Hopes for Wireless Cities
Como alguns projetos faraônicos mostraram-se impossíveis de serem implementados, a saída parece ser a criação de pequenas e comunitáris redes sem fio cobrindo um determinado espaço urbano. Pelo menos é isso que aponta matéria do NY Times, replicada no The Future of Cities.
Trechos:
“(…) ‘the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be profitable led to sudden withdrawals by service providers like EarthLink, the Internet company that had effectively cornered the market on the efforts by the larger cities.’
But also highlights the many people working to develop a more organic infrastructure of community wireless networks: ‘Mr. Newsom said that rather than select a single Internet provider to blanket the city, he might team up with multiple nonprofits and companies, and set up smaller free Wi-Fi areas, especially in poor neighborhoods. The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects,’ said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Mr. Meinrath said that advocates wanted to see American cities catch up with places like Athens, Leipzig and Vienna, where free or inexpensive Wi-Fi already exists in many areas. He said that true municipal networks, the ones that are owned and operated by municipalities, were far more sustainable because they could take into account benefits that help cities beyond private profit, including property-value increases, education benefits and quality-of-life improvements that come with offering residents free wireless access.”