-------- Original Message -------- Subject: public internet - wifi on cycle Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 18:37:07 +0530 (IST) From: N Sashikumar Newsgroups: gmane.org.telecom.india-gii
Dear All, I saw this recent news from slashdot.. i forward it to ongoing discussion in the list on public internet. There is lot of interesting and funny comments on this topic in slashdot.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/012233 "Yury Gitman is not the average cyclist from Brooklyn. His goal is to bring more easily accessible free wireless hotspots to the masses. To do this, he has created what he calls the Magicbike, a bicycle equipped with a laptop, power supply and antenna. Gitman's bike has allowed people in NYC to browse the internet freely in local parks and gardens. 'I am like the ice cream man, but with no music and I deliver free wireless access and not ice cream'."
http://magicbike.net/
From elsewhere...
The technology behind this is not complex. Magicbike is simply a creative configuration, or reconfiguration, of widely available computer, bicycle, and WiFi gear. WiFi antennas mounted on the bike's frame feed into a laptop embedded into a specially outfitted bicycle side-bag. The bike's embedded laptop is configured to be a wireless repeater and hotspot. The bike receives its uplink connection either from the cellular network or from far-off WiFi hotspots (with the help of its mounted antennas). With this uplink connection from any one of various sources, the bike is able to serve-up its own Internet connection.
A Magicbike hotspot operates like standard hotspots, able to serve up to 250 users in a radius of 30 meters indoors and 100 meters outdoors [although its antennas can increase the hotspot’s accuracy and range]. A group of bikes can repeat and/or bridge the signal down a chain of wireless bikes. Meaning, a bicycle gang can snake into subways stations or across hilltops to provide Internet connectivity to (fringe but) vital communities and spaces ignored by the traditional telecommunications industry. A grassroots bottom-up wireless infrastructure can be formed and pedaled to any place accessible by bicycle.
from another site: universality is not lost on Gitman, either. “Let's say ten years from now, there are a million of these bikes in China and India. The technology could be powered by bicycle generators on the wheels. It's like the infrastructure comes awake with the city — it's very efficient, and it's there when it's needed. You're building an infrastructure where people are alive, instead of putting a tower in the middle of a city or an antenna on top of a building. It's infrastructure located where you actually are.”
http://www.wirelessreview.com/ar/wireless_magicbike_wheel_deal/
regards sashi
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