December 16, 2009

Always nice to make a Ten Best List.

Venerable Bryant Park led the way in terms of free public Wi-Fi at #1. The NYC library system comes in second. They have done a terrific job providing free Wi-Fi as an amenity at 36 of their branches.

Union Square comes in at #4. We are very proud of this, but really we feel we are only getting started. There is so much that can be done with the infrastructure we already have there — 10 Mbps duplex for backhaul, and enough infrastructure to support 200 simultaneous users.

With the iPhones and now the Google phones hitting the market, and with more access points to come, we expect traffic to at least double this year.

Times Square, which Wired Towns built for The Times Square Alliance, and which is sponsored by Yahoo!, comes in at #10. It too will just get better, as more and more people come to know of it, and use it, and as we expand it.

Here’s a nice review of a passing stranger / enterprise Wi-Fi expert, who happened to be in TImes Square last night:

Times Square Wi-Fi. One moment I get a tweet that a Craig Plunkett, who I never met, is following me on Twitter. The next, he’s making a pilgrimage to Times Square to test the Wi-Fi. So far, so good! The T+C page was not ours, btw. I have forwarded Craig’s tweet to the appropriate party.

Not mentioned in the Top Ten Rockefeller Plaza and Concourse. We have Wi-Fi at The Tree and around the rink, and in the Dining Concourse of 30 Rock itself, in all three seating areas. It just needs PR now. Maybe NBC / Syfy, who paid to have this built, can come up with a novel means of creating public awareness about the Wi-Fi. Even those little cardboard stands they put on restaurant tables would help in the seating areas. It absolutely should be in the Top Ten.

You can go outside now with a Wi-Fi enabled camera/video cam and upload pics and movies straight to the Internet while filming the tree/skaters. I’d love to take a Cisco Flip Video cam there, for instance, and have that video go right to a Facebook page. Our networks could handle at least several simultaneously.

So two of the Top Ten for 2009, and we only put them up this year! For 2010, we will continue to build and improve, with Lemcon our global service partner and Altai our infrastructure vendor, providing the best in public Wi-Fi services and experiences.

By Marshall Brown | Permalink | Comments (0) |