Wi-Fi unplugged in New York City parks
Wireless networking vendor WiFi Salon forced to shut down for lack of financing
January 6 2009 - 5:36 pm ET | Amanda Fung | Crain's New York Business
Logging onto the Internet for free at many New York City parks has become another casualty of the financial crisis.
The vendor, WiFi Salon, which won the contract from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation in 2004 to wire 10 parks in four boroughs, including Central Park, quietly shutdown in October due to lack of financing and is in the process of removing equipment. The contract expired Sept. 30, and it wasn’t financially feasible for WiFi Salon to continue on its own.
“We didn’t have the sponsor to pay to continue the network. It was too costly,” said Marshall Brown, WiFi Salon’s founder. “It is tough to find the means to build it out when the city is in budgetary straits, and Wall Street has evaporated.”
Brown isn’t giving up on the business of free Wi-Fi. He has launched Wired Towns, a firm that partners with Business Improvement Districts that want to offer free Wi-Fi in their neighborhoods. He’s already wired Union Square and is talking to other BIDs.
For now, free Wi-Fi has ceased at seven formerly wired locations inside Central Park, two locations inside Prospect Park, and at Washington Square Park, Battery Park, Riverside Park, Van Cortlandt, Orchard Beach, Pelham Bay Park and Corona-Flushing Meadows.
Bryant Park’s independent Wi-Fi network is still up and running.
“New York City lost a great resource in WiFi Salon,” said Dana Spiegel, NYCWireless, a nonprofit that works with other local community groups to run free Wi-Fi hotspots around Manhattan. It operates a dozen so far. “It’s a tough business to be in. You have operating and staff costs,” added Spiegel, who was the first to blog about the park Wi-Fi shutdown.
In a statement, the Department of Parks and Recreation said the city will soon unveil “a series of digital inclusion initiatives focused on expanding access to, and adoption of, broadband technology, including service in parks across the city.”
Brown says it would have taken $400,000 to $500,000 to maintain the parks’ Wi-Fi network. The company had struggled to find financial backing for the networks from the start. When WiFi Salon launched its first network in Battery Park in June 2005, Brown said the company had to eat the $200,000 expense.
“Sponsorships are tough to get in any climate,” he said. In his latest venture, he is counting on BIDs to invest in Wi-Fi. Wired Towns has partnered with Altai Technologies, a Hong Kong-based outdoor Wi-Fi provider, and has been reaching out to the city’s 59 BIDS as well as other cities across the nation.
Last year, the Union Square Partnership agreed to work with Wired Towns to relaunch the Wi-Fi network in Union Square Park and its surrounding streets. The Union Square Wi-Fi network allows up to 250 users to log on to the Web at the same time, noted Mr. Brown, who declined to disclose the how much he is charging the BID and the cost of the project. He said the network will be up as long as the Union Square Partnership wants to fund it, and expects two more BIDs in the city to launch similar networks this quarter.
In addition, Brown hopes to tap into the online ad market as another revenue stream. For instance, the welcome page on users of the Union Square network could be served ads or coupons from local establishments, he explained.
“Even in tough time people will invest in public WiFi to help local businesses market themselves, lower telecom costs and help the digital divide,” he said.
Amanda Fung is a reporter for Crain's New York Business, a sister publication to RCR Wireless News. Both publications are owned by Crain Communications Inc.
Crain's New York Business
February 10, 2009 12:59 pm
By using a wifi product such as Ubiquiti you could now offer wifi hotspots for a fraction of the cost. HD Communications has been working with companies around the globe on similar projects with great success. Please visit us at www.wirelessnetworkproducts for more information.
January 9, 2009 06:12 am
Wireless@SG still rocks! : )http://www.infocomm123.sg/view.123?page=wirelessmain
January 7, 2009 06:09 am
WiFi indeed will play an important role for those seeking high speed downloads of multimedia content. The cell infrastructure will not be able to support the traffic, so the carriers must embrace Wi-Fi as a matter of course, for 'load balancing' purposes.The iPhone is very much driving Wired Towns' business. 30% of our traffic in Union Square is from iPhones, and 60% of our traffic overall is from some Apple device. With Altai, our vendor for Wi-Fi gear, and with the iPhone, a model for public Wi-Fi is certainly emerging. Shame that we couldn't come up with the cash to upgrade the 17 location parkwifi network to Altais in time, and so continue on with Wi-Fi Salon and our concession with the parks department, but what we saw back in 2003 -- see www.wifisalon.com's blog for evidence of that -- is just now emerging.Very exciting things about to happen in the white spaces. Question again is will it be small companies and communities, or will it be the big boys? Top down networks/content, or from the bottom up?
January 7, 2009 06:09 am
3G is too slow for data-hungry applications as any iPhone owner will tell you. When you buy an iPhone, you become a WiFi hunter. As for WiMAX, there are so few nomadic or mobile WiMAX services available today. You can't really just go to a city with a USB dongle and expect to find WiMAX service. I just posted a WiMAX map and you can see only a handful of cities where you can do this:http://www.muniwireless.com/wimax/wimaxmap/It took me a long time to build this map because it was hard to find nomadic WiMAX. Most operators still offer fixed WiMAX (how's that for an oxymoron) where you need a huge modem. Also in Amsterdam, several people tested the WorldMax service and couldn't get a signal inside the building:http://www.muniwireless.com/2008/12/19/amsterdam-wimax-5mbps/The upload speed is also appalling on the Amsterdam WiMAX network: 256 Kbps. This is not broadband. Back to WiFi, I guess.
January 7, 2009 06:09 am
WiMax and 3G are better solutions for data coverage than WiFi in a large area. In reality, WiFi is meant for using in buildings where celluar coverage is not as good.See Tessco.com for WiMax solutions.Lance