Re: Googlie Wifi - expanded

On Aug 30, 2007, at 2:50 PM, Tyler Booth wrote:

>> I forgot how much MissNet cost, but a rooftop network like that, with
>> radio (or optical) backhaul to a fixed-wireless 'net connection,
>> should
>> cut out enough infrastructure costs to be be cheap enough to build.
>>
>> Of course, if you charge for access, you get out of PTP territory,  
>> and
>> lose the goodwill you need to place rooftop nodes.
>
> If I recall correctly, the grant was for $15,000. Some of that of
> course was spent on grant administration
> but in all, it's 6 radio system with some repeater nodes and 3
> backhaul points. It's a design that
> should scale nicely if PTP where to take on a larger neighborhood.
> However, even with an all-volunteer workforce,
> this network cost about an average of $2500 per access point (no the
> indivitual AP didn't cost nearly that much, but
> factoring everything else in is where it adds up).

More or less, this is an accurate accounting of what that project  
cost. That being said, there was a degree of trial and error in that  
project, as it was designed to be an experiment, and we could  
probably do a larger roll-out, following some best practices based on  
what we learned, for closer to $1200-1500/roof. Hardware wise, we're  
at about $650 per dual radio array (including antennas and mounting  
equipment), figuring in the miscellany that go into getting the gear  
up, I'd say there is absolutely no way to go cheaper than $700 per  
node, for something like Mississippi, if you have absolutely no  
administrative or backhaul costs.

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