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Why, there's Wi-Fi on Fulton Mall: Free wireless Internet service makes a quiet debut downtown.(Fresno Bee (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jun. 16--With little fanfare, the city of Fresno has "lit up" sections of downtown with free wireless Internet service, making it possible for people with Wi-Fi-enabled laptop computers to sit and surf the Internet along parts of Kern Street, Grizzlies Stadium and the Fulton Mall. Now city officials plan to track how people use the service to decide what next steps to take in their long-range plan to bring wireless Internet capability to a larger swath of the city. The city's new system can offer connection speeds of up to 54 megabytes per second, using a series of 16 antennas that city workers have installed in the past three weeks or so, said Bob Hendricks, city chief information officer. Inspired by a report from the Creative Economy Council, a group formed by Mayor Alan Autry to suggest ways to draw "knowledge workers" to the city, the installation of the network has happened quickly, Hendricks said. "It's up and running. It's live," he said. "This provides additional opportunity for people who are always on the go to come downtown and stay connected to e-mail, stay connected to work, stay connected to their private lives." So far, supporters of free wireless Internet access in the downtown area are thrilled by the new service. "I'm stoked -- I can't wait to give it a try," said Tom Walzem, owner of Otto Creative Services, an advertising and graphic design business with offices on Fulton Mall. "I don't see people jumping on it immediately, but for me, I see it as momentum." He said he'd like to see Fresno join such cities as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Riverside, Long Beach rolling out city wireless Internet services. Gerry McKearney, vice president of the Fresno Grizzlies, said he hasn't seen too many opportunities for customers to use the service yet. But "I think it will be a great thing for the future," he said, useful for booth operators at trade shows to show off their Web sites or for visitors at owner suite rentals to use various Internet services. For Elliott Balch, a Downtown Association of Fresno board member, the first experience with the service came on a lunch break Monday on Fulton Mall. "It worked great. It was really fast," Balch said. "I had all the bandwidth to myself." He didn't spot anyone else surfing the Web on laptops on the mall, but figured the new service would take a while to catch on. "It's all happened kind of quickly," he said, noting that it was only three weeks ago that Autry promised in his State of the City address that Wi-Fi service would be offered free on the mall. "It's nice to see they took the reins and ran with the project. Just getting it done is the most important step." Across the country, cities are looking at ways to expand access to such services, using a variety of public and private partnerships based on both free service and paid service models, Hendricks said. For Fresno, taking the pulse of this new service will be critical for determining how it will proceed with the plan to expand the wireless reach to other parts of the city. "Now we're talking about how to finalize this," Hendricks said. "Does it make sense for the city to provide free access? This is our pilot project to determine that." To figure that out, the city will be tracking how many people use the service and what demands that usage places on its capabilities, he said. The city spent about $18,500 on the equipment, working with Fresno business Mystical Technologies to manage the network and its connections to various Internet service providers, he said. Hendricks estimated it would cost the city about $200 a month to operate, a "reasonable" amount of money. "When you talk about Wi-Fi for an entire city, obviously it's a much larger project," he said. "We're already having discussions about future potential, once we have this data back." From a job creation and economic revitalization standpoint, building a "metropolitanwide affordable broadband wireless network" will be important for Fresno, said Ashley Swearengin, chief operating officer for the Fresno-area Regional Jobs Initiative. "The infrastructure of the new economy is a telecommunications infrastructure," she said. "We need to get to the point where it's so ubiquitous that we don't need to think about it." As for how to do it, "the cooperative public-private partnership seems to be the model," she said. While she applauded the city's initiative, she added, "I don't think you could build a citywide network on that model. It's a great way to start, but to do a metropolitanwide network you have to have the private sector leading." There are different ways to pay for such a service as well, from the idea of offering a free service paid for by advertising, which Internet search engine giant Google has proposed in San Francisco, to offering free service along with higher-speed dedicated services to those willing to pay for them, as has been done in Riverside. "Fresno-Clovis is a really good market," Swearengin added. "There's room for growth here." People interested in learning more about, or commenting on, the new, free Wi-Fi service can contact the city by sending an e-mail to [email protected], Hendricks said. The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559) 441-6637. |