Wireless City

November 30, 2005 3:50 PM

New Orleans becomes the first US city with free citywide wifi.
posted by The Jesse Helms (35 comments total)

the snakes, rats and corpses appreciate it.
posted by quonsar at 3:56 PM on November 30, 2005

The technology is pretty interesting too: they're going to shove the end of a 100-foot flagpole up Michael Brown's ass, plant the flagpole, and use Brown as the antenna.

I hear he'll do a "heckuva job".
posted by orthogonality at 3:58 PM on November 30, 2005

That ought to bring everybody back.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink at 4:02 PM on November 30, 2005

I'm not sure I buy the "first" part.
posted by BrandonAbell at 4:09 PM on November 30, 2005

The technology is pretty interesting too: they're going to shove the end of a 100-foot flagpole up Michael Brown's ass, plant the flagpole, and use Brown as the antenna.

Ahem. You forgot the part about them shaving a millimeter at a time off his dick until he's a resonant antenna.

Technical details are important, you know.
posted by eriko at 4:19 PM on November 30, 2005

Well, it'll mean a huge upswing in the amount of Mardi Gras titty pics at least.
posted by jonmc at 4:21 PM on November 30, 2005

Yeah, this'll work.</sarcasm>

All of those people coming back are going to have power, computers, and homes to put them in as well? How about jobs, or are the computers to be used to connect to job sites?

Ever get the feeling that people who make these decisions are living in some sort of fairy land?
posted by Kickstart70 at 4:23 PM on November 30, 2005

Why all the negativity? It is an extraordinarily cheap way of reestablishing data communications for everybody, why wouldn't you it?

Why doesn't every city do it...
posted by Chuckles at 4:43 PM on November 30, 2005

Is it even a city anymore?
posted by nightchrome at 4:54 PM on November 30, 2005

Chuckles: No kidding. I'm kind of surprised about the reactions here.

nightchrome: Uh... yes.
posted by brundlefly at 5:06 PM on November 30, 2005

Maybe it's the first major city to do this, but I know there're already suburbs and small towns that offer this.
posted by Target Practice at 5:36 PM on November 30, 2005

reestablishing data communications for everybody

everyone in New Orleans has a computer with WiFi? I had no idea that place was so tech savvy.
posted by milnak at 6:06 PM on November 30, 2005

Maybe the silly reactions come about because the wireless networking is getting media attention when the more serious issues are being ignored.

It couldn't be about the money... Unless people think it would actually cost a lot...
posted by Chuckles at 6:24 PM on November 30, 2005

Here in Texas, Addison did this several months ago -- so it's not a first. Other cities have done it prior to Addisson, I'm sure.

But who cares about numeration? Hell yeah I say. I wish they would do this in Dallas.
posted by undule at 6:25 PM on November 30, 2005

milnak, a huge chunk of New Orleans is without phone service. This is a fine way to provide communications to those areas. Not everyone will have laptops with wifi cards, but businesses will, emergency services people will, etc. It's a start and I'm happy to see it.
posted by brundlefly at 6:26 PM on November 30, 2005

*applause*
posted by crythecry at 7:00 PM on November 30, 2005

Spokane Washington's entire downtown area has free municipal wifi... but it's still a shit hole.
posted by stenseng at 7:16 PM on November 30, 2005

Yes, Nightchrome, we're still a city - one of 100,000 or so by most estimates, as a matter of fact.

And yes, Kickstart et al., there are many more serious problems to be addressed here. But this was one relatively inexpensive and easy way to provide a valuable service for those of us who have returned to the city to live - as well as for potential businesses and tourists who provide most of our revenue.

That said, I live out of range of the free WiFi service, which currently only covers the French Quarter and Central Business District. The press releases say the rest of New Orleans will be covered within a year's time; right now I'd just be grateful if our power didn't go out every two or three days or so.
posted by contraposto at 7:55 PM on November 30, 2005

So many critics, yet so few coming down to help.

Good for new orleans.
posted by justgary at 7:56 PM on November 30, 2005

Oh, didn't mean to give the wrong impression. My snark was an anti-Spokane snark, not related to this plan or NoLa - I think both are great.
posted by stenseng at 8:35 PM on November 30, 2005

Whenever I'm in downtown Spokane, it seems like I'm almost the only person on the street, there's hardly anyone about in the middle of a work day. Where is everyone? All too busy on the free WiFi? Creeps me out...
posted by normy at 8:57 PM on November 30, 2005

Bigger problems in the city aside, this is actually pretty cool. When old technologies are entrenched in an infrastructure, it can take a long time for a radically superior new technology to replace the old. But when there is missing infrastructure, a green field, the new hotness can drop right in and all its advantages can be realized much sooner.

Look at so much of the world adopting cellular networks in the 90s, without ever getting land lines.
posted by newton at 9:29 PM on November 30, 2005

Don't worry, stenseng, I don't think anybody interpreted it that way...
posted by brundlefly at 9:47 PM on November 30, 2005

This is a brilliant move, even if it can't help everybody. The city government exists to provide services to the people who are living there, after all, and it will be physically impossible to provide all the needed services -- electricity, fresh water -- to large swathes of the city for months or years to come. That doesn't mean they can't innovate. In fact, this suggests to me that hte city is thinking outside the box, even slightly, and that bodes well for the reinvention of the city for the future.

Then there's the frosting: this just might provide a wedge for getting the LA state cap on municipal wi-fi lifted. My prediction: around the time the state of emergency is going to be lifted, the city outsources the network itself to a private concern, and the state modifies the cap at its behest. In any case there will already be thousands of users who will be a powerful claque in favor of keeping the 512K speeds.
posted by dhartung at 10:04 PM on November 30, 2005

It is a nice idea it is just not a very practical one at this point in time. There is no city any more There are less than 60,000 people left of what was once a major urban area. No jobs, very little utilities and infrastructure. It will not "attract" people to a place where there is no way to make a lving.
posted by robliberal at 11:31 PM on November 30, 2005

robliberal, you clearly aren't here in NOLA, because it IS A CITY with over 100,000 of us back already, many jobs, power in most of the city already and coming back to the rest by year's end ... this is positive, forward thinking news, something we don't get to much of around here these days so please, keep your negativity to yourself.
posted by ab3 at 12:31 AM on December 1, 2005

Many of the jobs are debris removal and are temporary jobs. There will not be much in the way of infrastructure in place for many years if ever in large areas of LA and MS before an economy can even be rebuilt.
posted by robliberal at 9:02 AM on December 1, 2005

The weirdest thing about this is that nobody here in New Orleans even knew it was happening until we heard about it on the national news. (Well, me, my friends, and everyone else I've talked to, anyway.) In fact, I actually woke up to the news about it on NPR.

The Times-Picayune article had some interesting and unsettling bits in it:

The city service is running on the back of a fiber optic-based communications system that was created before the storm to operate city security video cameras on the tops of streetlights.

Uh...really? Needless to say, this is the first we heard about that, too.

The network's speed will slow even more, to about twice as fast as dial-up, once the state of emergency is lifted and a state law restricting government-owned Internet services goes into effect again. [...] Though city officials say the WiFi signal will be available in most homes, technology analyst Andrew Seybold said the network likely will not penetrate far into buildings. "If you're sitting in your front room, you might have access. But if you're sitting in a back room, you're not going to get it," he said.

Well, okay...thanks anyway, I guess.

Okay, I'm being unneccesarily shitty. Obviously this is cool and I don't want to tear it down too much. I'm just saying it's not quite as neat as it sounds.

Can someone on here explain why Louisiana even has a law restricting the speed of government-owned Internet services?
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:15 AM on December 1, 2005

The bushies have been pushing tons of laws, including trying to make municipal wifi completely illegal. Just more pandering to the guys who pay the bills - in this case, the big telcos and isps
posted by stenseng at 10:23 AM on December 1, 2005

i was watching the CBS Evening News last night, or the night before, and there was a report that there are lots of jobs going beggin in NOLA right now. they were having a job fair, and offering signing bonuses, including at burger joints that were having to pay 2 or 3 bucks at least above what they were traditionally paying. the problem is that new and returning workers literally have nowhere to stay. it's so bad that some employers are renting places for high prices and sticking in bunk beds to house their workers.
posted by TrinityB5 at 1:02 PM on December 1, 2005

> Many of the jobs are debris removal and are temporary jobs.
> There will not be much in the way of infrastructure in place for > many years if ever in large areas of LA and MS before an
> economy can even be rebuilt.

And again robliberal, what's your point? The infrastructure at least in the greater New Orleans area is indeed being rebuilt - and there are many of us among the 100,000 current residents of the city who lived here pre-Katrina and who are employed with non-temporary jobs while we try to pick up our lives where we left off. Your whole doom-and-gloom scenario is tedious and insulting. Lay off.
posted by contraposto at 1:58 PM on December 1, 2005

Contraposto, the highest estimate I have seen is around 60,000 of which many are temporary workers from out of state and not residents. The number of residents who actually lived in the city prior to the store would be much lower. Yes some areas of the city will be rebuilt but New Orleans will never again be anything similar to what it was before. The various plans in place by state and federal goverment assure the working and middle class will not be allowed back. It will most likely end up as a small city about 1/10th or so of its former size.
posted by robliberal at 4:02 PM on December 1, 2005

And that still leaves tens of thousands of us, of all socioeconomic classes, who will be living here permanently -- and who appreciate anything (including free WiFi) that will help make our lives easier, especially considering that we've lost so much.

Yes, we're all aware the city won't be like it was before. But constantly stressing the negative aspects of that, as you've been doing, isn't pertinent to this conversation (or any other, for that matter). Once again, lay off.
posted by contraposto at 6:59 PM on December 1, 2005

Contraposto, I do not feel personally attacking me because I do not share your opinions to be very productive.
posted by robliberal at 7:46 PM on December 1, 2005

No one's attacking you; it's just that we're getting tired down here of hearing all that crepe-hanging pessimism from outsiders like the kind you were expressing. The WiFi story was one bright spot in an otherwise unrelentingly dim cloud of negative speculation - let us have something to be happy about, OK?

And about that WiFi, I got to try it today from a bench in Lafayette Square in the CBD - probably the fastest public connection I've ever experienced. (Of course, I then took my laptop to my favorite bar in the Quarter and got practically zero signal strength, but hey, it was nice while it lasted!)
posted by contraposto at 10:06 PM on December 1, 2005