Boston launches muni Wi-Fi project

The city of Boston became the latest municipality to give citywide Wi-Fi a try, announcing today the launch of a pilot project covering 5000 homes in the south Boston neighborhood of Roxbury.

The project launch comes just two and half months after the city-sponsored Wireless Task Force completed a study recommending that Boston embrace a citywide municipal Wi-Fi network, run by a non-profit corporation and targeting underserved residents and students.

“We said we’d move quickly, and we have,” Boston Mayor Thomas Merino said in a statement. “The Boston Wireless Initiative is up and running.”

The city lit two public hotspots today, one in Quincy Market covering areas around City Hall, and the other in the North End’s Columbus Park. But the mesh Wi-Fi neighborhood network is not yet completed. The city said work would begin immediately on the project, though no timeline was specified.

Boston is initially depending on donations from the community to fund the pilot project as well as contributions from network vendors and ISPs that hope to have a shot at the final citywide contract. BelAir Networks is supplying its mesh radio nodes antennae and other access equipment, GigaBeam is providing radio backhaul gear and MetroNext is supplying the Internet backbone. For the two hotspots, several vendors chipped in time and services and equipment, including Verizon Communications, Cisco Galaxy Internet Services and SkyPilot.