[Berlin-wireless] [Fwd: [wsfii-discuss] Battle for Barcelona]

[Sven Wagner]

FYI
lg
	cven

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [wsfii-discuss] Battle for Barcelona
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:00:30 +0200
From: Ramon Roca <ramon.roca at guifi.net>
Reply-To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free Information 
Infrastructure	<wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org>
To: Discuss list on the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructure 
<wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org>


Hi there,

Last month the city council of Barcelona announced their intention for
installing free wi-fi internet access on 500 locations around the city
using the city-owned buildings with a funding of about ?4.5 million for
deployment and 3 year maintenance. Initially those accesses are planned
to be restricted for a certain amount of time, and installed only indoors.
Because of that, and since we already have some deployment also on the
city, we reacted by claiming to replicate the same model we've been
using with other municipalities of the region, where we connect those
internet access points into an open network and release some of the
constraints for becoming a truly open and free access also outdoors by
meshing at the streets or roofs.
Initially from their site, was no intention for interconnecting networks
or allowing to be extended by the civilians, they were arguing that they
was not allowed to connect to do so by law, so first controversy is
going around this discussion, but also on the politic opportunity for
make this happen, and that is not used this king of cooperation with
open networks in other countries within the EU. Not sure how this will
end, but we can always use this experience to promote the concept of
cooperation between civilian open networks and projects promoted by the
administration which also uses free spectrum and provides affordable
internet access.
As said, we have been doing this already with many smaller
municipalities around the region, but I'm wondering if someone can also
know from another experiences in other countries around the EU for
having even more arguments I.e. the Spanish regulatory Agency has noted
that the EU Commision granted to the City of Prague for a wi-fi
deployment... we want to collect as many similar examples as we can.

In particular, we are interested in knwoing about:

     * Cities in the EU where there are some public outdoor free internet
       access (regardless if they are connected or not to open networks,
       so free as in beer also counts), with as many details of what do
       they have and where, regardless of how extense is the coverage
       (parks, some streets or squares, beaches... everything counts).
     * Cities in the EU where municipal networks are interconnected or
       extend civilian open networks (ref¡gardless of the technology).


Please, if somebody has any information on this, let us know as soon as
possible, since here the things are advancing so quicky and we are
having many meetings with local politicians this days.

Ramon.

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