Why are we doing this? Free city-wide wireless internet? It can't be true!
This entry was posted on 4/9/2006 12:08 AM and is filed under Recent Deployments,Team Members Q and A,About Us.
So many have asked - "Why are you trying to
GIVE away the internet?"
My Answer: "It was free to begin with..."
Sure, it costs money to operate and deploy the mesh network. Valuable resources, equipment expense and an enormous amount of time is invested into this project.
The reason it works - is because of people like you who can offer your expertise to everyone else - for FREE... we all benefit from the open knowledge and access our network can provide to those it covers.
Please leave all the headaches and details on how we keep financialy solvent to us. We thrive on your opinions and knowledge you can share. The more you visit our network and use it - the more others will too. It's quite simple actually - the internet was inteded to be free. The idea of charging for access to the internet - the ISP industry - is really a very new industry in the world, being barely 12 to 15 years old in most areas... Technology advances have enabled us to provide multiple levels of services to our communities we serve - some of these are completely at a loss, financially - but fear not - if even the most expensive to maintain and deploy network segment can find its way to attract just ONE person who can help our effort or answer questions by sharing their experiences or expertise on our community websites - it is well worth it!
Partnerships with local and national ISP's and WiFi roaming partners like Airpath and Boingo are on the way... soon your home or business ISP (dial-up, cable or DSL provider) will give you the option to add high speed priority city-wide wireless access to your service plan. Some may charge for it - as we intend to charge them for using our network backbone of wireless devices - others will roll it into the costs of your monthly contract with that particular ISP. Remeber this, however, - all proceeds from such relations will go to further the development and deployment of this network and all it's community websites.
Free wireless internet is provided on a limited bandwidth with some port restrictions (for safety and security) to encourage users to participate in the project. Those who need higher bandwidth and are capable of paying for it are encouraged to contact your ISP or one in our lists to setup an account. Free high speed access is provided to everyone who connects to our access points and nodes throughout the coverage areas - you can register for an account on the local community portal website and use that username and password from then on to authenticate to the wireless network and to the rest of the internet.*** We DO block publicly known sources of virus, spam, and certain non-beneficial materials known to be of poor taste which is not legal to display in public areas or through public services. If you want access to adult-related sites, please do so in the privacy of your own home. The free public access accounts will NOT have world-wide access and we may discontinue your use at any time if others in the network are affected negetively by your access. This is a COMMUNITY network. Please keep it clean! We monitor ALL traffic and work closely with federal and local authorities to catch and prosecute anyone conducting illegal activities over our networks.
If we all monitor our activities - and the activities of our children who are using the Internet - this can be a much safer place to visit, play on and learn from.
Typical bandwidth for unregisterd public users who are able to browse the local community websites and other partner web pages is upto 256kbps download and 128kpbs upload. This is still nearly 4 times faster than dialup!
We recommend service resellers to offer 3 tiers of priority broadband: 512Kbps Down, 1Mbps Down and 1.5Mbps down. These are near T-1 speeds, wirelessly. Our network is constantly evolving and adding physical ISP connections. As more connections are added these options will be greatly expanded. The hardware we use is capable of 100Mbps backbone network communications between each node - bidirectional per backbone radio. Most of our nodes have the ability to host not one, not two, not even three - but a whopping SIX radios per location. That affords us a lot of capacity for increased useage and ability to integrate well with emerging technologies like Voice over IP (VoIP).
Welcome to the future of the net! Welcome to wireless FREEDOM!
WelcomeToWichita and the
ZippyWiFi Alliance!
