The Press-Enterprise, May 12, 2008
By Doug Haberman

AT&T officials on Monday taught the public how to get onto the citywide Wi-Fi network that the company is preparing to roll out in Riverside.

More than 250 residents, many of them senior citizens, attended the presentation at the Riverside Convention Center downtown.

The network will allow users of computers or personal digital assistants with the appropriate wireless device to connect to the Internet for free, via radio waves, from most of the built-out portions of the city.

About 55 square miles in the 86-square-mile city -- most of the residential and business districts -- will have the capability. Residents and visitors won't need to be signed up with AT&T to use the network.

It's wireless, like cell phones, meaning no wires or plugs are needed.

Damon Wei, AT&T's Riverside Wi-Fi project manager, walked the audience through the few steps needed to use the system, which will require people to sign on with a user identification and password.

Some residents left feeling the hour-long event didn't help them.

Clara Kincaid, a senior from La Sierra, said she was hoping for specific instructions on what kind of equipment to buy to tap into the Wi-Fi network from her house, but she didn't get that information from Wei.

"All he did was talk about moving around the room" to find a location where a computer can pick up the signal, she said.

But downtown resident Rhonda Chatham said she learned enough that she plans to go to an electronics store and buy an antenna that will pull the Wi-Fi signal into her house.

"I'll try it," she said.

She would like to stop paying $50 a month for cable Internet access, Chatham said.

"It would be worth it in the long run" if the Wi-Fi network is fast enough and reliable enough, she said.

Wei told the audience that the Wi-Fi network, like any network, would not be reliable all the time. It is mainly meant for outdoor use, he said.

The connection speed is not as fast as DSL or broadband but is 10 times as fast as dial-up service.

Wei said the Orangecrest area would get the service at the end of May and AT&T hopes to turn on the system gradually in the rest of the city throughout June.

The company had expected to have the system up in March but "the testing of the network is taking longer than we thought," he said.

This is the largest municipal Wi-Fi network that AT&T is installing in the United States, Wei said.

Steve Reneker, the city's chief information technology officer, said the city would conduct more educational presentations once the system is working.

This article is copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.