Looks like more NYC parks (and one beach) are going wireless. NYCwireless is the community wireless group that started it all with free wi-fi Bryant Park (2002) and more recently, Brooklyn Bridge Park. Now, as this NYT article describes, 18 more parks are set to be “lit up” by end of month. The “hot spots” will be ready to go by the end of next month at Battery, Central and Riverside Parks in Manhattan; Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, and Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks and Orchard Beach in the Bronx. A beach!
This rollout is also free, but is commercially-driven, as Wi-Fi Salon’s partnership with Nokia and $90K contract agreement with the City indicates:
Wi-Fi Salon, a small company started by an Upper East Side entrepreneur, Marshall W. Brown, won the three-year contract in October 2004, agreeing to make quarterly payments of $7,500 — totaling $90,000 over three years — or 10 percent of gross receipts from advertising and other sources, whichever is greater.
It looks like the “location-specific portal” is part of the plan here too – albeit with a clear focus on paid advertising over (free) user-generated content or community events and information:
 At each hot spot, users will encounter an initial Web portal with information about the park and local history and advertisements for Nokia and other sponsors, which could include retail kiosks that do business in the parks.
Interesting variation on the non-profit model that has already been pretty darn effective here in Toronto and other cities (Montreal, NYC, Seattle, Austin).¬â€
Actually, the description of the lag in providing wireless on the part of NYC Parks sounds very familiar to Toronto’s situation:
The parks department’s own effort, covering some of the city’s largest and most heavily used parks, began around the same time but has proceeded in fits and starts. Verizon Communications initially won the contract in April 2004, only to withdraw a month later after concluding that the venture would not be cost-effective.
Despite an obvious advantage of offering free wi-fi in Toronto’s public parks and community spaces, the City has yet to launch any public access points of their own either. (But that’s ok, we’re doing our best to make up for this! 🙂
But efforts like this one in NYC might help overcome reticence at the City (of Toronto).
I just hope Toronto would consider a non-commercial model of provision – we’re already subject to so much advertising in our daily urban lives, parks and beaches are one place where it’d be nice to (physically and virtually) be granted a reprieve.¬â€
Indeed, it is arguable whether ad-supported wireless networks are even a cost-effective (let alone civic/responsible) way to go. This is something Anthony blogged about (and that I reblogged) a few months ago.
But the one thing that really piqued my interest about this was the BEACH. !!! This is something I hadn’t considered before… This opens up a whole new realm of desired wireless zones in Toronto – Centre Island, Sunnyside, Ashbridges Bay – especially in the summer, free wi-fi in these places would be great for us Torontonians and out-of-towners alike!
(full NYT article)
After Delays, Wireless Web Comes to Parks
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Map: Wi-Fi in the Parks
Wi-Fi Salon intends to activate 18 wireless “hot spots” by the end of next month at Battery, Central and Riverside Parks and in Washington and Union Squares in Manhattan; at Prospect Park in Brooklyn; at the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens; and at Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks and Orchard Beach in the Bronx.
Eight of the hot spots will be in Central Park and two in Prospect Park. The first of the 18 locations — a stretch of Battery Park, from the Battery Gardens restaurant to the Castle Clinton National Monument — is to be activated today, with the other 17 to follow, in stages, through the end of next month.
At those locations, users with laptops configured for wireless networking will be able to check e-mail, browse the Internet and download files while sitting on a park bench or sipping a coffee at a concession stand, all at no cost.
“The expanded Wi-Fi network will give park visitors even more options to enjoy,” Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said in a statement. “Park patrons can throw a pitch, score a goal, catch a wave or surf the Internet at some of our city’s greatest parks.”
Park advocates said they were delighted to hear that the parks department and Wi-Fi Salon were getting the project moving. “We’re glad that they seem to have gotten their ducks in a row,” said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group that is not involved in the project. “It’s long overdue and long awaited by park users.”
Four years ago, the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation created a Wi-Fi hot spot encompassing the six-acre park in Midtown. It has been a huge success, with use of the network rising each summer since the service began in June 2002. About 250 people now use the network each day during the peak summer months.
Following that example, the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business improvement district in Lower Manhattan, set up wireless hot spots at eight sites from 2003 to 2005, including City Hall Park, Bowling Green and the new Wall Street Park. Some cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, have begun to explore creating citywide wireless networks.
The parks department’s own effort, covering some of the city’s largest and most heavily used parks, began around the same time but has proceeded in fits and starts. Verizon Communications initially won the contract in April 2004, only to withdraw a month later after concluding that the venture would not be cost-effective.
Wi-Fi Salon, a small company started by an Upper East Side entrepreneur, Marshall W. Brown, won the three-year contract in October 2004, agreeing to make quarterly payments of $7,500 — totaling $90,000 over three years — or 10 percent of gross receipts from advertising and other sources, whichever is greater.
Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer of Manhattan, chairwoman of the City Council’s Committee on Technology in Government and a major proponent of the project, said that Internet access should be viewed as a public service and that the city’s effort to derive revenue from the project was a strategic error.
“There’s no revenue to be made, and I knew that and said that from the beginning,” she said.
In an interview yesterday at Battery Park, Mr. Brown, 47, described Nokia’s support as critical. “We looked for a long time to find the right partner — somebody who not only understood the future of Wi-Fi but was willing to commit the resources and vision to make that happen,” he said.
At each hot spot, users will encounter an initial Web portal with information about the park and local history and advertisements for Nokia and other sponsors, which could include retail kiosks that do business in the parks.
Floris van de Klashorst, a director in the multimedia unit at Nokia’s office in White Plains, said he believed that traditional park activities — reading newspapers and listening to music — were increasingly being done using mobile communications devices, in addition to watching television and sending e-mail.
“Wi-Fi in the parks provides an excellent podium for us to showcase these new kinds of applications,” he said. Nokia is marketing several portable devices — essentially scaled-down computers for casual Internet browsing — that can tap into Wi-Fi hot spots. (The most popular “smart phones,” including most models of the BlackBerry and the Palm Treo, rely on cellphone networks.)
Mr. Brown and Mr. van de Klashorst would not discuss the terms of the sponsorship arrangement, saying it was confidential.
Robert L. Garafola, the deputy commissioner for management and budget at the parks department, said that Wi-Fi Salon still needed final approval for the eight sites in Central Park from the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages the park under a long-term contract that was renewed in April for another eight years.
Mr. Garafola said he was optimistic about the project after the repeated delays. “I’m feeling pretty good, but we’re going to watch it very closely and hold them to the schedule,” he said.
Wi-Fi Salon and Nokia said they planned an extensive marketing campaign, but declined to discuss specifics. Warner Johnston, a parks department spokesman, said he believed that if the system worked, word of mouth would be powerful enough. “I have no question in my mind that once this is active in Central Park, word is going to spread like wildfire,” he said.