Montreal Tech Watch

Montreal’s future wifi network threatened by City

By Heri Aug 24th 2008 in Design, Open Source

Quebec-Tech had a story this week about Île sans fil‘s problems within the Ville de Montréal administration. The non-profit organization, which had earlier this year a plan to blanket the city with free wifi coverage, is discovering endless layers of authorizations, officials and representatives, even though the initial plan was requested by the Ville de Montréal itself.

Daniel Drouet (yeah the same who does this), president of Ile sans fil, is asking the Montréalers who can to weigh in, and get the administration’s act together.

If I have a criticism to make, it’s that the non-profit organized rejoiced and announced too early the deal, putting unnecessary pressure (and hope) on the organization. I have also something against subventions and grants, since it skews a project’s financial figures, making it more vulnerable whenever a politician decides to make a few savings. However, having wide-city wifi coverage for Montreal is something that I’m looking for. The Internet has gone beyond the state of private needs to become a basic and necessary economic infrastructure for a country, in the same way as roads, electricity or running water. As such, the city has the responsability to ensure that Montrealers get a modern, complete and efficient coverage; and also see what’s already being done in other leading cities, such as Paris, Seoul or Taipei. And if there’s one organization that can make it happen, it’s Île sans fil, which now serves 75.000 users, accessing the highest number of hotspots than any other Canadian city, and which also inspired many other organizations such as, ogWifi, ZAP Québec, ZAP Sherbrooke, Montérégie sans-fil, Centre du Québe sans-fil and Wireless Toronto. 

So if you know someone at Ville de Montreal, or know an elected representative, or if you can call directly the City, then make yourself heard. And I really hope the dramatic tone by the article’s author, saying that it would be a critical blow if the deal doesn’t go through, was just an overstatement and not an accurate illustration of the reality.

Update: Daniel Drouet has more details here

  • Intellitix provides rfid access to Coachella

    #coachella

  • twtspire.com| idea for the next startup = One Tweet Away? twtspire.com| idea for the next startup = One Tweet Away?

    twtspire.com| idea for the next startup = One Tweet Away?

    Startups solve problems. So if you find a problem there’s probably a startup idea lying somewhere nearby. A Montreal developer Kenji Williams developed an app called twtspire.com that scours twitter and automatically detects tweets from people that wonder why a solution doesn’t exist for a specific problem they’re having. Here are example of tweets from [...]

  • AccelerateMTL : more than just a conference

    AccelerateMTL is coming up on the afternoon on May 23rd, right after the FounderFuel demo day. It’s announced as a conference full of good keynotes, from successful entrepreneurs like BeyondTheRack founder, renowned Internet marketers, and other Internet execs. View more on the eventbrite page. As the name suggests, the presentations were curated to accelerate startups. [...]

Comments

  • At Home with Kim Vallee August 24, 2008

    It would be sad if we lost it. It is something that set Montreal apart from other big cities in North America.

  • Bruno August 24, 2008

    Dans un endroit quasi communiste, comme le Quebec, une bureaucratie sovietique n’est que normale.

    Les fonctionnaires s’attendent a avoir des cadeaux! tout simplement!

    La corruption commence quand le gouvernement dit non.

    A la place de chercher de l’appuie politique, ISF a besoin d’argent pour donner des petits cadeaux a nos bons fonctionnaires.

  • Montreal Tech Watch August 24, 2008

    Montreal’s future wifi network threatened by City http://tinyurl.com/6m2wtj

  • Michelle Sullivan August 24, 2008

    Retweeting @mtw : Montreal’s future wifi network threatened by City http://tinyurl.com/6m2wtj

  • fsbrainstorm August 24, 2008

    Montreal’s plans for free wifi coverage threatened by layers of bureaucracy http://tinyurl.com/6m2wtj (via @mtw)

  • Heri August 24, 2008

    hey bruno, un endroite communiste qui a une bureaucratie soviétique, je trouve les mots assez forts quand mêmes… même si j’ai connu aussi l’expérience (des délais interminables par exemple), il y a quand même certains services qui marchent très bien.

    et aussi je serais le dernier à conseiller de donner des cadeaux aux politiciens. par contre, les personnes qui prennent les décisions à la Ville sont des personnes sensées comme tout le monde, donc ca prend de la discussion… et aussi de bons talents de conviction.

  • Louis-Eric Simard August 25, 2008

    I agree; I don’t get the communist reference and the bribing references. Fact is, any bureaucracy, in any country, at whichever level of government, and no matter which ideologies prevail in the crafting of new laws and directions, functions as a machine where repetition and predictability are favoured; this means that initiatives and innovations at the lower levels of administration (permit issuance, impact studies, that sort of thing) are never favoured, and that mistakes tend to be punished. In a system like that, people tend to function by CYA rules. There’s red tape ? Sure. People don’t want to be caught making a mistake; praise, in any case, is rare. Play by their rules: understand the rules, help people out, advise when you can, follow as you must, look ahead, be wise, make it easy for things to move forward by reducing risk and getting rich communications going in the proper forms (e.g., written), treat people like human beings rather than mere service providers, and the whole machine will often enough move in your direction, yet at its own pace.

    That is, provided that you really have support at the policy and upper advocacy levels.

  • Heri August 25, 2008

    I like Louis-Eric’s comment.

    and for ISF: so work on upper advocacy levels

  • Aaron deMello August 25, 2008

    Its an ambitious plan so its bound to encounter some hiccoughs. I wish them the best of luck and will help in any way I can.

  • daniel August 26, 2008

    I’ve written a post that clarifies the situation over on the ISF blog.

  • A. Matthus August 28, 2008

    Le problème est avec l’absence d’une instance municipale qui aurait l’autorité nécessaire pour imposer un projet comme Île sans fil.

    Selon la structure actuelle, on doit consulter et traiter au cas par cas avec chaque propriétaire d’immeuble où on souhaite poser une antenne pour le réseau. Voyez-vous le problème énorme que ça pose?

    Il n’y a pas de solution facile au problème, et ça demande une volonté incroyable de la part de la ville. Malheureusement, ce n’est pas une priorité pour beaucoup d’élus.

  • Thierry March 19, 2009

    Internet is part of my life on a regular basis, but this is kind of a irresponsible intrusion in mind pollution since some schools are removing wi-fi networks precisely for concerns about cell damage due to electromagnetism, and I believe this remains a legitimate decision to an individual to have reasonable control over his health and choices in this world (use a cell phone or wi-fi network at home as to smoke or not to smoke). Internet is fine wired. There is no insane-drying need to have this suicidal profit-making deployement set appart to satisfy our neurotic thirst for semantic communications to our needs. This belief will lead to our end. If this happen we are doomed, and to an unreachable level of life quality that our parents would have been the only and the least to witness.

  • Dalton Ovitt January 24, 2011

    Why is it that the content reminds me of one other equivalent a bed that I read some place else?

You must be logged in to post a comment.

blog comments powered by Disqus