Ah, how short is the memory of our media outlets.
Not 2 months ago, there were “a number”:3 of “reports”:2 about how Wi-Fi Salon + Nokia were going to bring free Wi-Fi to New York City Parks. Of course, those reports didn’t mention that we already have a bunch of free Wi-Fi hotspots in some of New York’s most prominent parks, like Bryant Park, City Hall Park, Madison Square Park, Union Square Park, and Brooklyn Bridge Park, all of which were “NYCwireless”:1 projects.
But one thing these reports did mention was that our own City Council held a hearing, and “put a deadline”:4 on when Wi-Fi Salon should have its franchised parks online (after 2 years of virtually no hotspots under the Park Department’s oversight):
bq. At the City Council hearing, Robert L. Garafola, the department’s deputy commissioner for management and budget, said that the city had
extended the deadline to August.
bq. “We expect Central Park to be launched in July, and the rest of the parks in the late summer,” he said.
So, now that the summer is over, where are all of these Wi-Fi Parks? We’ve heard _nothing_ from Marshall about his company turning on these hotspots. The Parks Department and Commissioner Benepe have been silent. We’re now 30+ days beyond the *second* deadline that they set for Central Park, and close to that for the rest of their parks, and certainly we citizens have waited long enough.
Over this past summer, NYCwireless has brought online “a number of new hotspots”:5, including Brooklyn Bridge Park, Stuyvesant Cove Park, and Madison Square Park. We’ve launched (through the work of students at Monroe College) hotspots at a bunch of restaurants and gathering places in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem. We’ve upgraded some of our hotspots that provide free Wi-Fi for affordable housing residents at some “Dunn Development”:7 & “Community Access”:6 buildings.
Of course, that’s not to say that the Parks Department hasn’t been involved. They tried to force the folks at the Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza pay for insurance using taxpayer dollars (the “Friends of” organization is funded by the City Council) before they pulled out of the Parks Department Wi-Fi RFP. Now Dag Hammarskjold Plaza is getting free Wi-Fi with the help of NYCwireless. The Parks Department also forced the fully operational Madison Square Park hotspot (built by NYCwireless) offline for over a month because they didn’t want that hotspot online before the Parks Department had their hotspots online (and we’re still waiting for that to happen…).
*So, Mr. Benepe, our Commissioner of Parks, where is all the free Wi-Fi in our Parks that you promised us? Are we going to have to wait until the winter, freezing outside with our laptops on our snow covered laps? I hope not.*
[1]http://www.nycwireless.net
[2]http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060706/dath006.html?.v=57
[3]http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nokia+wi-fi+park&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
[4]http://www.mail-archive.com/telecom-cities@googlegroups.com/msg00281.htmlhttp://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16890
[5]http://auth.nycwireless.net/hotspots_map.php
[6]http://www.communityaccess.net/
[7]http://www.dunndev.com/
Filed under: Community Wireless, New York City, NYCwireless, Policy
Hi,
I sent my ‘testreport’ for 4 CP hotspots as a comment to Glenn but he left only Marshall Brown’s reply. Here is the whole thing:
And Marshall’s Reply:
P.S. see you at the sept. meeting
Klaus
Klaus,
Thanks for the update. So it seems that there are a few hotspots up and running in Central Park (though a month or so late). But better late than never, I suppose.
Its good to see that the silence is not entirely indicative of the state of the networks, though why they would want to be silent about this is beyond me.
Dana,
like I said without the NOKIA flyer I never would have found out about this.
The WiFi Salon page is not very useful.
Check http://parkwifi.nokia.com
Klaus
I have also spoken to and emailed with Marshall Brown, actually many times over the past several years about the wi-fi project, and it has always been “coming soon”. He’s also been quite secretive about the whole project which doesn’t make any sense to me. I have offered many times to post the status of the project on my site (centralpark.com) and/or help in any way, but nothing has come of any of those offers.
FYI I did test the access point at the Dana Discovery Center last week. I picked up “parkwifi” however the signal was extremely weak, only two bars at most which was odd considering I was standing in and around the Discovery Center the entire time. I never could determine exactly where the access point was (which was another question I directed to Marshall with no response).
Another thing that confuses me is that when I did connect to parkwifi, I was not directed to a jump page or any branded intro page, like what happens in Bryant Park. I wonder why? I would have expected to see “Welcome to the Central Park free wi-fi network. Click here to see what’s happening in the Park today (sponsored by Nokia
.