> How happy I will be when Saint Paul gets wired! A few cafes in my
> neighborhood offer wi-fi, but it will be a huge improvement to offer
> this city-wide and available at home. Most of the internet services
> I've scoped out are very expensive on a monthly basis, and/or require
> year-long contracts or various other inconveniences. Even if the city
> charged a nominal fee for this kind of access, it would be a huge
> improvement over the options currently available.
For those not reading the MPLS board, when this was discussed the
price was $20 to $25 a month, i believe. The city of St Paul will
most certainly charge for access. Since they will pull from a smaller
client base, possible more than MPLS. this also means that if you
connect to StPaul.net with your centrino mobile laptop, you will get
cut off once you leave st paul, unless you find a free hotspot.
> Of course, I'm sure Comcast and Qwest and others will start screaming
> that "it's THEIR monopoly" and the city should not be allowed to
> compete! Where's the free market when we need it?
The city is putting out RFPs to avoid trouble with the contract
already in place for the cable companies. At least that is how i
intrepret that. The cities negotiated the monopoly which made some
sense at the time since someone had to pay for the cities to be wired
with cable.
While broadband isn't free, it isn't that expensive. I get time
warner for $45 a month and used to get quest DSL for $40 to $45
depending on what ISP i used. There are still questions of security
and performance with city wide wireless. As with home wireless, if
you are not close to a repeater, or signal base, you might not get
very good reception.
It is a good deal but not a slam dunk.
John Harris
camden, mpls
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