Should I buy a Meraki Mini, sign up with FON, or is there a more effective way to speed up free, ubiquitous wifi?
Mob Rules inspired me. If you haven’t yet, I recommend doing so. In that article, Mark Pesce mentions the Meraki Mini, and how that could be game-changing for telcos.
There’s a lot to like about the Minis. They’re not completely open-source, but they could run CUWiN software and are cheap. FON seems to have better backing (Sequoia, Google, Skype), but their marketing bugs me (Is that a for-profit trying too hard to be hip, calling itself a ‘movimiento’?).
My understanding is that Ile-sans-Fil isn’t trying to blanket the city with free wireless. Someone please correct me if I have that wrong. While I like what they are doing, I’m attracted to the idea of free wireless everywhere.
We don’t know who will use these technologies, or how. Pesce uses the example of Kerala fishermen, and there’s the example of homeless people using a phone number to improve their condition. The applications I have in mind for ubiquitous wireless - location-based services and augmented reality - might not be the ‘killer-app’. If there are any social aplications for these, I think there’s a good chance they’ll be built in a city like Montreal.
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My current strategy has been just to leave my router open (with the network name “Open (but no bittorrent plz!)” and try to change people’s minds about this issue when the opportunity presents itself. There’s an unfortunate meme out there that leaving your router “unsecured” is just plain bad (ignoring the societal benefits of doing so).
I’m sceptical of both of the solutions you pointed to, for the fact that they’re closed source and seem to require specialized hardware. If I had more time, I’d probably mess around with OpenWRT (http://openwrt.org/) or the CuWin stuff you mentioned.
You are absolutely correct, ISF is not trying to blanket the city. We are just trying to be where people are most likely to want/need nomadic Internet access. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi is a very poor technical solution for city-wide coverage. For that, the current best solutions are 3G cellular and WiMAX. Unfortunately, both are carrier solutions and so not as hacker-friendly as Wi-Fi. I just posted something related to this here: http://www.montrealstartup.com/?p=76
That being said, 2008 is going to be a *huge* year for ISF and we are looking for more hackers to get involved. Tell us what APIs you need to build your services on top of our network and we’ll do our best to deliver, or better yet, we’ll give you access to our servers and you can build them yourselves. Our meetings are open to everyone (checkout the website for the time and place) and we are launching 2008 with a Cocktails at Les Pas Sages this Wednesday: http://ilesansfil.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=76
I’d love to see you there.
Cheers.
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