We don’t have all the details yet, but according to the NY Daily News, NYC residents and visitors can sign up for 3 10-minute sessions per month of Wi-Fi internet access in parks. This isn’t Free Wi-Fi, like NYCwireless, the Downtown Alliance, and others provide, since you need to pay $0.99/day after you use up your 10-minute sessions.

As a tax-paying resident of NYC, I’m personally offended that DoITT would allow a CableCo to make money off of our tax-funded parks. TWC had revenue of $17.9 billion in 2009, and they are paying part of $10 million to light up NYC parks. That’s less than 0.05% of their revenue. Meanwhile, they stand to make $10′s of millions of dollars per year providing this service. (Central Park gets about 25m visitors per year, and if we ignore all other parks, and figure that fewer than half of those visitors buy one day of internet service, we get $0.99 x 10 million visitors = $10m.)

This seems to be DoITT selling out NYC residents and tax-payers. And we shouldn’t be surprised considering how DoITT and the NYC government have been in the telco’s/cableco’s back pocket for years.

A few more notes:

1. If its not 24/7 Free, its not Free Wi-Fi. Period. This is clearly not “Free Wi-Fi” but rather government sanctioned subscription Wi-Fi.
2. That DoITT released this on primary day was a clear attempt to bury this news because it knew it was doing wrong by residents of NYC.
3. The previous Park Wi-Fi program with WiFiSalon drove that company out of business. See our post: Wi-Fi Salon Shuts Down
4. What happened to DoITT’s plan to offer a more open and sustainable park Wi-Fi program? They put out an RFI last year (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/miscs/rfiwifi.shtml), and we (NYCwireless) had quite a lot to say about it (see Response to City Wireless Internet Access for New York City Parks and Other Open Spaces (DoITT RFI) and Our Take: NYC RFI on “City Wireless Internet Access for New York City Parks and Other Open Spaces”). But at least they were trying to ask the right questions…
5. And what of security and privacy issues? Isn’t this deal like the city saying that we all should be giving our personal and billing information to TWC and Cablevision? What sort of protection has the city negotiated on our behalf?

Only time will tell if DoITT and the NYC Government decide to take the correct path and release an RFP for Free Park Wi-Fi as they indicated they would last year. If they don’t, we’re going to continue to see failure and lack of leadership from the NYC Park Wi-Fi program.

But fear not, NYCwireless will still be here and we’ll still be providing real Free Wi-Fi to all city residents and visitors.

NYC MTA Wireless Broadband RFP 2010 http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=33695734&access_key=key-2cfhbxywxnmhy0ffu4t6&page=1&viewMode=list

Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Net News has a great writeup about this RFP, which leaves a lot to be desired:

The MTA wants a service provider who would operate a network to bear all the expense of installation and operation (including railroad labor costs for same), provide 24×7 customer support, and uninterrupted service.

But the proposal is pretty muddled. While digital advertising (changeable signs on board trains and at stations) should be part of a bidder’s thinking to minimize the cost in installing such systems, there’s no spec for those systems. A bidder can build a bid partly around offering such services. The MTA also likes bids in which the authority shares in revenue.

I don’t see how this could fly. No sensible firm would propose taking on all this expense without any assurance of revenue beyond the public Wi-Fi side of the system. Despite the large number of passengers, many of those most likely to pay already have 3G service on smartphones or through laptop cards. There’s no operational services component, and that should be the baseline for any new rail RFP of the last five years.

Klaus tells us that the connection is speedy (7Mbps down/1.7 up), and that its available throughout the Amtrak waiting area and most of the rest of that level. The free Wi-Fi in Penn Station is part of Amtrak’s recently launched Wi-Fi program on their Acela trains.

Let us know if you try out this network or the one on the Acela trains. We’d love to hear about people’s experiences!

This year, the Summit is truly going international: its moved to Vienna, Austraia! NYCwireless will be there, and so should all of you. Check out the press release:

The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, Tech Gate Vienna, the CUWiN Foundation, and the Acorn Active Media Foundation are pleased announce that the annual International Summit for Community Wireless Networks will take place in Vienna, Austria from August 12-15, 2010.

Internet access is increasingly important to all facets of civil society. Since the first National Summit for Community Wireless Networks in 2004, tens of thousands of community and municipal broadband initiatives have been deployed around the globe, but many communities are being left out of this communications revolution. “The global coalition of developers, communities, industry, and advocates working together over the past decade has created one of the most disruptive and far-reaching technological innovations of our generation, yet few know about it and fewer still have taken advantage of this opportunity,” says Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative and the Summit’s founder. “The International Summit for Community Wireless Networks is the nexus around which this movement swaps notes, strategizes, and organizes its agenda for development and implementation of ubiquitous, affordable broadband networks.”

2010 marks the first year that this group of technologists, entrepreneurs, government officials, academics and engaged citizens will convene outside the United States, a critical step to broaden and deepen international involvement in what truly is a global movement. Participants will learn from each other’s examples, exchange strategies and anecdotes, and build partnerships that strengthen alliances among projects.

Vienna possesses a rich and diverse mix of established technology companies and start ups, new media organizations, researchers and cultural producers as well as a remarkable number of institutions of higher learning. Not only is Vienna well positioned among the top international leaders in the information economy, the city is also home to FunkFeuer, one of the most advanced community wireless networks in the world. FunkFeuer is highly respected internationally for its technical and social innovations, its many collaborations with university researchers and artists, and the scale and scope of its network. The Summit will provide an opportunity to expand upon FunkFeuer’s successes and spread best-methods for developing sustainable metro-scale wireless mesh networks.

The International Summit for Community Wireless Networks focuses on how wireless networks can better serve their target populations, the policies needed to support broader deployment of community wireless systems, and the latest technological and software innovations in the field.

More information on the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks, including a call for proposals, registration, and other logistical information, will be available in the coming weeks at www.wirelesssummit.org.

We look forward to seeing you in August!

There’s an open call for projects, and we think everyone should submit something to the festival. NYC has a lot of innovative, creative, artistic nerds and nerdy artists, and more representation of our great city in SF can only be a good thing!

Recent exhibitions, festivals and conferences across the US and in Europe have taken wireless networks, public space, locative media and urban environments as sites of intervention, creativity, and critique. Formulated within the emerging context of networked urbanism and mobile media, City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community will focus upon dynamics of the shifting, locative, cartographic and social space of the city. It is organized by educational, arts, community-based and civic organizations and asks how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression.

From within San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, this festival will celebrate the rich possibilities that art and technology offer for urban communication of place and place-based media. City Centered focuses on the use of locative media and wireless technologies for site-specific and neighborhood-based interventions. Artists, designers, architects, community and cultural workers –people, places, and devices — will meet for four days of street-side celebration, public exhibitions, a symposium, and workshops. The festival seeks new work aligned with the themes of creative mapping, urban storytelling, sentient space, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming.

The festival’s main goals are:

• to promote creative public use of free wi fi and open networks in the city of San Francisco
• to encourage meaningful collaboration between artists and local organizations in connection with wireless networks
• to introduce site-specific locative media art to urban places

when trying to connect at a CBSMobileZone lately I keep getting redirected to:

no aptilo terms of service page coming up. Also the “cbsmobilezone.com” Website is gone. Could be accessed from anywhere not just their hotspots.

Right by CBS on Sixth Av I caught a good one: upper case and lower case. Was always like that. My guess is that the lower case was their tryout and they never corrected it.

The last time I was able to connect to CBSMobileZone was on Nov. 28 (Subway entrance 7th Av and 53 St) I checked the stats from an email I sent from there. The hotspots have definitely something to do with Verizon:

from [10.128.6.248] (pool-71-167-227-24.nycmny.east.verizon.net[71.167.227.24])

So is CBSMobileZone history? Have you heard anything?

So, has anyone heard anything about CBSMobileZone? Is it in fact quietly shut down?

What comes after television, the internet and mobile is what has been commonly referred to as the fourth screen. But what is the deal with all these screens. What are they, why are they important and what do we as producers, designers, technologists and marketers need to know?

• SCREEN 1: Traditional Broadcast and Cable Television starring Steve Ronson: EVP/AETN (A&E Television Networks)
• SCREEN 2: Desktop, Laptop and computers starring Lance Podell: CEO/NextNewNetworks
• SCREEN 3: Wireless and Mobile starring Dana Spiegel: Executive Director of NYCwireless
• SCREEN 4: Digital out-of-home advertising and everything else starring Michael Kogon: Founder and CEO/Definition6

The panel was picked up by Advertising Age: Chasing Mobile Audiences Beyond Phones:

http://assets.adage.com/podcastvideos/3min122209.m4v

Although they get all the press, phones aren’t actually the only devices that make up our rapidly expanding world of mobile communications. Laptops and portable game consoles are also being widely used by on-the-go consumers. And companies like Yahoo and Google are paying close attention to that. Both sponsored expansive free wifi services for the holidays. Yahoo’s blanketed Times Square, while Google’s took to the airports and skies beyond.

I finally got connected at 43 and b’way. I tried saturday – no luck. No good at the steps either. Could this be new CBSmobilezone?

I tried again Friday (12/4). Same thing. Ok at 43, nothing at 46th St.

We don’t know of anyone that was able to get the CBSMobileZone network to work. Hopefully the quality and range of the Times Square Wi-Fi network improve.

For those of you that don’t know about the details of the Madison Square Park hotspot, its located on the rooftop of the Shake Shack. You can see the antennas, mounted on one of the light poles, from the ground.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/tliPDpSiR30&hl=en&fs=1&

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/QOtngpfFlXk&hl=en&fs=1&

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/AUpnDP2O_is&hl=en&fs=1&