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Early Addition
Last September, the city announced that wireless internet would be coming to ten parks around the city, perhaps by summer. Fast forward nine months, only Battery Park's wifi has been completed, but the city set a deadline for all other parks to be wireless ready by July. Nevermind that WiFi Salon is unsure whether they can make it - owner Marshall W. Brown said, "That's the timetable set forth by Parks. Let's see if that's attainable... It's obviously going to be tight, but I'm confident we'll be able to pull it off." City Councilwoman Gale Brewer thinks the process is taking too long, saying, "Free wireless Internet in our city parks is a no-brainer. We should be wiring as much of New York City as possible." Yeah, there's only so much one can do on a Treo! But it's true - NYC has lagged behind other cities and even its own parks (think Bryant Park) in offering free WiFi, but maybe it's because there are so many Starbucks around, not to mention WiFi you can steal.
The NY Times article details the dollars and cents of the deal, and there's a graphic of the parks slated and proposed to get WiFi. As we've said before, we cannot wait to liveblog our visits to the zoo.
Photograph from Bluejake
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I've often figured this is the reason we don't have city-wide municipal WiFi. There's no other sensible reason.
Unfortunately this isn't sensible, either. Such WiFi is either expensive, inconvenient, unreliable, or some combination thereof. At the very least free wifi in parks would be convenient and inexpensive, and hopefully hit reliable as well.
And if we get that, maybe we could work on extending it to other public spaces as well.
Not complaining, but how in the world did Municipalities get into the ISP buisness?
Free Wifi sounds good, but how many people can they shoehorn into each 54Mb access points? Bet it's prempted by SPAMERS and Virus infected laptops...
does the universal free wifi access come with pony?
What about Hudson River Park? The area around Christopher Street is ripe for wifi - heard something about it a few years ago but it never happened...
I thought it was supposed to be super easy for people to intercept your browsing. Why would anyone use free wifi for anything but reading the news or Gothamist?
Ugh...I hope they never get around to doing it. I hope they fail. If it is so important for people to be wired wherever they go and they are so desperate to be ignorant of their surroundings and so uncomfortable with the idea of just *relaxing*, just *stay home* with your DSL and leave the parks to the less annoying people. Parks aren't made for sitting around and surfing the net.
Laptop thief paradise
Why isn't washington square park on the list?! Anyone know what the story is with that and wifi?
Free wifi in Bryant Park is provided by Google.
Do they provide free HackySacks too? Cause that would be hella sweet
As a resident of Battery Park let me be the first to celebrate the fact that us rich folks got wi-fi before poor people did! HOORAY!!!
"Such WiFi is either expensive, inconvenient, unreliable, or" ...unnecessary?
As a resident of Battery Park let me be the first to celebrate the fact that us rich folks got wi-fi before poor people did! HOORAY!!!
[11] Posted by: Karl Rove's Mom | May 16, 2006 11:57 AM
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If you're actually a resident of Battery Park, it's unlikely you're rich.
Does anyone know whether the free WiFi in City Hall Park and Stuyvesant Cove Park are set up?
hope everyone finds a dark enough corner in order to actually see their laptop screen.
Yes, anybody can intercept your traffic (both up and down) if it's not encrypted. That means email (contents login name and password), in most cases. It's worth Googling combos of [wifi security hotspot] until you find some info on secutiry in public spaces