On Tuesday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin revealed the city’s plan to offer a free, city-run Wi-Fi system that will be available to the entire city within a year. It has already begun operating in the city’s French Quarter, New Orleans’ central business district.
“We are among the first cities to feature a city-wide wireless network and that’s especially important to the recovery of our community,” Nagin said in a statement.
The plan is part of an effort to attract businesses and people to return to the hurricane-ravaged city.
Intel Corp., Tropos Networks, and Pronto Networks will supply the majority of the equipment necessary to construct the citywide Internet infrastructure. Tropos’ VP of Marketing Ellen Kirk said that New Orleans already has 200 routers in place, covering 7 to 10 square miles of the city.
Part of the Wi-Fi network will be secured exclusively for municipal organizations such as police, fire, and building inspection departments. The remaining bandwidth will be opened up to the general public to provide them with free Internet access.
The Wi-Fi network will initially support download speeds of 512 kbps and upload speeds of 384 kbps. However, after Mayor Nagin lifts the current state of emergency, both speeds will be lowered to 144 kbps in order to observe a state law that restricts Internet access speeds on services provided by municipalities. The city is planning to challenge the law.
New Orleans joins Philadelphia and San Francisco as another major city that plans to offer a Wi-Fi network to its citizens. There is one major difference between New Orleans and the latter two cities, and it’s the fact that New Orleans has opted to run the network on its own. Philadelphia will have Earthlink build and operate its 135-mile Wi-Fi network, while San Francisco has received the voluntary help of Google.
This bold move has skeptics questioning whether or not a city can actually fully fund and operate an entire free wireless network on its own. They are unsure if it is economically sustainable and if cities have the technical knowledge and experience to handle such a huge task.
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless, says “Typically, cities have core competencies that include things like sweeping streets and keeping neighborhoods safe, but building, running and maintaining a wireless network is a whole different ball game. We think that municipalities that are looking at offering wireless service to their citizens underscore the value proposition that we have in the marketplace.”
While Philadelphia will be charging $20 per month ($10 for low-income users) for access to its wireless Internet, and San Francisco’s free Wi-Fi is being made possible by Google’s abundant bank account and the use of the city as a testing area for its location-based products, New Orleans is making its Wi-Fi free without the help of a large company.
Earthlink CEO Garry Betty recently said, “Free wireless is not a reasonable option. Nothing is free.”
Chris Drake, project manager for the mayor’s office of technology, said “We haven’t made a decision on whether we would bring someone else to run the network after it’s built. We have to operate half the network anyway, so we will have to see how it goes and assess the cost and effort that goes into it.”
So far, only about 10% of the city’s pre-hurricane population of approximately 500,000 residents has returned since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29th, 2005.
Sources:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/
N29201026.htm
http://news.com.com/New+Orleans+to+offer+
free+Wi-Fi/2100-7351_3-5975845.html
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=
14659&hed=Citywide+Wi-Fi%2C+Big+Easy-Style
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