Community and Municipal WiFi ToolKit

Need to make a connection? Does your City not provide free wireless? This toolkit is designed to help you find Wireless broadband resources or find resources so that you can lobby for and build an area-wide WiFi network in your area.

FREE WIFI NETWORKS

Use the following free wireless network sites to see if there is an available hotspot in your area:

AnchorFree - a user-run community that brings together over 10,000 free Wi-Fi hot spots globally. The online community consists of thousands of independent hot-spot networks that have united into one global alliance. The alliance is currently proliferated and powered by AnchorFree.

FON Network - FON is a Global Community of individuals who share WiFi.

SF LAN - SFLan is an experimental wireless community network in the San Francisco Bay Area

JiWIRE - Find WiFi hotspots anywhere in the world with JiWIRE which can locate up to 132,000 hotspots in 131 countries.

 

CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO'S WIRELESS INITIATIVE

Whether you are a citizen of San Francisco or are located in another city, San Francisco's initiative could be a model to adapt to your community. Most importantly the City's digital inclusion strategy encompasses training, support, community information portals, and more.

OTHER BAY AREA INITIATIVES

Wireless Africa - Anietie Ekanem is a pioneer in providing wireless broadband services in the East Bay and in Africa. Explore his innovative initiatives as a possible model for your community.

AC Transit (East Bay Busses) are testing deployment of WiFi access in its busses.

OTHER USEFUL RESOURCES

Digital Cities Convention - See what's happening in U.S. cities with municipally sponsored projects.

WANT TO BUILD YOUR OWN WIFI NETWORK IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?

CUWin - The pioneer in providing communities with a low open source software solution allowing communities to build their own low-cost wireless mesh networks. This is an excellent step-by-step resource for building your own area-wide network.

Mini-Box : Suppliers of computer hardware that can be used to create WiFi nodes using the CUWin software.

Meraki Mini: A low-cost node for building a Wifi Network.

Seattle Community Network - Provides an example of what is possible using a community developed model of wireless broadband.

Public IP - Public IP provides hotspot operators with an extremely simple, highly versatile, FREE, open source hotspot solution. Public IP's ZoneCD is freely distributed software that has been created to help implement safe, free, WiFi hotspots.