This rules beyond belief(and sucks beyond belief all at once

[Tikker]

In a move the Saskatchewan government hopes will attract and retain
young people in the province, a new free wireless Internet service
is set to launch in May in four Saskatchewan cities.

"I think it just opens up possibilities," says Victoria Morris, one
of the facilitators at the province's first youth summit held three
weeks ago. "If you're at the Broadway Roastery or you're in a park
and you want to check your e-mail or you want to surf the Internet,
you have a place to do that."

Free wireless Internet access was one of the recommendations
emerging from the Saskatchewan Youth Summit, Morris said. Although
the service is one of many changes youth are looking for, they'll be
excited that government heard their voices and took action, she
said.

On Monday at the Broadway Roastery cafe, Premier Lorne Calvert and
Andrew Thomson, the minister responsible for information technology,
announced the province will provide free wireless Internet access
downtown, on university and college campuses and in trendy areas of
Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert.

Once the government spends $1.3 million installing wireless
transmitters the size of coffee cans on light standards and
telephone poles and a central antenna within each coverage zone,
people with laptops and other wireless devices can surf the web and
read e-mails around Saskatoon. So-called "hot spots" where people
can connect to the Internet will include River Landing, downtown,
the University of Saskatchewan, the Kelsey campus of the
Saskatchewan Institute for Applied Science and Technology (SIAST)
and on and around Broadway Avenue, north of Eighth Street.

Once up and running in May, Calvert said the network, called the
Saskatchewan! Connected initiative, will be the largest free
wireless Internet network in Canada.

I'm one of the 4 guys responsible for architecture/install/support of the existing Wireless Internet stuff for the company

this initiative was announced (With a hard deadline!) before they came to us with the idea

free wireless internet in the cities rules, but 3 months to design and implement then troubleshoot is kinda on the stupidly insane side of things

jeje?

[Lyion]

Holy shiite.. Move to commune in Canada with your laptop and get free subsidized foodz and play WOWz all days!

Free Health Care!

Canada is calling you, Arlos.

[Lueyen]

Tikker maybe you can shed some light on something that has always bothered me concerning free wireless service especially wide spread covering an entire metro area. How do you stop illicit activities? An paid ISP has your info and knows based on your login or MAC address who you are and can trace illicit activity directly back to you.

With free wireless how do you prevent illicit activity, because without being able to trace a connection back to an individual account holder the only option is prevention. Sure you can block MAC addresses, but those can be changed easily by a new nic card (not to mention the possibility of spoofing).

[Arlos]

Hell, Lyion, if I want free wireless internet, I don't have to move to Canada. Google is setting up free wireless throughout the entire city of Mountain View, which is just up the peninsula from me. Free health care would certainly be nice, but I'm not real big on the whole "The entire winter is spent at 30 below" thing.

-Arlos

[Harrison]

Yeah, after I lost weight, winter isn't so much my favorite season anymore.

[Tikker]

Tikker maybe you can shed some light on something that has always bothered me concerning free wireless service especially wide spread covering an entire metro area. How do you stop illicit activities? An paid ISP has your info and knows based on your login or MAC address who you are and can trace illicit activity directly back to you.

With free wireless how do you prevent illicit activity, because without being able to trace a connection back to an individual account holder the only option is prevention. Sure you can block MAC addresses, but those can be changed easily by a new nic card (not to mention the possibility of spoofing).

well, that's a pretty hot topic right now
in this particular case there's a few factors:

1) it's not really full on broadband. The government doesn't want to wtfpwn internet enabled coffee shops that are offering free(or even paid) wireless connections. this is going to be fairly low speed stuff. fast enough for email, googling stuff, and really basic webpages. it'll be faster than dialup, but you won't be sitting in the park hitting up youtube (final speeds aren't really finalized at the moment)

2) it's going to be firewalled to shit. You're not going to be able to hit porn or gambling sites (we're actually pretty friendly with China, so think about how they desensitize their internet from the chinese public). it's not going to be near as draconian as China, but it's definitely not going to be wide open internet

3) I don't think that they ever really considered what happens when RIAA/MPAA send lawsuits saying that 57832572538 copywrite infringements occurred on this network


4) Based on the size and disposition of our existing networks, and our technology base, we're a test bed for pretty much every major equiptment vendor. We're years ahead of pretty much everyone else in the world, especially in terms of doing broadband stuff in rural settings (biggest city in a space the size of texas is 220k'ish)


this is pure speculation, but I suspect that this free wireless thing will be an ongoing trial that will eventually incorporate wireless HDTV~

[Lueyen]

As I recall San Francisco and Albuquerque have had it for quite a while now. I know Portland is or maybe at this point has got it up and running.

Thanks for the response Tikker, I figured certain sights would be blocked by some sort of content filter or direct address blocking. Bandwidth limitations will curb a lot of problems, however there will still be a lot that can be done with total anonymity and it makes me wonder if we'll see an increase in "war driving".

[Tikker]

, however there will still be a lot that can be done with total anonymity and it makes me wonder if we'll see an increase in "war driving".

not really

the small group that does it already will just continue to do it, while everyone else will remain oblivious to it

the point of wardriving is to get into someone else's network, not to use freely available hot spots

ps, my wardriving setup can hit my home network from almost 9 km away now

[Phlegm]

As I recall San Francisco and Albuquerque have had it for quite a while now. I know Portland is or maybe at this point has got it up and running.

Most of the San Francisco/San Jose area has free wireless internet for a while. In the city where I live, the service started in summer of 2005.