Akron, Ohio to provide free citywide WiFi, inevitably fail within a few years
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 1st 2008 4:06PM
posted July 1st 2008 4:06PM
[Thanks, Glenn]
posted July 1st 2008 4:06PM
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i think if you can say what you said in an even douchier fashion, they'll give some props to your backwater town
As an Akron native, I'm glad to see that my city is taking bold initiatives. Akron has been named a "Top Tech City of the Future" by BUSINESS WEEK Magazine, The Akron-Summit County Public Library system was once again ranked number one by the American Library Association, The University of Akron is the only public university in Ohio with INCREASING enrollment, and there have been enormous investments in the city in recent years, with plenty more forthcoming, including the Biomedical Corridor project. Considering that Rubber City was a virtual ghost town for most of my childhood years, these are all very exciting developments. My city deserves every good thing that comes its way. I hope the wi-fi project works out well after all. After all, we are an inventive people, which is why we are also the Invention Capital of the World (more patents have come from Akron than any other city--plus we have the National Inventors' Hall of Fame and Museum).
--Christopher D. White,
Editor-in-Chief, Rager Media (book publisher--poetry and literary fiction--based in Akron, Ohio).
Not to mention, Akron schools were rated in the top 5 in a review of the nation's top 20 school systems by Forbes. Don't believe me? Their website has a link to the article: http://www.akronschools.com/
Also, Akron is the only major Ohio city to experience an increase in downtown workers in the first half of the decade. Akron is the only major Ohio city besides Columbus to add jobs since 1983.
We need this is Cleveland.
i thought Cleveland was going to do the free city wide wifi thing years ago?
Free wifi or not, you guys in Akron probably still get more opportunities to go see The Black Keys play than any other city in the world, and that's pretty cool in my book. Since, you know, they rock!
Akron might be better off using high speed data based wireless protocols such as WiMAX and LTE. If this requires waiting for Clearwire, Digital Bridge or another Telecom provider, so be it. WiMAX is just getting going this year and provide users way better coverage and usability.
Akron, Canton, and Cleveland Ohio are rolling out these projects for one reason, Hospitals. The billions and billions that are coming into NE Ohio hospitals. Summa, The Clinic, and Aultman don't even take out loans to build new buildings, they just have that much cash in reserve. That happenns when you charge $6500 for a single CT scan and $1500 an hour to sit in a room. The average 3 day hospital stay without surgery is $20,000. When you're pulling in that kind of dough with a small ammount of overhead for those services you can pay for a whole lot of crap.
I don't want to hear about the hospital costs either. That argument has been debunked so many times that it isn't even worth shooting it down anymore. Cleveland Hospitals are making a killing. That is why they keep on building new medical centers all over the place, to hide profit by sinking it into new construction. You go to a medical center and pay $120 for the apoointment, $120 for the doctor, and then money for any test. Say you need a $5 prescription for a infection, well the 5 minute appointment is going to cost you $250. Wow thats $3000 an hour, man I'd love to make that.
University Hospital and the Clinic, along with Case Western and all the museums have had a working free Wi-Fi network for years now. If you live within range it works great. Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh also has a great muni WI-Fi network for the local community. They started to test and roll it out in 1998.
Hoover is gone, Timken is closing shop, Good-Year and Firestone are closing plants and steel in Cleveland is long gone other than the token production through Mitral. Ohio is throwing billions in taxpayer money to build itself into the medical capital of the world. The Wi-Fi networks are all part of the plan to make sure all of the medical institutions and doctors have access to information at all time. At least you know it won't go away. Only the may add some sort of access control when people start hacking medical records to get out of $50,000 bills.
Being an University of Akron student, I'm not so sure I like seeing my tuition going to this.... UA needs to buy the land around the school, rip everything down, and rebuild it. There are some VERY sketchy spots around campus that need attention before the wifi... and we already have a blazing wifi connection (that is supposed to get even faster this summer) on campus anyway.
But like someone said earlier, Its a beautiful place, it just needs a hearty clean up. Its already 2294493x's better than it was, but i still dont walk around campus by my self, no matter the time.
U of A already has campus wide (and it even rolls off campus a little bit) WiFi to all of it's students and faculty.
Degrade in a few years? Yea, if they build it and just leave it to rot...
I can see adding the city wide wifi to downtown area's since the university and nearby surroundings are already covered. But the rest of the city, for the most part is either college students who already have internet from the university or, people who cant even afford to buy a $100 pc let alone a wireless card.
Put down your copies of Atlas Shrugged already. Sometimes Muni's do a decent job. Yes, market forces and private providers will provide better service and services in a competitive market.
That isn't what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is public monopolies vs. private monopolies (ie comcast and the like). Step right up and defend those private monopolies.
Didn't think so.
Winsto-Salem, NC already has free Wi-Fi. We've had this for at least 6 years and it's going good.
Winston-Salem, NC already has free Wi-Fi. We've had this for at least 6 years and it's going good.