The Minneapolis City Council approved a plan Friday for a public-private citywide Minneapolis Wi-Fi network, ending a drive by opponents who wanted the city to own the network instead.
Under the plan that the council approved, a private company will build, own and operate the city network at its own expense. The city will become an anchor tenant, and consumers and businesses will be encouraged to buy Internet access and other services. A consumer with a Wi-Fi equipped laptop could access the network anywhere in the city for about $20 a month.
Something like that. The only thing official I've hard so far is that Google is paying for free city wide WIFI some place near Palo Alto (south part of the bay).
The SF one is still in the proposal stage, I believe. As you probably could imagine, a lot of wealthy companies make their money off of internet service and wouldn't be too happy if there was free internet in the city.
However, it would be incredibly easy to do free WIFI here, being as the city is only seven miles long by seven miles wide.
5 to ten years from now most major metropolitan areas will have citywide wifi networks, and the speed will only increase with technology and investment.
Think of this as the late 70s and cable television is only in the top ten markets.....but wifi will be a lot less difficult and expensive to set up.
MrTwister wrote:5 to ten years from now most major metropolitan areas will have citywide wifi networks, and the speed will only increase with technology and investment.
Think of this as the late 70s and cable television is only in the top ten markets.....but wifi will be a lot less difficult and expensive to set up.
Broadband cable networks and DSL are doomed.
I’d say it will be WiMax and the prime providers will most likely be Sprint/Cingular etc teamed up with Cox/Charter…
