From: "john adams" <nospam@nospam.com>
Newsgroups: alt.surrealism
Subject: Spanish town deploys its own wireless network
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 02:45:00 -0500
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Spanish town deploys its own wireless network
(Catalonia) in the north-east of Spain has deployed a municipal wireless
broadband network that covers eight square kilometers (3 square miles). The
installation of wireless nodes now have 350 houses connected wirelessly to
the Internet. Almost 15% of the town's population is using the municipal
network for Internet access and the town is continuing to expand it.
Details about the network
Sergi Baulida Saiz, a member of the town council, tells me that they are
using mesh technology with equipment cobbled together from various
manufacturers. All software to run the network is based on Linux. To save on
costs during the deployment, they used "volunteers" who are technically
adept at installing Wi-Fi networks and tweaking Linux-based programs.
Because he sees the tremendous potential for other towns, Sergi has
network) to deploy similar wireless networks in nearby towns, which are keen
on providing inexpensive broadband service (wirelessly) to their residents.
maintenance is less than 1,000 EUR. The cost of backhaul is 300 EUR per
month because they are leasing two 2 Mb ADSL lines. Sergi says they would
like to have better Internet access in their region, but service is very
expensive and the telcos refuse to provide adequate coverage in their area.
To improve service on the wireless network, they have had to partially
restrict people from accessing peer-to-peer applications (oh, those pesky
music and video downloads!).
Access has been free of charge so far, but Spanish laws are forcing them to
change this policy. EU member states are not allowed to compete head-on with
private enterprise. As a result, they will charge a symbolic fee of no more
than 3 EUR per month.
Municipal wireless networks in the region
In the province of Girona, there are six municipal wireless broadband
team. More than twenty are scheduled to be deployed. They receive financial
assistance (approximately 20-30% of the costs) from the municipal
governments of these towns.
Do it yourself
I have been running Muniwireless.com for over a year and I confess that many
community wireless networks fly under my radar, especially in Europe, Asia
and Latin America. I do see a pattern of people "rolling their own networks"
because no one else will do it. One of the best examples of a community
wireless initiative is the Austin Wireless City Project run by Rich
MacKinnon who has written the first guest commentary for Muniwireless. Sergi
and Rich, like so many other people around the world, have discovered that
unless people do it themselves, no one else will do it for them. If you wait
for the operators to do something, it could take forever and in any event,
as with my own experience with operators, you'll get a network that is
expensive and a pain to use.
Setting up hotspots, hotzones and city-wide networks need not be expensive,
as Sergi and Rich have demonstrated, but the people deploying them have to
be passionate and organized.
http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000420.html
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