By Lindsay Wilkes-Edrington
The Tampa Tribune

Tampa City council members said today they don’t want to establish a wireless Internet network over all of Tampa, but prefer instead to only provide a connection to the city’s business and entertainment districts downtown.

James Buckner, the city’s director of technology, presented to the council the results of a study on how other cities across the country have set up city-wide wireless connections. A wireless network allows anyone with a wireless card installed on a computer to gain access to the Internet at any point within the area covered by the network. Buckner particularly analyzed San Francisco, which signed a deal earlier this year with the company Earthlink to set up wireless Internet networks that stretch across the entire city.

Councilman John Dingfelder, who requested the study, told Buckner that what he presented to the council was not what they had asked for. Dingfelder said he’d been interested in the potential to establish wireless in the downtown and Westshore areas, and around Channelside and Ybor City.

“If we’re talking about getting new residents downtown, and getting young people here, I think this is what we need,” Dingfelder said.

Dingfelder asked Buckner to return to the council in 90 days with a report on confining the wireless area to those downtown districts.

Related Story: Tampa Council To Hear Report On Citywide Wireless

 

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