Não uma cidade, mas todo um estado com wifi

«America's smallest state is seeking to become its first to offer a wireless broadband network from border to border. Backers of Rhode Island's $20 million project say it would improve services and make the state a testing ground for new business technologies. It also comes at a time when Rhode Island's capital of Providence is stepping up efforts to lure business from Boston, about a 50-minute drive away, in neighboring Massachusetts, where office rents are among the nation's most expensive. The Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs) should be fully in place by 2007, providing wireless connectivity throughout the state, whose land mass of about 1,045 square miles is only slightly more than double the size of metropolitan Los Angeles. (...) The Rhode Island network is a hybrid of WiMax and Wi-Fi technologies that would deliver real-time connections at a minimum speed of 1 megabit per second (Mbps), allowing users to download a typical Hollywood-length film in about 100 minutes. The system will be supported by 120 base antennas placed throughout the state. © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.»

fonte: «Rhode Island embarks on statewide wireless network» ZDNet News, April 28, 2006

Mark Ramsey questiona: «And that will precipitate the arrival of the Internet in cars, which is already on the drawing board in Detroit. And that will create a broad range of new opportunities for radio, all of them online. And it will create a serious new threat to radio, entirely online. Are you ready? Or are you still pitching HD?»