Southside Wi-Fi Open to the Public
Minneapolis, MN

I got word from a contact at US Internet that the south pilot Wi-Fi area opened for testing yesterday. SSID is USI Wireless. Once connected, open your browser and you should be at the sign-in page. Way down the left side, in small text, it says 'Online Registration.' Click there and fill in the info and it should let you on the network. Hopefully you only have to do this once.

Could someone please confirm that this works now? Email or comment. Thanks.

My information (following) is coming from the pilot demos and from some US Internet techies who've been working on my block over the last couple of weeks.

Pilot Area

As I said before (am I ranting yet?) the City's South map is not accurate. In fact, it's not even close. They shifted the map east and pulled back the north boundary. You should be able to get a signal along Riverside Avenue, Franklin Ave. from Riverside to Hiawatha, and 24th Street from 27th Ave. to Hiawatha and into Phillips (on 24th Street). So the park at Cedar and 24th St. should have a pretty good signal. The signal at Little Earth might be good also. Coyle Center should have a good signal too.

Twenty-second Street in Seward from 23rd to 28th Avenues should light up also. Matthews Park may have a decent signal.

That's the general area. Look on the power poles for antennas.

I'm getting from 6 to 9 Mbps up and 4 to 6 down. It really makes a difference in the Web experience. It's (very) doubtful that this bandwidth will survive to final deployment with 1 Mbps, up and down, the likely speed that Minneapolis will end up with no matter which vendor is chosen. So enjoy it while you can. The price point I hear (from both vendors) is $20 to $25 a month. This would include all internet connectivity charges. If your signal is weak either up or down, both vendors demo'ed hardware booster devices. Both vendors have tentatively stated that the device could/would be free with a subscription, which I will guess means a year's service.

Consider the pilot networks 'unstable' (both the north and south pilot) as they're in a testing phase and could even be switched off (for public consumption) from time to time. (In other words, don't assume it's the vendor if you can't log-in. It might be testing.)

If you have trouble connecting, there is a tech support button on the log-in page, right by the registration link, and it's supposed to work.




- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 7:32 PM [to Del.icio.us]