.
Pittwater Council signs with myKP to provide the Newport Village area free wi-fi.
Gilgandra Shire Council signs with myKP to provide Gilgandra’s Central Business District free wi-fi.

Another free Wifi project to keep an eye on, Hong Kong:

Government Wi-Fi Programme (GovWiFi) is one of the major initiatives under the 2008 Digital 21 Strategy to build Hong Kong into a wireless city. The Programme aims to provide free wireless Internet access services to all citizens by installing Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g) facilities at designated government premises.

We are progressively installing Wi-Fi facilities starting from early 2008 to mid 2009 at about 350 government premises in different districts. These premises include public libraries, Public Enquiry Service Centres, sports centres, cultural and recreational centres, job centres, community halls, large parks and Government joint-user buildings.

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Read a comprehensive review of the Meraki hardware over at Practically Networked.

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The Meraki’s handled traffic pretty good, with people playing WoW, watching youTube, surfing, demoing,… with the Meraki’s handling about 50 users and transferring 1.8 Gb over each day.

You can clearly see when lunch was on…

We talked to lots of people, mostly in the hallway, and in our presentation on Saturday we focused on the Meraki Dashboard and its settings. We also had a group discussion on developing meshing software for mobile devices or laptops. And then there was even a presentation on how, with the help of a couple of Merakis, a student circumvented his school’s net censorship… Some people signed up for a group buy (we’ll get back to you soon!).

Sunday afternoon, we had a Meraki Mini to give away to the attendees.

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