My vision and goal is to bring wireless to the downtown area. My discussion with some members of the Pleasanton Downtown Association was about bringing wireless (Wi-Fi) there and not on a city-wide wireless plan as published last week (Pleasanton Weekly Editorial, “Think twice about wireless,” Feb. 10, 2006). I want to thank my fellow council members in agreeing with me on a downtown wireless zone and accepting my proposal to make this a council priority.
Pleasanton’s downtown is a community gathering place as well as a place where business people gather to discuss deals over lunch and dinner. A wireless zone would allow people in the downtown to use their computers whether they are sitting on a bench in front of the museum, at a coffee shop or in a restaurant. Other cities have done this with success. We have a great downtown but we need to continue to improve it.
Going a step further, we should consider bringing Wi-Fi to some of our parks. Instead of parents dropping off their kids at a sports practice, they can stay at the park, watch their kids, get some work done or even surf the net. Our youth could do study sessions in a park and still have full access to the Internet.
While bringing Wi-Fi to public areas of the city make sense, I do not feel that a city-sponsored wireless plan for the whole city does. Most of the residents of Pleasanton are wired for the Internet already. A city-wide wireless would be costly and would require upgrades to the hardware every five years or so. Let the wireless carriers compete against each other for technology of this magnitude to give us the best product. The government getting involved would certainly curb innovation. We would also become committed to this technology and it would end up being a cost to the taxpayers. It is also quite rare to see government do a better and cheaper job than the private sector.
Trying to provide wireless coverage to the entire city also has technical issues. We cannot even get consistent cell phone coverage throughout the city and Wi-Fi would be more difficult then cell coverage. How many of us have Wi-Fi in our house but cannot even cover our complete house?
I do not share the same concerns as the (Pleasanton Weekly) editor on security. If the government wants to eavesdrop on our communication, they can do it whether we have wireless throughout the whole city or not. Problems such as viruses and identification theft are no different whether you are on wireless or a wired connection to the Internet. You need to be careful and have proper virus detection whether you are on wireless or not.
The city should focus on services in our public areas and not compete with the private industry in our homes.
