WiFi by the City of Edmonton

My friend Andrew linked me to this news article about the City of Edmonton and their free WiFi pilot project. So far they’ve done a pilot project in several large community areas that averaged about 250 users a day. I’m extremely skeptical about those numbers considering City Hall was one of the locations. The other locations were wide open spaces like Sir Winston Churchill Square and community centres like the Kinsmen Sports Centre.

According to the article in the Edmonton Journal it’s expected to cost $20,000 to set up a new hotspot and about $1000/year to operate each node. That’s simply ridiculous.

I’ll be at the council meeting on Wednesday, June 18th when they discuss this. The agenda is set to address WiFi at 9:30AM.

The City of Edmonton Wireless Edmonton website FAQ is sort of funny. It assumes people are idiots:

“Q: Will I be disconnected when moving to another location?

A: Minimizing your movement is recommended – typing while walking is not recommended for safety reasons.”

They also filter content, which I have a moral issue with.

Here’s a brochure about the WiFi pilot project.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Ethics, Poor Service, WiFi. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Edmonton Computer Repair