City to Provide Wireless Access

Cambridge has a reputation as a sci-tech hot spot and a socialist enclave. Now, with Harvard’s help, a new program will bring these two traits together.

Free wireless internet access will become available to students and residents of Cambridge alike by summer 2006, thanks to a collaboration between Harvard, the city of Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The plan, which aims to blanket the city with wireless internet access free of charge, is the brainchild of Cambridge Director of Information Technology Mary Hart, and City Council members Henrietta Davis and Michael Sullivan.

The initiative has been under development for the past year, according to city councillors. Harvard and MIT are aiding Cambridge in its efforts by offering technological advice.

“Anytime that you can bring bright and engaged innovators to the table, there’s a real synergy to it,” said Cambridge City Council member Brian P. Murphy ’86-’87, referring to the collaboration with the universities. “[The collaboration] allows you to come up with ideas and build off of others’ ideas and I think that that’s a real benefit to the process.”

Beyond the technical expertise that the universities offer, a more practical reason underlies the partnership. The plan will use a “mesh” system to provide the city of Cambridge with free wireless internet access. A “mesh” system connects and expands various pre-existing wireless internet sites to offer wireless services with a higher level of quality than dial-up, but a lower level of quality than DSL or broadband, said City Councillor Michael Sullivan.

The “mesh” system also links the universities and the city geographically.

“If you look at a map of the city of Cambridge, you can look at MIT as being more helpful in the eastern part of the city and look at Harvard as being more helpful to the western part of the city,” Murphy said.

Harvard has lent a helping hand to the city’s initiative since the project’s inception, according to Dan Moriarty, Harvard University’s chief information officer.

“Harvard has provided periodic network engineering and project management advice at the request of the City of Cambridge during the last year as they evaluated the feasibility of this ambitious project,” wrote Moriarty in an e-mail.

Despite this pre-existing relationship, Moriarty noted that Harvard has a limited involvement in the project right now since it is still in its early stages. However, this should not deter the University from becoming more involved in the future, Murphy and Sullivan said.

“[T]here are many important questions to be answered,” wrote Moriarty. “We look forward to reviewing the city’s full plan at an appropriate future date.”

Sullivan noted that the plan still has a long way to go until the summer.

“There are some limited aspects to it,” said Sullivan, referring to the relatively low strength of the signal.

Murphy also noted the on-going nature of the project and said that he expects to see more changes in the initiative over time to keep up with evolving technological standards.

“We want to provide leading-edge services to our citizens and visitors,” Murphy said.

Despite the challenges that the project will face, Murphy praised the future benefits of wireless access to Cantabrigians and the city’s expectation of low capital outlay that will result from the initiative.

“We’re trying to attack the digital divide by providing a reasonable level of access to anyone and everyone in the city,” he said. “[Working with MIT] gives us a sense of if the mesh technology is working. It’ll allow us to institute this over time that won’t require a giant amount of capital.”

But Kelly L. Mooney ’09 expressed little interest in the plan.

“I honestly don’t use my computer for wireless outside of my room and the library,” she said.

“But...if you wanted to go into a coffee shop or something [having free internet access] would be really nice.”

Other cities, including Portland and Philadelphia, have begun the processes to implement citywide wireless services by next year, according to Newsweek.

—Staff writer Laura A. Moore can be reached at lamoore@fas.harvard.edu.