Community WiFi comes to Hyde Park

You got signal? I got signal! Brian Goodman of Boston Main Streets and Pat McCormick of the Boston Wireless Advocacy Group check out Roslindale WiFi under the stars - just like Hyde Park WiFi, only Rozzier - after a meeting about WiFi in Roslindale, Hyde Park and West Roxbury.

Hyde Park's become the second city neighborhood to get a city-sponsored WiFi zone after Roslindale. The city's Main Streets program last week installed a wireless access point atop the municipal building in Hyde Park (at Fairmount Avenue and River Street) - similar to the wireless access points that now cover Roslindale Square.

The service, separate from the Boston Public Library's existing WiFi service at the Hyde Park branch, is aimed at giving local businesses a way to give their employees and customers quick 'Net access. But anybody within sight of the municipal building can tap in.

When you're near the community center, call up your wireless access software and do a site survey. Connect to the Boston WiFi network and you'll get a login screen, on which you'll have to create an account. The goal is to keep people from tying up bandwidth "downloading eight hours worth of video," Brian Goodman of Boston Main Streets said. After an hour, you're bumped off the access point, but you can log back in, he said.

Goodman spoke tonight at meeting of Boston Main Streets and the Boston Wireless Advocacy Group in the Roslindale Community Center - where Roslindale's first community access point is located (ironically, wireless was not available at the meeting, thanks to the three beefy concrete floors between the basement meeting room and the access point up on the roof).

Goodman said Roslindale Square now has three access points - two others are near the train station. To date, usage has been low - the login page gets maybe 20 hits a day, but the city hasn't done all that much to promote it as it works with volunteering companies to finish building the system, he said. Coming up: Promotional efforts that will include "starter kits" for local businesses that want to extend the WiFi into their shops (the packages will cost roughly $300). The city is also building wireless zones along Centre Street in West Roxbury and in the South End.

He emphasized the goal is to give shopowners another tool to draw customers in - Emack & Bolio's in Rozzie Square, for example, has long offered its own WiFi service - not as a replacement for "business-level service" from Internet service providers. Running wireless zones will cost roughly $1,200 a month, but Goodman said the city hopes to pay for that through sponsorships and ads on the login page: "We're trying to find a way to fund it without going to the taxpayers," he said.