New Orleans will have free muni wi-fi | 802 Online

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

New Orleans will have free muni wi-fi

Posted By on Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 2:39 PM

This is interesting. The city of New Orleans, in an attempt to lure people back after Hurricane Katrina, is offering free municipally owned wi-fi that will cover the whole city. They'll be the first major metropolis to run a muni wi-fi network.

Check out the last two sentences of this short AP item:

The system will operate at 512 kilobytes per second as long as the city remains under a state of emergency.
That will be slowed once the state of emergency is over — that date hasnot been determined — to 128 kps in accordance with state law, whichrestricts government-owned Internet service.

That put me in mind of this essay by Doc Searls that Bill Simmon forwarded me yesterday. Haven't had a chance to read through the whole thing yet, but it makes me want to write more about Burlington Telecom, that's for sure.

Cathy Resmer

Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at Seven Days as a freelance writer in 2001 and still has the Rolodex...