Users climb aboard Wireless Oakland, whole county coverage by next year’s end

Now that the Wireless Oakland project has made free Wi-Fi, cordless Internet, available in seven communities, its organizers are gearing up to increase the coverage area to include the rest of the county by the end of 2008.

Leaders of the effort are encouraged by the useage statistics they have seen in the 18.5 square miles covered in Birmingham, Royal Oak, Madison Heights, Oak Park, Pontiac, Wixom and Troy. So far users have been logging 60,000 sessions per week in the area. That’s well above the 21,000 sessions per week expected by this point in the project.

“We’ve had incredible useage,” says Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County. “We’ve had 19 million minutes used since March. They’re using 1 million minutes a week now.”

The next step to making free WiFi available to the whole county is finishing planning and engineering work for the initiative. Officials must also nail down private financing for the project before the end of the year.

Making Oakland County wireless gives free Internet access to the county’s 1.2 million residents and 300,000 daily visitors. Free Internet service is being offered at a 128Kbps by MichTel Communications, which will charge fees for additional download speeds and services.

Source: Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County
Writer: Jon Zemke