City Goes High-Tech
By CASEY HICKS Staff WriterArticle Photos
WHEELING - The Wheeling City-County Building will be the first hot spot for a new, secure Wi-Fi network to be constructed with a $75,000 grant from Verizon West Virginia.
At a news conference this morning, city officials and representatives from Verizon shared their hope that the wireless broadband network will serve both government employees and members of the public.
"One of the things I thought when elected mayor of the city of Wheeling was how can we move forward without (modern) technology?" Wheeling Mayor Andy McKenzie said. He added that he hopes the network will go beyond government buildings and may include the Centre Market, the Heritage Port and other downtown areas.
"We've been working on this for the past several months," said Wheeling City Manager Bob Herron. "It's an exciting day for technology."
John Ruddick, vice president for public affairs, policy and communications for Verizon West Virginia, commended McKenzie for working to make Wheeling a "new economy environment."
"He's the one who came to us with the idea," Ruddick said.
McKenzie said that Verizon is one of Wheeling's biggest employers and will continue to be a leader in bringing jobs and technology to the city.
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EllisWyatt
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11-20-08 10:08 PM
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GETACLUE Government creates NOTHING. Not jobs, not tax revenues, not wealth. Private enterprise creates jobs, tax revenues, products & services. If the government is going to spend your hard earned tax dollars on economic development, private enterprise would be far more beneficial. Every dime the government spends comes from taxpayers. Businesses INCREASE the size of the pie. Government spending results in a DECREASE in the pie.
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GETACLUE
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11-20-08 1:48 PM
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EllisWyatt......."Great. Give everything to government and nothing to private enterprise."... There you go again with CORPORATE WELFARE.
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GETACLUE
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11-19-08 8:16 PM
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Ellis you are against the plan to get rid of the B&O Tax. I see you mouthing off about it all the time .......... IT IS CALLED HOME RULE
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atoddh
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11-19-08 7:57 PM
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former is right.Houston was not able to develop a planned city-wide wi-fi service despite a huge public investment. It would be nice at the OC Library.
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EllisWyatt
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11-19-08 6:06 PM
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The City-County building gets Wi-Fi service? Great. Give everything to government and nothing to private enterprise. That will work wonders for the economy. Where is the effort to bring hi-tech employers here? Where are the ideas to eliminate the B&O tax, streamline city government, push Charleston for tort reform and an Open Shop? Until taxes are cut, regulation is simplified, government is less intrusive, trial lawyers are neutered and unions are put in their place, Wheeling will be dead. Now, spare me the whining about how unions saved us, blah blah blah. Unions and government Socialism did not happen until the 1930's. By then, the US was the world's dominant military and economic power-WITHOUT unionism or Socialism. Fact. Now, unions need to be limited because A: Hi-tech employers will be scared off by militant unions, which represent a throwback to the darkest days of labor agitation and B: New jobs are not going to be union jobs. Tech jobs earn $ without unions.
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thedub
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11-19-08 4:04 PM
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Ok, let me say something. This is going to be a secured network where you will either need a token, password or to register your MAC address from your equipment to get on the network from what I gather from the article. So it won't be "free public" wifi like you can get at Starbuck's. Also, it will probably be an 802.11g wireless network which runs on the 2.4GHz frequency.
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thedub
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11-19-08 3:59 PM
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Wow... now the city building has the same thing that Panera Bread, Wheeling Hospital and many other places have. Really... keeping up with the times is news now? Why don't they focus on getting some high tech jobs in Wheeling so that I don't have to live in a different state for a competitive wage.
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UNCOMMONSENSE
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11-19-08 3:27 PM
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No doubt they will use the same people that screwed up the two-way radios to screw this up too! And Stratuswave likely still supplies the wireless for this news paper. No doubt they are still using the UN-licensed 5.8ghz equipment that is prone to interference and subject to shut down by the FCC for interference to hams. Virtually their entire network uses UN-licensed frequencies that are allocated by the FCC to ham radio operators. And while these UN-licensed access points are limited to 1 watt MAXIMUM power, hams are allowed to operate at 1,000 watts on those SAME frequencies! So ONE ham would wipe it all out! On top of all this, should even ONE local ham operator file a complaint with the FCC of interference from these Un-licensed APs, they will ALL have to be taken off the air since these wisps can't legally license the frequencies! $75,000 dollars COULD go a long way or be a dead end venture. Let's hope the city Government has a sudden attack of intelligence
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formerohvalleyresident
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11-19-08 2:03 PM
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If the area is just limited to Heritage Port, $75K would cover it. But cities far bigger and wealthier than Wheeling have chased the dream of free city-wide WiFi and failed. Anaheim, CA population 346,000 tried this about 5 years ago with Earthlink as a partner and crashed. With “free” service there is nothing to pay for the equipment costs, maintenance, and huge bandwidth requirements. People realized free WiFi = free telephone service with VOIP, free streaming video and movie downloads, etc. which amount to a huge bandwidth requirement for an entire city which in turn requires lots of expensive equipment and maintenance and support. Look at your cell phone bill to get an idea of the real cost of “free” wireless service. Those cells sites, the equipment, and the backbone connection cost big money. Capitalism still works, at least until next January!
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FreddieMac
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11-19-08 1:32 PM
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"If I remember correctly a local wireless company provides Wi-Fi service to Heritage Port at no cost to the City " Not anymore. Stratuswave service sucked.
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reasoh
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11-19-08 12:51 PM
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If I remember correctly a local wireless company provides Wi-Fi service to Heritage Port at no cost to the City
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acousticportal
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11-19-08 11:22 AM
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I'd like to see the break-down of expenditures for this venture. It seems to me that $75000 should be enough money to provide wireless service throughout the entire city.
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