Community Wireless: Examples

Wireless in Kenya Takes a Village:
… in many situations it takes a single individual to own a cell phone or computer for whole groups of communities to benefit.

Long Beach: The City Behind the Hotzone :
The whole premise is that the service will attract city visitors, especially visitors attending business conferences at the nearby convention center. It may do that, but will they stop to look at the information on Long Beach at the portal site -- or will they rush on to check their e-mail or surf the Web to download MP3s?

NoCatNet:
We are working to build a community supported 802.11b wireless network in Sonoma County, CA. We are also actively developing NoCatAuth , the centralized authentication code that make shared Internet services possible. This site is the central repository for our software, ideas, and general information.

CZfree.net:
CZFree.Net is an free wireless network in Prague based on open standards. It uses the IEEE 802.11b protocol to connect nodes around the city, creating a community run network that costs virtually nothing to maintain.

Sydney Wireless:
Exercise your communications freedom to make it do what you never thought possible...
We are about providing a means, of by passing per meg charges for people in the community, to play games and experiment with VOIP technologies for free phone calls between friends... However due to expensive carrier licenses, and/or Australian laws, AUP's and the inflated cost of data, it makes it very difficult to provide internet access by wireless means, such as seen in the US, and elsewhere... Sydney Wireless is a group of individuals interested in creating a community wireless network in the Sydney Area. Other Australian Wireless Groups

Broadband in South Waikato ?:
In the absence of alternatives to the pricing schemes for internet backbone bandwidth provided by established players, WiFi wireless solutions are likely to remain high on the list of options for extending access to isolated communities, but they are not likely to provide inexpensive broadband access to the full internet by themselves. At $1,000 startup and $65 per month, fast access to slow trunk lines may not prove an option the South Waikato District Council will take up, even with new Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) data phones thrown in.

The Wireless LAN Revoloution: The Portland Community Lan Resource Guide
Although it started among friends, community LANs are a revolutionary concept. Grass roots, neighborhood networks, using standardized, 802.11b equipment, are forming in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, London and elsewhere. BayArea Wireless already has 21 access nodes. SeattleWireless and Portland's Personal Telco may each have a dozen or so. They may threaten multi-billion dollar investments made by cellular, cable and telephone companies. Public-access LANs that share a 1.5-megabit-per-second link are faster and cheaper than 2.5G cellular. Range is limited to 1000 feet but inter-connected community LANs may soon provide a viable alternative.

Free wireless Net access for the masses: Sept 26, 2001
Tim Pozar used to speak only rarely to his neighbors in San Francisco's foggy Sunset district, but that changed the day he hung out a wireless antenna and welcomed the world to use his high-speed Internet line. "I've gotten to know the neighbors much better," said the professional network and telecommunications consultant. "Occasionally, they bring me pies and things like that."

Gate way to a wireless world: Welcome to the emerging world of wireless Internet access. Companies offering this type of connection are specialized Internet Service Providers. Instead of providing individual service to homes and businesses, they partner with hotels, airports and restaurants to offer high-speed wireless access in public locations using a standard called Wi-Fi, or IEEE 802.11b.

SeattleWireless: Seattle Wireless is a not-for-profit project to develop a community wireless network in Seattle and end recurrent telco fees. We are using widely-available, license-free technology to create a free, locally-owned wireless backbone. This is a MetropolitanAreaNetwork (not just a "wireless LAN" in your home or business) and a community-owned, distributed system (NYASPTWYOAMB - not yet another service provider to whom you owe a monthly bill)..

hp's digital village program: Digital Village is designed to help underserved communities fulfill their aspirations for participation in the digital age.

Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks: According to the 1999 Economic Development Administration report, Assessment of Technology Infrastructure in Native Communities, "The poor state of existing infrastructure in most Native communities means there is less of a foundation to build on." Future efforts to deploy new advanced telecommunications infrastructure would require either an upgrade of the existing infrastructure, or the deployment of new technologies that would not be heavily dependent on existing systems.

A Wireless Long Shot May 3, 2001
There has been plenty of talk about the range of wireless LANs, so we decided to find out how far we could stretch it. This series of articles tracks our progress in trying to use the 802.11b protocol to create a link from Sebastopol to a hilltop tower 20.9 miles north, and from there on to some homes 5 miles across a valley. In this first installment, we try out the 5-mile link and create an experiment to test the loss we would encounter on the 20.9-mile link.