Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (
More info?)
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:06:23 -0400, "Alan Spicer"
<a_spicer@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>* Right. And how many thousands homes passed in each of those 500 foot
>or so access points, and who is going to pay for this?
>
>Oh shoot! I see our taxes going up to support community wireless networks.
>Wow ... the universal service fund from ****.
Let's play with the numbers.
http://www.phila.gov/wireless/
The web site declares that Philadelphia has 135 sq miles and that this
will cost $60,000 per sq mile or $7-10 million. Digging deeper, the
population of the city is 1.5 million with about 670,000 households.
So we have a cost of:
$10 million / 670K = $15 per household
That's really cheap. I wouldn't worry about your taxes, initially.
Of course, that doesn't include the cost of the backhaul, planning,
environmental impact studies, contract administration, installation,
maintenance, upgrades, administration, support, security, abuse
managment, insurance, shrinkage (theft), depreciation, and the
inevitable litigation from the tin foil hat crowd. It's a bit like
the government building the roads, but not providing for traffic
lights, lanes, street cleaning, and road maintenance. Of course, a
beaurocracy will be needed to run it.
At 8-16 access points per sq mile, that yields a cost of:
$60,000 / 16 access points = $3,750 per access point.
That's approximately the price from the Tropos Networks price
guestimator:
http://www.tropos.com/support/faq.shtml#faq10
which claims only $20,000 to $50,000 per sq mile. Presumeably, the
city will use it's own light poles for installations, so the cost
should be on the low end. Maybe Philadelphia padded the numbers to
include some of the missing items. Dunno.
I can't tell from here if the cost estimates are high or low. That's
because the greatest bulk of the expenses have nothing to do with the
hardware. The system should require:
16 AP's per sq mile * 135 sq miles = 2,160 access points.
These cost about $1,000ea so the approximate hardware cost will be
$2.2 million. Where the other $4.8 - $7.8 million are going is not
very clear.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558