City Wide WiFi

[mmonroe]

City wi-fi hope loses its signal | NewsOK.com

I have an idea that would pay for this, no problem. Wish I had the money myself to finance it.

[OKCCrime]

City wi-fi hope loses its signal | NewsOK.com

I have an idea that would pay for this, no problem. Wish I had the money myself to finance it.

OK I'm game. Lets hear your idea.

[Blazerfan11]

A great way for the city to have it would be for it to have been invented during the Great Depression.

[soonerfever]

According to a fact on Emporis about the Chase Tower, there is a Sprint transmission tower on top of the building that broadcast WiFi signals up to 35 miles from the building. I didn't add the fact and can't find any sources though.

Edit: The same fact is also listed on the Wikipedia Page for Chase Tower.

[venture]

The only problem with wireless is line of sight and the ability for the consumer's wireless device to broadcast a single strong enough back.

I've done wi-fi hotspotting and the longer stance wireless broadband before with my ISP several years ago...it is fun, but can be a real headache. OKC would be not as bad as the cities i've done it in back east...less trees and flatter terrain.

[mmonroe]

You can set up a landing page when you first connect to the cities wide wifi and sell advertisement on the page... that can help either pay for it all or supplement.

[OKCCrime]

You can set up a landing page when you first connect to the cities wide wifi and sell advertisement on the page... that can help either pay for it all or supplement.

I'm not sure that it would be economically viable. I'll bet some entrepreneurs (smarter ones than I am) have sat down and done the math, considered the potential number of viewers, the average click though or impression rate, the millions of dollars in hardware outlay, and the return on investment over 5 to 10 years, and came up in the red.

If we want a great city wide wifi system at no additional cost, all we need to do is require by law that all access points be open access. This might not provide complete coverage, but if you have been war driving in downtown OKC, you know it would be pretty good coverage. We might also want to put in a mechanism that provided priority of packets to access point owners so that we don't deincentivize ownership. Not sure COX would buy into this model, but anyway..... thoughts? alternative ideas?