Intel has a list of the top 100 Most Unwired Cities. They’re referring to availability of wireless networking. “Unwired” probably wasn’t the best word to choose, since the word “wired” has a long tradition of indicating the acceptance of new technologies.
Anyhow, I see that my stomping grounds, Atlanta, comes in at #6. I was pleasantly surprised to see Mobile, Alabama make the list at #72, and Birmingham at #86 (I was also surprised that they weren’t in the reverse order). They only surveyed the 100 largest metropolitan areas, otherwise, I wonder if Huntsville might have made thelist, as it’s home to organizations such as Adtran, Intergraph, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center.
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You’d think that the Seattle area would be highly “wired” with Microsoft in town and all, but it’s true, we suck in the “wired” game. Until people and companies are willing to pony up the $$$ to make it happen, we’ll continue our lag behind other major cities.
even the small cities are getting on board, like mine, Schenectady, NY, home of the 12345 zip code for instance, among some other really great things especially related to electricity, radio, and broadcast tv.
http://schenectadyny.info/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b=cc,v=display,m=1093335603,s=20
If they only surveyed the largest 100 metropolitan areas and then proceeded to rank the “top 100″, #72 and #86 aren’t very good; they’re decidedly below average.
Of course, I don’t know your history with the area. Perhaps your being pleasantly surprised was a result of uncharitable thoughts toward Mobile and Birmingham
First of all, I didn’t realize that Mobile was even in the 100 largest cities. Birmingham doesn’t surprise me as much, because it’s got a metro population over 1M (Mobile is about half that). But it surprises me that Mobile would beat out cities like Honolulu, El Paso, and Oklahmoa City.
When I last lived in Mobile (about 15 years ago), I was lucky to be able to even find more than a handful of BBS’s that I could dial into.
I’ve never been to Mobile, but that sounds like a decent comparison. I used to live in a town (Moscow, ID) which also only had a handful of BBS’s available, and it certainly is not in the 100 largest cities now. So the fact that Mobile grew from “handful of BBS’s size” to “one of the largest 100 metropolitan areas” in fifteen years is impressive (though this is all horribly unscientific). I’m now officially surprised too
I’m not surprised that Huntsville metro isn’t on the list, Dougal. We like our wires here. [I'd be floored to see wireless anywhere on the Arsenal, really. Those people are security conscious!]
As for me and my house … I’ve tried to push going wireless in the machine shop here at Teledyne, to no success. [I'm also pushing for RFID beacons with our build paper so that we can track hardware in the shop ... but there's huge resistance, because people don't want to be seen as slackers. Feh. I'm not slacker-hunting---I'm hunting for inefficiencies! Less inefficiency === more hardware in the shop === fewer layoffs!]
[FWIW, I still claim Huntsville though I've moved to Madison.
]
Well, remember that the list wasn’t the “top 100 wireless” out of all cities. It was the top 100 biggest cities, in order of their wirelessness. So, even if there was an open WiFi access point in every building, Hsv wasn’t going to be on the list.
And I don’t expect Redstone to have much wireless going on, because as you say, they are a bit security-conscious (and rightly so). It’s just that there are a lot of employers in Hsv that one would consider “high tech”. So the per-capita geekiness in Hsv is higher than in a lot of other places.
I ran across this when I was looking around because my city is talking about getting wifi for free for everyone blanketing the whole city. Interesting that we haven’t come a long way in the last three years. wired vs. wireless over the radio is kind of irrelevant
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SimpleBits | Figure 1: Current Work/Life Balance – ah, the joy of self-employment. Wireless Internet: Intel Ranks the 100 Most Unwired U.S. Cities – Denver is #7, I moved here from the Bay Area (#2) and grew up in Seattle (#1). (thanks Dougal ) Casio G-Shock GW-400J Vibrating Watch Reviewed (Verdict: It’s About Time) – I like the idea of a phat digital watch, but there’s something about a simple, classic analog watch that I like better.