Can you e-mail me now?
BOSTON IS working to go wireless, so anyone anywhere in the city can pop open a computer or cell phone and connect to the Internet to read e-mail , do business, or find tourist sites. It's an exciting vision. But making it real will require ambitious fund-raising.
Mayor Menino wants Boston to go wireless on its own terms. So while other cities have invited private companies to set up their wireless systems, Boston is putting a nonprofit organization in charge. Earlier this month, incorporation papers were filed to create a private nonprofit called openairboston.net.
Here's the plan: openairboston.net will act as a wholesaler of Internet access and will invite companies such as
Yet there's a hurdle; openairboston.net won't get any funding from the city, so it has to raise $16 million to $20 million for startup costs. Boston's goal is to be wireless by the end of 2008. To achieve that, openairboston.net officials must be smart, aggressive, and fast in their fund-raising.
Early pieces of the city's wireless effort are already in place. There are two wireless hot spots downtown in Quincy Market and in Christopher Columbus Park in the North End. And city officials are developing a pilot project, a 1 -square-mile wireless network in Roxbury's Grove Hall and Dudley Square neighborhoods that should be fully active this spring. Residents in these areas should be candid about the value and reliability of the new service. That will help openairboston.net officials learn more about marketing, technical support, and how to avoid missteps.
The Museum of Science (already a fiscal agent for openairboston.net) expects to provide content on the new wireless system for what Brian Worobey, the museum's chief information officer, calls "learners on the go."
Then there are the compelling dreams of what the system might offer, such as a Web-based way to report potholes or an educational component that lets Boston's school children work on projects with children in other cities. Colleges could offer online job training programs. Community groups could run on-line evening events so that younger teenagers have something to do at night that keeps them safe at home. The system is designed so that as many people as possible can use it in as-yet-unimagined ways.
Wireless networks are growing in Cambridge and Brookline, in Silicon Valley, in Seoul and Paris. Boston should be a member of this global club, not just a living history book of this nation's past but also a herald of its technological future.
