Comment on City of Toronto's Wireless Mesh

Well when you spend 60 million on a wireless mesh and you get 4000 subscribers in most cases this would cost $15,000 dollars per subscriber. Which mean it will cost 500 months to make any money. What is 500 Months equivalent to? 41.6 Years. In the attached article you will read how Wireless Mesh in Toronto is being indicated as a success http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/231749

Yes I glad that 43000 people have received user id and passwords and out of that 4000 have signed up for the experience. I just think if the private sector built this mesh that surely would not have costed that much and the whole city would have been covering including the downtown core.

Right from the get go I knew this would be a major failure. First I can remember the CIO of City of Toronto telling me that they will use "Best Practices" to implement the new technology of wireless mesh. Second they award the contract to a company that had little experience installing a large mesh network as Toronto. Third they used taxpayers money to build an infrastructure for a select few in the downtown core. Sure they build a wireless mesh in small part of the city but what happen to the rest of the City?

This failure is being touted as a success. Can you imagine building a wireless mesh in the city of nearly 3 million and only getting 4000 people to sign up?

Yes Toronto City Wireless Mesh is a success but at what cost?