Cincinnati goes high-tech with Wi-Fi

When you step off your flight and reboot your computer, you may be surprised to find a stable, free Internet connection in the airport. As you take the bus to your hotel, you stay connected. Downtown, at the park or city square — you never have to sign off. No, the plane did not land in Silicon Valley. Rather, you are in Cincinnati, which is quickly becoming the most well-connected city in the country.

Project Lily Pad, in conjunction with Time Warner Cable and Cincinnati Regional Tourism, originated from a suggestion at a Regional Youth Leadership Conference in February 2005. Young community members wanted Internet access whenever and wherever they wanted. This 100% volunteer initiative gained support from Give Back Cincinnati, a volunteer organization of 2400 young professionals, key business partners, government leaders and academic representatives, and has since grown into a successful reality, equipping the Cincinnati interstate region with free wireless Internet access.

Project Lily Pad Vice President Joe Hansbauer defines the goal of the project as bringing free wireless Internet access to all public spaces, essentially creating an entire pond of virtual coverage. A welcome side effect he anticipates is attracting the creative class and raising national awareness of the thriving, albeit unacknowledged, progressive community of the greater Cincinnati region.

“Positioning Cincinnati, which is a Midwest city, not East or West Coast, involves bringing awareness to the fact that there is a large tech-savvy, progressive community that embraces new solutions like that,” Hansbauer said.

For street-level users — the project's target audience — to know if a location supports free wireless, they simply must look for hot spots designated by a green “lily pad” and the sponsor's insignia. These lily pad sites are funded by private/public tax-deductible sponsorships. Corporations, organizations and individuals can attach their brand to a Wi-Fi location by sponsoring a lily pad for a three-year period. In exchange for covering the lily pad's cost of installation, data access, maintenance and marketing, sponsors gain exposure that enables them to promote their products to users, including having a splash page and links to the sponsor's Web site.

The Wi-Fi system in Cincinnati uses a combination of radios and antennas in a mesh environment to cover approximately 25 million square feet of the riverfront area with 802.11 wireless capabilities. Currently, Cincinnati has 28 lily pad locations and 25 affiliates. The Project Lily Pad team aims to add 50 more lily pads before August of this year. So far, they are well are on the way, Hansbauer said.

“The use has been fantastic,” Hansbauer said. “The support of the city has been fantastic. I think everyone who sees the vision is onboard. It is just time to kick it into high gear.”