Free outdoor Wi-Fi (1 Mbps downstream speeds) in the City of Santa Clara is being launched by Silicon Valley Power, the city’s municipal power company, as part of its SVP MeterConnect program.
Santa Clara says it is the first city in the country to provide free outdoor Wi-Fi access for an entire community as part of an advanced electric meter upgrade program that uses wireless technology to read meters.
SVP expects over 5,000 connections a day on the free public network.
As always is the case for a community broadband network, some sustainable way of generating the resources to keep providing the service is key. In this case, the resource model is the sale of electrical power to customers in Santa Clara.
That commercial revenue stream supports the operating and capital costs associated with the meter reading program, which in turn provides the capacity for the outdoor public Wi-Fi network.
When advanced meters are installed at residences starting late in 2013, electricity and water usage information will be highly encrypted and sent using the same wireless network that provides the public Wi-Fi.
The SVP MeterConnect network reserves a separate channel for the free, public, and unencrypted outdoor Internet service.
The network seems intentionally designed not to compete with commercial ISP operations. the network is not designed to support indoor coverage, so it really is not going to be a substitute for other commercial ISP services.
Also, the 1 Mbps (shared) network is not going to offer the sort of bandwidth most users these days will find too useful, as a primary connection.
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