Where's Our Wi-Fi? Wireless Internet in Minneapolis
Some people using the service are wondering where they got their data from. Customers living near lakes and in high-rise buildings complain that their reception is poor. Those who are receiving service are only getting around half of the advertised 1 Mbps speed. Trees can impede the signals, and as leaves grow back it will only get worse. Users with mobile devices, such as the iPod touch, are also having problems.
A large part of the city still doesn't have access to Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi transmitters must be mounted on lightpoles or similar structures, and in Calhoun-Isles and areas around the University it's been hard to get permission from various organizations (Minneapolis Parks and Recreation, Xcel Energy, and private property owners) to have enough poles to provide service.
USI Wireless say they are confident that they'll find enough poles and the whole of the city will be able to receive Wi-Fi.
Issues aside, I admire the city of Minneapolis for taking the initiative in building the network, and giving customers another option to connect to the internet.
Now, I live in St. Paul. Are we going to get Wi-Fi?
Comments
For myself, I am not sure if I will stay with USI Wireless.
At this point you would think that USI Wireless would have given people clear and useful information about how to improve their able to recieve a strong signal. Their has to be some gadgets that can improve that, yet they never say anything.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks. As others have pointed out, the bottom line is, they just aren’t delivering enough signal. The system is marginal, modem/antenna positioning is tweaky, and the hubs are knocked out by storms. Don’t drop Qwest yet – I wish I hadn’t.
Admire the city for what? Spending public funds on a system that performs worse but costs more than the private sector?
Bravo indeed!
I’ve been using Mpls Wireless since it was turned on in my area (Near North Mpls) in late Feb 2008. While it is not 100% reliable, I have found it to perform quite well. Radio is by it’s nature is problematic for this kind of use. I just did a bandwidth test and am getting 1000 kbps that I am paying for. $15/month for that (paid annually) is a lot cheaper than DSL or Cable. Has anyone organized an independent evaluation of the system yet? All these anecdotes are just that – not a basis for evaluation. Fred http://fholson.cohousing.org
About St. Paul getting wireless:
Many residents of St. Paul are assuming that wireless is also coming your way soon, unfortunately what is going on in Mpls has nothing to do with anything coming to St. Paul…unless people start talking about it. St. Paul started a few discussions about possibly setting a a fiber system just for the use of Gov’t buildings (although I don’t think this included schools). But there has been almost no discussions going on anymore this summer. It is up to residents to start organizing and pressuring their local city officials to start talking, and if its residential wireless you want, you will have to push even harder for this. I also suggest going to local non-profits and community orgs and starting dissussion, once these groups see the importance and benefits of city wireless, they are also likely to use their voices to push the discussions. I really encourage anyone interested to start doing this, especially highlighting economic development benefits it will have for residents and small businesses (these were the groups that turned the mpls discussion around to look at public wi-fi). Good luck, keep talking, explore broadband options, and pester your local reps as much as you can!
We can also hope that once Mpls REALLY gets this system up and running successfully in all parts of the city, and people begin to benefit from the “civic garden” sites offered, that this info will be presented to St. Paul as reason to power up the city.
I’ve had Mpls WiFi for about a year now. The service is inconsistent but works 85% of the time. Its fairly slow but is good enough for checking email and light internet surfing. I’m moving to St Paul soon and not looking forward to paying twice as much for Qwest, whose customer service sucks.