Wireless Mobile in Mobile Excites Mobile Reader
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Free downtown Mobile wireless eyed
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 By DAN MURTAUGHStaff Reporter
The future of downtown Mobile could include people sitting on benches in
Bienville Square, in a bar on Dauphin Street or in a condominium on St.
Louis Street, all opening their laptops to use free, wireless In ternet.Part of a new plan for downtown Mobile is a proposal for the city to
provide a seamless zone of free, broadband-speed wireless Internet access
throughout downtown Mobile.Mobile Mayor Sam Jones said he’s already directed the city’s
telecommunications and technology departments to explore the matter.”That’s something we consider a priority,” Jones said. “A lot of people are
interested in having broadband access. … It would be a selling point for
Mobile.”Officials have not decided whether the city would do it on its own or work
with a private company, Jones said. The city’s network doesn’t currently
have the capacity to simply offer access through it, he said.That’s how a free wireless service began in downtown Houston.A few years ago, Houston built a wireless network to allow parking meters
to accept credit card payments, said Janis Benton, the deputy director for
the city’s Information Technology Department.Earlier this year, officials decided to secure the part of the network thatdealt with the parking meters and open up the rest of the bandwidth to
anyone who wanted to hook on, she said.It cost the city about $25,000 to make the upgrades, she said, and there’sno operating cost because the network needs to be maintained for the
parking meters anyway.The network covers about a 4-square-mile area, and about 200 unique users
connect every day, Benton said.People can buy a piece of equipment called an extender for less than $200
to get a stronger signal indoors, Benton said. That’s less than it would
cost for five months of high-speed Internet from Comcast in Mobile.The program has also had the ancillary benefit of making Houston more
“hip,” Benton said.”It’s legitimized us with young people in a way that nothing else has,” she
said. “Of all the things we do in government services, this is the one thing
they connect with.”Computer users can find free wireless hotspots in downtown Mobile now.
Southern Light, a fiber-optic company headquartered on St. Anthony Street,
started beaming a free wireless signal into Cathedral Square several years
ago.