Philadelphia Considers Citywide WiFi

A lot of news outlets have already covered the city of Philadelphia's ambitious plan to blanket 135 sq. miles of city with a WiFi network, so this is hardly a scoop, but more of an opinion piece. As much as I'd love to believe in free, ubiquitous wireless access, I still have ample doubts about these municipal WiFi networks. The articles says "The main drawback to Wi-Fi is that the signal can only travel several hundred feet." but I don't think that low-range is the main drawback - low range is almost a design feature for a wireless technology that was designed for local networks, and thus is limited to within an office or a house. No, the real "main drawback" with WiFi (b and g) is that there are only three distinct channels that can be used, and the frequencies are unlicensed. What 'unlicensed' means is that any of a myriad of other RF sources can interfere with a citywide WiFi net - not the least of which is other WiFi nets. There's a reason the French government only allowed WiFi use indoors: this keeps one WiFi network from interfering with another. I'd love to be wrong on this, as it would mean cheap ubiquitous connectivity, but I think the connection quality on these networks will be low. Lastly, the City of Philly CIO scares me when she says, "If you're out on your front porch with a laptop, you could dial-in, register at no charge, and be able to access a high speed connection,"...uhhh...a couple of questions: do I have to go out to the porch, and what the heck does she mean by "dial-in"? You don't "dial-in" to WiFi. Slip of the tongue or demonstration of poor knowledge? I don't know.

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