It wasn’t my plan for the blog to be a WiFi blog — there are so many other things to write about in the world of Internet Technology. However, my enthusiasm for WiFi grows each day as I hear from readers. Anders Jacobsen, a Norwegian subscriber to my weblog’s RSS newsfeed, sent me some additional WiFi resources I was not aware of. Wireless communities are popping up all over the world — it is not an American phenomenon. A Portland, Oregon grassroots effort, called Personal Telco, is helping communities build alternative communication networks by creating, packaging and disseminating Open Source tools, documentation and community support. The resulting city-wide wireless networks are open to, and maintained by, the public. Personal Telco also maintains a list of all of the communities they have managed to find all over the world, including over 100 in Europe.
Speaking of Europe, I also learned from Anders about an enthusiastic group of volunteers who have started ‘Wireless Leiden‘, a project to build a WiFi network for the citizens of Leiden, a moderate-sized town in the west of the Netherlands. They say it will be “extremely fast and cheap”. The group has delivered a prototype and is now looking for tall buildings throughout the city and suburbs where they can place antennas.
As discussed in my earlier posting about WiFi in Europe, there are room for many different business models in the world of WiFi.