The Wireless Philadelphia Executive Committee will select a company Monday to build the infrastructure of the approximately $10 million system set to provide wireless Internet throughout Philadelphia.
We've gotten "a lot of positive public feedback from the pilot neighborhoods we've been in ... so there is a lot of interest in getting this done," said Philadelphia Chief of Information Officer Dianah Neff, who is directing the wireless initiative.
After selecting the company to install the network, the committee will proceed into final negotiations with the chosen contractor, which has been narrowed down to either EarthLink or Hewlett Packard.
The plan calls for a wireless fidelity network to provide wireless access for all residents of Philadelphia with a computer and wireless capability at a fee of $20 a month. This price will be reduced to $10 a month for low-income residents.
Instead of requiring students to pay the wireless-access fee, the University could choose to pay an institutional fee, allowing all students access to the service anywhere in Philadelphia.
"The universities are very excited about this because right now only on-campus is wireless, but when [students] go off they don't have it," Neff said.
But City and Regional Planning professor Eugenie Birch says that all of this does come at a price. Although the University would subscribe to the service, students would be paying indirectly for the subscription.
"I'm a little curious about the [University's] financing plan for the wireless program," Birch said. "If there is a fee involved ... it makes it less accessible and more difficult for the kinds of people who wouldn't have computer access ... for the people who need it most."
Students living off campus, who already pay for Internet access from providers such as America Online, would merely be paying for a service from a different provider, Birch said.
Construction will begin around late October or November, and the entire network should be ready to go about a year after that.
Many of the Wi-Fi units will be installed on traffic lights and other traffic-control devices, working off of energy from the pre-existing traffic equipment. Between eight and 16 units will be needed per square mile of wireless coverage at a cost of about $60,000 per square mile.
The first 15-square-mile area of wireless coverage, in a yet-to-be-determined area of the 135 square miles of the city, will be completed in February.
While some 300 cities are providing some form of wireless, Philadelphia is leading the nation in citywide coverage.
Philadelphia provides about five square miles of free wireless in five different locations now. Neff said that about one-third of the active users in these areas are affiliated with an educational institution.
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