New Orleans Wifi - keep it rollin, rollin, rollin

More on New Orleans wifi in USA Today, and then some sage commentary from wifi pundit Glenn Fleishman.  Earthlink wants to provide free wifi in New Orleans.  Google wants to provide free wifi for San Francisco. I don't have a problem with people making money off of the free wifi, but, like many people who have this strange sense that we should push hard to achieve widespread high-speed connectivity (especially in communication dead zones like post-Katrina New Orleans), I want the rollout to happen quickly.

Comments

[Jeff Richardson]

The few times I've tried to connect to the New Orleans free WiFi network, I've had trouble getting it to work. Is there a web page that tells you how to do it? And in what parts of the city is it working?

[Ernie]

I've had trouble too, from time to time. It is supposedly working in the downtown area around Poydras. In fact, right near One Shell Square is an access point.

[Aaron]

The wireless works, it's just slow as sin. At 512 kb/s, that's 1/2 a megabyte, or probably 200 times slower than your cable internet at home, which is usually 100 mb/s. Anything that's not text based, you may as well just give up and drive somewhere with a faster connection.