City Wi-Fi, Green Wi-Fi
It’s been a long time since I blogged about my enthusiasm for municipal wi-fi, but news from Boston brought the subject back to mind again.
Boston’s plan to create a citywide wireless Internet network entered a new phase yesterday as Mayor Thomas M. Menino named former high-tech executive Pamela Reeve to lead the search for a non profit corporation to build the network.
Reeve, a member of the mayor’s Wireless Task Force and a former chief executive of software company Lightbridge Inc., also will talk to businesses, foundations, universities, and hospitals in an effort to raise between $16 million and $20 million for the project.
The money would be used to blanket city neighborhoods with fiber-optic cable and radio transmitters that would beam WiFi signals, enabling laptops, handheld computers, cell phones, and other portable devices to connect to the Internet at high speeds anywhere in the city.
As noted at GigaOm, this model is unlike any other in blending resources from government, business and non-profits. Can it work? Who knows, but if it does the next step might be to combine it with an idea like One Laptop Per Child movement, but with a domestic focus. Nigeria just ordered (and payed for) 1 million of the wireless-equipped laptops. It could happen in the U.S. too — wi-fi access and low-cost wireless laptops opening up new opportunities for a lot of kids.
And as long as cities are launching wi-fi networks, the might want to consider making them green too.
The technical concept behind the Green Wi-Fi network is fairly simple. Each node in the network consists of a battery-powered router and a solar panel to charge the battery. The nodes are mounted on rooftops, and the network’s Wi-Fi signals are transferred over a grid using a wireless network standard known as 802.11b/g.
The first seed money has arrived, enough to produce and test prototype nodes. It came from the One Laptop Per Child initiative (OLPC), which aims to construct a $100 laptop to be distributed to children in developing countries. OLPC showed immediate interest in the Wi-Fi initiative, Pomerleau said.
