Bad news for residents of Milwaukee who were anxious to be one of America’s first major cities to have citywide Wi-Fi service: work still hasn’t started.
Last July, I noted how the project was six months behind schedule at the time, but a deal had apparently been reached between the city and Midwest Fiber Networks. That would have put the initial “test” network for the near-west side online in Fall of 2006, with the entire city online by the end of 2007.
However, I’ve been talking to MFN through their PR firm trying to get some updates on the status of the project and it doesn’t look good. Bottom line is that they’re still negotiating with the city, and there’s no timeline on those negotiations being completed. Hence, the clock still hasn’t started ticking on the six months MFN will need to build out just the “test” network.
That 6 month time frame precludes the 18 months for Wi-Fi service throughout the rest of Milwaukee. So even if work were started today, we wouldn’t be looking at completion of this project untill early 2008 at the earliest.
That’s quite a dissapointment for a project that was basically sold on the promise of making Milwaukee “first” to have citywide Wi-Fi access.
So what’s the holdup? Like I said, I’ve been in contact with their PR firm and with one of the owners/principles of Midwest Fiber Networks and received this response to my questions about the delays:
Where we have fallen short of expectations is not anticipating the
amount of time required for contract approvals. The fundamental terms
were approved by Common Council in January, but we did not prepare for
some of the detailed legal review of those terms and just how long it
would take to work through the various partners and affected parties.Therefore, we have not started the official City Wireless build-out of
the test network yet. We continue to work in the background on the plans and installation procedures in anticipation of the larger project beginning soon. – Donna Raffaelli-Meyer
While it’s hard to not understand the frustrations in working out contacts with a city government, this is also a company who has been working with the city and it’s proceedures for years now.
The sad fact is Milwaukee is no closer to rolling out city-wide Wi-Fi access than it was almost a year ago when this deal was proposed. In the meantime, other major U.S. cities are passing Milwaukee by with their own plans to rollout citywide Wi-Fi access for their residents.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
I was just informed that the Journal Sentinel has an article in the paper this morning about the developments as well:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=487627
Much of the same info as I wrote above.
Hi Dan. Your opinion please?
How concerned should one be in using WiFi in regards to computer security? I understand there is software that one can use to obtain personal data (stored credit card numbers, social security number, et.al. — which I’ve personally never stored on my harddrive nor in a store’s personal account) by being in the vicinity of someone using their laptop in a WiFi setting.
Should this be a huge concern? I’ve yet to utilize any WiFi environments….I’m curious because I want to do so in the future when I travel.
Thanks in advance for your wise and learned opinion. Marybeth {Jen’s coworker and Em’s quasi-ECE-aunt and a non-computer savvy dork)
Oh and btw, would you please coerce Jen to post newer photos of Em?
thankyouverymuch
I do not claim to be a technology expert, but I work in telecom and have for the past several years, and I know most companies with which I’ve worked in the past will not allow employees to access Wi-Fi on corporate laptops because of security concerns. You have to keep in mind that Wi-Fi is based on the principle of sharing signals between users, and while I’m sure it’s possible to implement some sort of firewall that should offer protection, a hacker sitting right next to you is probably likely to be able to get access to whatever you’re doing on your laptop.
I think municipal Wi-Fi is good for for a lot of users, but in my mind it’s more beneficial for laptop users to just buy a wireless internet card for their computer, and then they have access virtually anywhere–at broadband speeds in many municipal areas–rather than having to find a Wi-Fi hotspot. Also, using a wireless card prevents security concerns of Wi-Fi. And, the cost has come down a lot on the cards, so essentially for almost the same price you’re currently paying for a cable connection at your house, you can get a card and have wireless wherever you go.
DISCLAIMER: I actually sell wireless, including aircards, so one could argue that I’m biased, but everything I’ve said reflects my true beliefs and not a sales pitch.
The main additional (compared to wired access) risks of wireless access that that eavesdropping and on your traffic and denial of service (jamming) is easier.
Most commonly DOS is just an annoyance.
A reasonable way to mitigate the eavesdropping is to tunnel your traffic back to a wired server you trust and drop any packets not coming through the tunnel. You want to use a key exchange that is NOT vulnerable to man in the middle attacks when doing this, as man in the middle attacks are easier when you can see the all of the network traffic.
Another option is to be careful to always using protocols with strong encryption when using connections over a wireless network, but it is easy to make mistakes when trying to do this.
And this is just in addition to normal steps you want to take for any machine connected to the internet.