Should Vancouver have a public wireless Internet network?
By Richard Eriksson on October 21, 2004 - 4:55pm
Although it does not appear on the event listing for the VCN annual general meeting, the email announcement says there will be a discussion on whether Vancouver should have a public wireless Internet network. I'll quote the questions in the email:
Cities all over the world are either considering installing wireless networking infrastructure or actually implementing it to aid development. Recent newsworthy additions to the wireless club have been Boston and Philadelphia in the USA. Should Vancouver be joining them? How would it be funded? Who would benefit?
That paragraph doesn't mention the city of Portland, Oregon, which, through the Personal Telco Project and from private and public funding, are putting up wireless access points around the city. The way it was explained to me, if sites are willing to pay the monthly DSL connection fee, Personal Telco would provide the wireless router and support the equipment. Is that a model Vancouver can follow?
