Wireless Network to Turn City into One Big Hot Spot
The upscale suburb of Chaska, Minn., will soon become one of the few, but growing, U.S. cities almost entirely within a 'hot spot' of high-speed wireless access to the Internet.
CHASKA, Minn.—This upscale suburb will soon become one of the few, but growing, U.S. cities almost entirely within a "hot spot" of high-speed wireless access to the Internet.
The Wireless Fidelity network will blanket virtually every home, business and city office with broadband-grade bandwidth —that is, super-fast access to the Internet without a hard-wired connection.
Chaska is also one of the first cities to offer Wi-Fi as a municipal service that competes with commercial broadband providers. At about $16 a month for home users, the city service will be cheaper than the national companies.
The city foresees at least 2,000 of its 18,000 residents signing up for the wireless service, creating what information-systems manager Bradley Mayer calls a "connected community" and defraying network-setup costs over about three years.
Chaska.Net has prior wireless experience, offering a more specialized kind of online access to about 85 business clients throughout Carver County.
The city's newer wireless network also is intended as a public safety tool. Computers now found in police squads will be adapted for Wi-Fi use, for instance.
But the network is primarily intended for home users, which makes Chaska and its technology partner, California-based Tropos Networks, consumer-Wi-Fi trendsetters.
