Rock County wi-fi still on the agenda
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From the WCLO newsroom:
ROCK COUNTY — Research into the feasibility of county-wide wi-fi service continues with another joint meeting of the Janesville and Beloit Wi-fi Committees Wednesday.
Assistant Beloit City Manager, Steve Gregg, says as more is learned, the cities involved may only be involved with the infrastructure.
Gregg says two providers have already talked with the committees and a third is scheduled to meet with them Wednesday.
The committees will be able to move on to the next phase of the discussion once they learn about all three vendors.
May 1, 2008 at 12:39 p.m.
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County wide wifi will be a challenge given the limits of the current technology available and competition from Verizon and AT&T's mobile broadband services.
I currently use Verizon's EVDO network and get 2MB service pretty much anywhere in Janesville, 60-200k outside of town. It's a fantastic service if you absolutely need mobile access. But at $60 a month, it's not cheap.
I do like what Sun Prairie's water department did - sell basic internet access from their water tower via omni-directional microwave. I believe Evansville also has a company selling long range wireless internet access. Unfortunately you need special hardware on your home to receive it.
Offering basic Wifi that can be accessed from a standard laptop (802.11a/b/g/n) will be very challenging to deploy county wide given the short range of transmission the technology is limited by the FCC. In a perfect environment 300 feet / 100 meters radius is about the functional limitation of an access point. How many will be required to cover all of Rock County?
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