Wireless broadband offered city wide, or even in rural areas appears to be a growing trend. This is a good thing as it makes broadband accessible and affordable in most cases. Since the roll out of wireless in Grand Haven, Michigan in 2004, other cities have followed suit. Now, according to this article, Japan appears to be aggressively pursuing wireless not only in populated areas, but in more remote areas as well.

Two things made Grand Haven a particularly attractive spot for wireless broadband:
-There is a large state park there with weekly and daily campers who want to stay connected.
-There is a significant population of boaters who slip in the marina’s there (and can even use wireless up to ten miles off-shore).
Because this creates many monthly users, the ability to pay for the sytem may exceed that of areas with more stable populations.

Wireless has many advantages including the lack of needing to invest in the infra-structure of phone lines and/or cables to carry signal to each end user. The down side is that you create some security risks using wireless over a large area.

This article was posted on Thursday, March 10th, 2005 at 3:35 pm