Kansas City free wifi network and Sprint

[lilotimz]

From this lovely article over at Fiercewireless (ignore the trash that is the comments below the article). 

 

Most relevant part

 

 

According to the ordinance, the "Smart + Connected Communities" project will be based around the city's 2.2-mile downtown streetcar line. The ordinance states that "in partnership with Sprint, a new public Wi-Fi network is proposed for downtown that will provide basic Internet access to visitors and residents of the neighborhood for free, helping the City meet its goals to be a more digitally inclusive city."

 

A fact sheet distributed by the city said there will be "no cost to the taxpayer for the construction or management of this network beyond permit fees being waived and the third-party provider will maintain [50 percent] of the network for its own use during the duration of the partnership." The "third-party provider" is likely Sprint.

 

The Wi-Fi network "will provide the connectivity necessary to support any smart city applications that KCMO may invest in to manage infrastructure along this corridor or adjacent districts. As stewards of public data, KCMO is setting the highest standards through the proposed data privacy principles."

 

Sprint spokeswoman Adrienne Norton declined to comment since nothing official has been announced by the carrier. Michael Grimaldi, a spokesman for the mayor's office, said the city aims to launch the smart city project by early 2016 but said there are no guarantees the city will hit that deadline. 

 

Sprint's potential role is interesting because wireless carriers have typically not been key partners of smart city deployments in the U.S. thus far. Instead, most such deployments have mainly focused on cities' collaborations with network vendors and the makers of municipal equipment. Sprint's headquarters is in Overland Park, Kan., near downtown Kansas City.

 

 

Sprints outdoor and indoor pico cell equipment in that region are commercially available Ericsson RBS6501/6401 B25 units and the Nokia Flexi Zone 2.5. 

 

See: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6789-how-to-spot-sprint-band-41-pico-cells-nokia-networks/

See: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6790-how-to-spot-sprint-band-25-pico-cells-ericsson/

 

Both vendors (+ alcatel-lucent and Samsung and along with basically every major small cell vendor) pico cell units have wifi capability alongside the licensed spectrum band that they're designed for.

 

So this occurs to be a free wifi incentive from Sprint to KC utilizing the abilities of the small cell equipment that they're deploying in return for relative ease of deploying said small cells in what must be an extremely dense setup to be able to provide wifi access points for a lot of areas. 

 

 

[cdk]

From this lovely article over at Fiercewireless (ignore the trash that is the comments below the article). 

 

But the trash comments are the most entertaining part of Fiercewireless....   

[Steve Dean]

Hope it goes well for KC.  If it does, maybe other cities will work with Sprint to do the same.

[sbolen]

Hope it goes well for KC.  If it does, maybe other cities will work with Sprint to do the same.

I'd love to see it all over college campuses and sporting venues. But I'm greedy.

[WiWavelength]

But the trash comments are the most entertaining part of Fiercewireless....   

 

Yeah, those "trash comments" are entertaining if you are sitting on the sidelines -- just watching and drinking a brewski.  But if you are doing work and writing content, those "trash comments" make you question why you bother with pro bono S4GRU.  And that may be the point of astroturfers.  Undermine without contribution.

 

AJ

[plasma1]

Sometimes if I toggle airplane mode , I can get 4 g lte, for a short time , Sprint must still be upgrading, got a tower a mile up the road, using sensorly and mapping, I get a great signal and speed if I hang out in the parking lot in the supermarket