Bytemarks

The City and County of Honolulu in a public private partnership with CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) and Kokua Wireless are activating free wifi hotspots around downtown Honolulu. Mayor Mufi Hannemann made the announcement on Sept. 4 in the lobby area of Harbor Court. KITV was on hand to shot video but also posted this entry on their website which lists the CBRE properties equipped with wifi. There are a couple place near where I work so will test out the ease of use with my iPod Touch. Aryn Nakaoka and his team at Kokua Wireless have a handy utility on their website that not only shows the locations but shows how many people are using the access point and what appears to be bandwidth usage. Interestingly, the C&C of Honolulu has been doing these wifi hotspot throughout O`ahu for several years starting with sites in Chinatown and then in the city parks. It appears the C&C has teamed up with multiple providers over the years perhaps giving each provider to an equal opportunity to build and maintain the hotspots. After posting the photos from Mayor Hannemanns announcement, I got a comment post from Scott Belford bringing to light one of the challenges facing these providers. Since each of ISP partners provide their own hardware and maintenance of the access points it becomes evident that infrastructure in controlled environments will fare much better than those in exposed conditions. It would be reasonable to assume that wifi access points in commercial buildings like CBRE will be better maintained as compared to those located out in the parks. The fallacy of the C&C’s plan is that they do not consider what it takes to provide ongoing support and maintenance of this infrastructure once it is installed and leaves it to the provider. In the case of the small grassroots non-profit (HOSEF) without any external funding, systems will fall to disrepair. Perhaps the C&C should consider putting the park wifi access infrastructure under their maintenance budget. Is that unreasonable?