The photo above shows a light pole about 25 feet from my parents' house in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Ponca City is not what I would consider a metropolis, or even a large city (wikipedia says the population was about 25,000 in 2000), and there aren't a lot of high-tech businesses -- there are some, mostly related to the petroleum industry. Yet this pole can do something that utility poles in cities with millions more residents and many more high-tech businesses cannot do: it provides free WI-FI internet service.

Imagine my surprise when my mother asked me about an article she had read recently about "free WI-FI" that the city was providing to all of its residents! I was skeptical about such a service, and if it was actually running it probably was over-loaded and very slow. I fired up my iPhone later than night and was surprised when it found a very strong access point named "Ponca City Free WI-FI." I joined the network and noticed it was quite fast. Again, my cranky-old-man hat was firmly on my head as I imagined that a) it was almost midnight and there probably were not a lot of people using it, and b) it was just recently turned on, so perhaps nobody knew about it yet.

I downloaded a movie trailer that averaged about 130 KB/sec (1040 kbps) with a peak of about 190 KB/sec over a ten-minute preiod.

The next day, I worked from my parents' dining room and the laptop reported that during the day (when the kiddos were supposed to be at school) I was getting close to 1 Mbps down and 500-700 Kbps up. That's very, very good for FREE FREE FREE internet service (my folks' DSL line is the el Cheapo SBC special: 756/256 Kbps). My informal testing also showed that the ISP for the service is also SBC -- but I assume for a city-wide network they have more than one pipe out to the net, probably several, and if they were trying to provide a really robust system they would have several different ISPs connected. Nevertheless, I was fairly impressed with the service provided, as none of the things I attempted to access were blocked (IM, video chat, Skype phone calls, e-mail, BitTorrent), and web browsing appeared to be unfiltered, too. I tried YouTube, hulu, and even some porn sites (just to see if the network was filtered) and all loaded normally.

The system is apparently designed as a mesh, so any node that fails can be replaced in the network by adjacent nodes. The mesh also allows the ISP to connect to just a few access points and be shared across the whole city. This saves the cost of running a DSL line to each access point and is likely the only way the network could have been provided. Luckily, the project was approved and budgeted before the Global Economic Meltdown.

In my few driving outings around town, I have seen the access points on light poles all over the city. My testing has shown a good-to-great signal almost everywhere, even in the open space ("park") a block from my parents' house where there are no streets and obviously no light poles, so the signal is coming from the edge of the property.

In a rare move, the network was originally meant for the use of the city only (police, fire, city employees) but was opened up to the citizenry at large. There's more information in this press release:

http://www.myponcacity.com/cms/City-Government/wifi/wifipressrelease.aspx

So, would I move back to Ponca City now that they're on the "cutting edge" of technology and appear to be more progressive than the typical Oklahoma city? Hell no. It does make it a little more palatable to visit, however.

I will post more about this as I spend more time in town this week. I'm curious to see how good the coverage is in the "poorer" parts of town, where this service should be very welcome. Yes, SBC DSL can be had for only $20 per month, but that's on top of a basic phone line. If you could cut up to $75 per month from your budget, why wouldn't you?