AT&T scales back citywide WiFi agenda in St. Louis
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 28th 2007 1:43PM
posted Oct 28th 2007 1:43PM
Just months after hearing that San Franciscans would be forced to deal with the collapse of a seemingly inevitable citywide WiFi access plan, wireless addicts in St. Louis will be mourning similarly. Apparently, grandiose plans laid out by AT&T this past February have now been throttled back quite a bit, as the outfit has announced that it will not be covering the city's 62-square miles with wireless internet. Instead, the firm will be "building a WiFi pilot project in the downtown core and expects to have it in service early next year." It seems that the main issues with completing the initial goal were the inability to find a "cheap way to power the network's transmitters," and you know, figuring out how to spin this into a profitable enterprise.
Citywide WiFi was a really cool idea 2 or 3 years ago but with cellular speeds quickly reaching WiFi equivalent levels, the cost and logistics of rolling out citywide WiFi just don't equal the payoff.
There's also Wimax, with a much bigger range, very suitable for city-wide networks.
Actually, it was never a very good business model. The ISM power limits kept it an extremely hardware intensive solution, especially for a pure-play ISP. As a technology for eliminating wires in a home or office (or point to point over short distances), it is just great, but it just doesn't scale well.
Note, I didn't say anything about campus wide networks in schools. They have a guaranteed revenue stream in the form of student computer fees to pay for that "laptop in the commons" picture on the cover of the brochure.
In Minneapolis, they tap into the street and traffic lights.
http://www.usiwireless.com/service/minneapolis/overview.htm
in toronto, the hydro company is doing it, putting access points on lamp posts. they're also going to start offering voip services.
i'm beginning to see the slow demise of Rogers and Bell (finally), because you can get free phone/TV online, but you'll always need power.
... or maybe it's because of the 0-7 start...?
Actually, in St. Louis, the power issue was that they were going to tap into the street lights but, a whole block of lights are powered by one sensor that turns them on and off. This means that when they are off, power is not flowing up the pole and they could not be powered.
That was exactly the problem.
ok so how are the censors set up in MN? I don't see why that is a major problem, it seems like a fix in the circuit would solve it.
I would be happy if AT&T just got some freak'n towers in downtown St. Louis. Their coverage here is absolutely horrible.
I work in Metropolitan square right behind the arch and frequently lose calls when sitting in my office. That's not right.
And forget wifi, I'd just take area wide DSL.
I'm form Milwaukee, and we feel your pain because we have about the same situation in our city that you citizens in St. Louis seem to be having with this so called WiFi technology.
Poor St. Louis.
They should have opened the bid to existing WISPs (wireless Internet Service Providers)in the area. They may have not done it for free, but they would have identified the basic power issue before they embarassed the city.