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| FibreTech offers free wireless east of UW |
Contributed by: Ryan Chen-Wing on Monday, October 06 2003 @ 03:35 PM CDT
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Starting today people north of University Avenue will be able to connect to the internet through a wireless hotspot provided by FibreTech. The service was launched in an 11:00 ceremony at University Plaza parking lot outside McGinnis FrontRow.
The service will be free and not use authentication until January 2004 when it will be a pay service.
Manager of Sales and Marketing Ron Kurtz said that while prices haven't been set he expects it to be cost for usage. He estimates that it would cost around $20 base rate per month costing more for extra usage and about $4 for a single day. "We haven't tested the boundaries of the system, you can get it past Columbia. When we were setting it up Sybase [near Phillip and Albert] told us they could see the signal," said Kurtz. FibreTech is using the 802.11b protocol and a directional phased array anttena from Vivato located on the roof of the apartment building at 135 University Avenue West.
FibreTech Telecommunications Inc. is a local company owned by the three electrical companies in Region of Waterloo. It is indirectly owned by the citizens of the region because those electrical companies are owned by the Cities and townships in the region. • Wi-fi near campus coming next week DB 2 Oct 2003
• Making something out of nothing Imprint 3 Jan 2003
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| Authored by: Agent Orange on Tuesday, October 07 2003 @ 08:47 AM CDT |
20 bucks per month? That's pretty dang cheap.
I'd like to know how strong that signal is, but since I'm on co-op, I can't test it for myself. Can anyone out there vouch for the signal strength, or the realistic bandwidth?
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Make soup, not war![ Parent ]
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| Authored by: mr. t on Tuesday, October 07 2003 @ 01:07 PM CDT |
Ummm from those two pics it looks like they brought in a stage and
everything. Was anybody there? Did anyone care?
A year ago this would have been ground breaking.. now with Bell's hotspots,
UW's reluctant but growing WiFi, and the fact that people don't really want to
be connected _all_ the time.. it seems like old news.
Cool they did it though... not gonna be cool when interferance from students
own WiFi's for paying customers comes into play.[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: fine print on Tuesday, October 07 2003 @ 05:25 PM CDT |
| Um, any ideas how much "extra usage" costs. Or for that matter how much usage is extra. I'm not making any price judgements until that's clarified. [ Parent ]
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| Authored by: nostra-dum-as on Wednesday, October 08 2003 @ 08:31 AM CDT |
that it will see usage until about January of 2004.
Isnt starbucks going to put wifi in their stores for free?[ Parent ]
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| Authored by: paul on Saturday, October 11 2003 @ 06:29 PM CDT |
$20 a month is nuts! that's on top of paying for internet access at home.
wifi really should be free, it'll cost more to bill you than provide the
bandwidth.[ Parent ]
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