now if you can only keeps your fingers from freezing to the keyboard.... -----
http://www.adn.com/life/story/8199357p-8093200c.html Wi-Fi along for the ride Published: September 16, 2006 Last Modified: September 16, 2006 at 09:43 AM "Check your e-mail on the bus with free wireless for 90 days," read the headline on the brief in the Daily News early this month. Anyone with a wireless laptop computer who rides a specially designated People Mover bus this fall will be able to log on to the Clearwire signal and turn their daily commute into productive work time. Get on the bus. Check out the new wireless system. Talk to passengers with laptops who use it. Try it yourself. Talk to the muni -- by e- mail from your seat on the bus? Are they hoping to attract new passengers? What's Clearwire? What's in it for them? According to a recent People Mover press release, this 90-day-trial wireless bus program is being offered at no cost to the municipality by Clearwire, a high-speed wireless Internet service provider that's been operating in Anchorage for nearly a year. Through November, a single "Mobile Hot Spot" bus, equipped with a modem that allows it to receive the Clearwire signal in most parts of the Anchorage Bowl, will travel across the city each day, with scheduled trips to South Anchorage, the airport, the university district, downtown, Muldoon, Eagle River and Peters Creek, among other areas. "Riders on these routes can now put that time to good use," the press release said. "(They) simply turn on their computer, start their Web browser, sign on to the welcome page and start surfing." People who might be interested in free wireless on the bus already ride the People Mover, Anchorage transportation department marketing manager Nancy Killoran said in a telephone interview. The mobile hot spot will allow them to get an earlier start on their work day, even if they're stuck in traffic. "But it's not just for the business people," Killoran said. "It may be for the student trying to finish (homework) before they print out their paper at UAA. Or it might be for the junior high or high school student who wants to chat by e-mail while they're taking the bus after school downtown or the bus to Dimond." If it's popular and increases ridership, she said, the city might choose to pay a wireless company (through an open bid process that would allow firms other than Clearwire to compete) to provide reception on all the People Mover buses all the time. "We would like to look at doing that," she said. The Report Just after 8 on Monday morning, I walked up to a bus stop near Northway Mall, thinking I might try to simulate the route of a commuting worker in Mountain View heading downtown. Perhaps a passenger or two would have a laptop open. Maybe they'd be checking their mail. Boarding the Route 45 inbound bus (which in full runs from the Alaska Native Medical Center in Midtown to the downtown transit center), I discovered it was nearly empty, except for the driver and a single passenger -- a man sitting in a window seat, sound asleep, his face pressed against the glass. I took a seat in the back. The bus turned east, crossed Bragaw Street, then began turning right and left, left and right, as the driver maneuvered through a jigsaw puzzle of residential streets, picking up one rider after another. A young man with a long black ponytail got on at Seventh Avenue and Klevin Street, an older man with gray hair and a daypack at Eighth Avenue and Hoyt Street. We headed north, crossing the Glenn Highway on the McCarrey Street overpass, then turned left on Mountain View Drive. Several more passengers stepped onboard at each stop. Each sat in a separate seat with a kind of Monday-morning stare. None of them had a laptop. I pulled out my iBook about halfway to downtown. Since my Web browser was already turned on, I immediately received the Clearwire signal and a dialog box that said, "Welcome to ClearWiFi." The text asked me to provide my e-mail address in a blank space and the answers to a few questions, such as whether I have high-speed Internet service at my home. I checked no (my family still has the slow dial-up modem that was provided free with our phone service). It asked whether we would like to be contacted about acquiring Clearwire broadband service. I checked no. (It doesn't serve our neighborhood in the far southeast corner of Anchorage anyway.) I'd completed all the questions in about 15 seconds. My e-mail page blinked on. There weren't any messages that I needed to read. But that was just as well because I was finding the scene in the bus a lot more interesting anyway. The seats were about half full now. A cheerful, elderly woman greeted the driver as she got onboard. "Good morning, sir," she said. Then a younger woman with long silver earrings joined her, carrying a notebook and a purple Nalgene water bottle, looking as if she might be a college student -- but she didn't pull out a laptop. Glancing at my iBook, I clicked on a bookmark that connects me to the New York Times' Web site and began reading the top story about President Bush's upcoming speech about Sept. 11. But soon I realized I was starting to get a little carsick, possibly from trying to read in a vehicle that was making so many stops and starts and turns. I looked away. As the bus headed west on Commercial Drive, it was nearly two-thirds full. Passengers began departing near Reeve Boulevard at Laborer's Local 341. More got off near the Mush Inn Motel, with all its draperies drawn across its windows. My e-mail icon indicated I had a new message. Still battling a little queasiness, I forced myself to read it. It was a note from my brother- in-law chastising me about a meeting postponement. I don't need to read this right now, I told myself, closing my laptop. The bus turned left at C Street, then right on Ninth Avenue, looping its way clockwise around the downtown business core to return eastbound on Sixth Avenue, where it stopped at the transit center -- the end of the route. The driver and nearly all the passengers stepped off the bus. Everyone except the man who was sleeping. A passenger next to me gave the man a nudge, and he slowly woke up. Standing unsteadily, he joined us at the exit. The follow-up In fairness to the mobile hot spot bus, that may not have been a fully representative sample. Every route is bound to be different, I told myself. People who get on the bus at the airport bound for a downtown business meeting are probably more likely to have laptops. So are the college students who ride the bus for free. I decided to try a longer trip -- like the downtown-to-Eagle River route, where a public-transit commuter with a wireless laptop might have some time to delve into work. Cost-wise, it's pretty hard to beat the price of a $1.75 bus fare (or $1 for a youth, or 50 cents for a senior) if you're commuting each day from Peters Creek or Eagle River to Anchorage. And if you can turn that hour or half-hour commute into productive work period, as I did that afternoon -- well, then, all the better. The straighter route helped too. Surfing on the computer didn't make me dizzy this time, as I addressed e-mail questions, looked up story references, checked Wikipedia for the definition of "broadband," which is exactly what Clearwire is trying to sell. We had just turned onto the Glenn Highway and everything was going fine until the bus passed Turpin; then I lost my signal. Minutes went by, and it didn't come back. It returned briefly at the Hiland Road weigh station but then disappeared again. It didn't fully return until we neared the Eagle River exit. Later, I learned why. The Clearwire signal doesn't completely reach the northeast end of town just yet. There's a dead spot between Muldoon and Eagle River. Once within Eagle River's island of coverage, I was able to resume my work, but on the return trip I had to wait until we reached Boniface Parkway. Nothing's ever perfect at the start, I told myself. And you really can't complain when it's free. Throughout the rest of the ride, Clearwire's broadband signal responded like lightning. As we approached downtown, I checked the latest Doonesbury comic strip at Slate.com, then got sucked in by a Slate feature titled "Eating Mr. Ed -- Should we slaughter our horses?" I checked the latest presidential polls. I glanced at the online version of the daily student newspaper in New York where my daughter is starting college. I checked my bank balance to see if I could afford to go visit her. I logged on to an Alaska Airlines site to check the latest fares -- all in a few city blocks. Everything was looking good. But then we reached the transit center ... and I had to get off. Suddenly my vacation daydream disappeared. This time I left the bus reluctantly, returning to the streets of this increasingly connected world. Daily News reporter George Bryson can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] The People Mover's Mobile Hot Spot demonstration bus (Bus #60248) travels varied routes. Find the schedule online at www.peoplemover.org, or try to follow this schedule. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TELECOM-CITIES Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Old searchble archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
