Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Anyone want free Wifi for Green Lanes, Harringay?
Among the many 'divides' that oppress us, the so-called 'digital divide' may not seem close to the top of the list of punishing inequalities we are heir to, but some see it as a key leveller.
Arquiva (a telecomms services company owned by foreign pension funds) has signed up a reported 17 London councils (including Camden, Wandsworth, Hounslow, Islington and Hammersmith & Fulham) to provide passers by with 30 minutes free wifi - Haringey isn't one of them. By the end of next year, for instance, Camden say they'll have rolled it out to:
Camden Town and Kentish Town, Kilburn, Finchley, Hampstead and Belsize Park
It may have been a key selling point that the 'home page' they want you to visit first is the Council's website. They'll do their best to censor selected sites they dislike.
It could be that our lack of public wifi will help us be sen by the rest of London as 'poor'. I wonder why, as a large buyer of broadband and wifi, our Council doesn't offer it to residents in their homes, let alone in the streets? They used to provide 'utilities' like electricity and telephones - who would you rather get poor service from? A large corporate owned by the 1% that pays little tax or a local council with £2bn annual turnover who collects it from you? It's a modern industry that could provide local jobs. Governments regularly step in where there is a will - our railways and the nuclear industry can't survive without them. Broadband improves our quality of life - many therefore consider it a utility, and see it as a 'right'. It also fuels business.
In any particular street, many residents have a powerful wifi that could serve the entire street. If yours has, say, 200 dwellings, it would be thousands of pounds cheaper if we all got together and shared it - fibre optics, the next generation, is down to £15/month and getting cheaper. People hardly use their landlines now, why do we all have to have one each when we could have a community switchboard? Haringey Council are already providing us with a shared scheme to lower electricity prices, so why not broadband and landlines?
All this is a pipe-dream of course. The Council will eventually offer public wifi I guess, for the same reason it offers other services - because everyone else does, as their civil servants will point out to a Cabinet member or two and, hey presto, a new policy.
I'd like more. I think that many of the 'chattering classes' are willing and able, through forums like this, to conceive of creative ways in which we can make life better for all of us, working in concert with our representatives (the council) to reduce inequality, improve social 'justice' and enhance the quality of our lives through concerted action. That will enrich us more than anything else I can think of in the longer term and we're all in it for the longer term, aren't we?
What seems to me to be missing is 'connectedness' - we try to connect to each other on this forum, why can't we connect more with the body we formed to regulate for us and spend our collective Council Tax? As regards free Wifi, why didn't we press the Council to start with Green Lanes and roll it out so that the traders have it in their shops as well, levelling their playing field too? Bet the increase in Council revenue would more than pay for it.
As several telecomms companies provide Wifi to shops and cafes etc at no cost, paid for by advertising, the Traders Association could maybe do it themselves, but how much cooler would it be if we suggested more things here that make a positive difference and see them actually happen?
The first step is forming a link between the IT department that runs the Council website and you and I - 'the users'. That's often done through a 'users group'. I guess many of us could think of ways that haringey.gov.uk could be improved but I don't think the Council are hearing these voices, many of whom are qualified professionals in their field. What's not to like if they did?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by 2o21fske2ygv0 on
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The snooping you're referring to is the Echelon network run in the UK from RAF Menwith Hill. Prism is just an update to this to reflect more modern communication mediums. They are watching every move ;)
I'm familiar with large scale networking (mainly with Cisco kit). Done properly it is great. Done badly it is appalling and turns users off. Can you imagine a council that can barely manage bin collections managing to appoint an appropriate contractor to deliver a long term plan? The sights in the ivory towers are only set to the next election and no further.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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I think you are shooting yourself in the foot if you pour scorn on the council - you are paying them to act on your behalf and you are getting what you pay for. They work for you. If you are really put off by what you think they are doing you are oblidged to stand up and challenge them and propose a better way of doing things, aren't you?
If you have Cisco skills then wouldn't you be well placed to scrutinise their plans before they roll them out, saving us a potential mess?
It's too easy to say that they are no good at it and wash your hands of any responsibility - if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem, aren't you?
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The chance of ever actually seeing any plans before they went out would be minimal. I suspect that this would be done under a Framework 7 agreement. If you aren't accepted onto the framework then you have no right to see the tendering documents.
The individual can make as many suggestions and provide as many solutions as they like. Being able to achieve the results is the difficult bit. Have a look at the challenges George Ferguson is facing in getting anything done in Bristol (He's the independently elected mayor).
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Thanks Lee - I agree that it's not easy effecting change, but that's life, isn't it? I am a bit aware of Bristol, being involved with Transition here in Crouch End.
I hope that our Mayor will one day accept her salary in Haringey Pounds, as he did in Bristol Pounds (see today's Guardian) - change created by local people is not only possible, it seems easier in a better-connected world.
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Permalink Reply by Peter on
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Does anyone know what "Street WiFi" is?
I was checking my smart phone while waiting for the bus near "Hala" the other day and saw that I was connected to it.
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IIRC it was a BT experiment placing additional equipment into their phone boxes to try and build a network.
I thought it had been abandoned after they moved into providing connectivity through cafes under the brand name of "The Cloud" which was a billable service.
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For many months I was an avid fan of the much adumbrated MOKA cafe/restaurant here on Wightman Road - until, that is, Kevin actually opened it and soon found himself persuaded by certain parties on this website that they couldn't possibly pay for a skinny cup of his brand of coffee and one solitary brownie without the accompaniment of Free buckshee Wifi. This, no doubt, helped them to persuade their bosses that they were "working from home" and their spouses that they were "at the office" while they conducted endless hours of free wifi trysts with their boyfriends and mistresses - much to my distraction from Kevin's excellent parma ham and scrambled eggs on sourdough, and even more seriously from my perusal of the Irish Times.
I can always solve my problems with, say, the Lemon or Moka. Solvitur ambulando, as we say here on Wightman. But how am I to escape the ubiquitous effects of omnipresent "free Wifi" when Harringay and Haringey are penetrated by wall-to-wall connectivity?
"Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear."
It isn't the snooping or surveillance that I'd worry about. Just the inanity of the nattering on every side that will be the result of Chris's roll-out of free wifi "communication" for all. Elected silence indeed! How will I elect to have an occasional bit of quiet. And where are those distant still pastures towards which Silence, if she wished, might pipe me? My poor whorled ears are already protesting in anticipation.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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"Elected Silence."
That's got to be the answer! The way to wise decision-making by councillors.
Perhaps something like Silent Waiting - Society of Friends style? Or at least a ban on the smart phones which many councillors can't resist compulsively tapping and stroking while they wait their turn in the parallel monologues.
" . . . ten thousand whispering and nobody listening"
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OAE, maybe you should stay in more?
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Permalink Reply by Richard Woods on
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BT already offers FON via its subscribers. Have been in France and Spain for last few weeks - free wifi everywhere. we are soooooooo behind in the UK.
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FON is good - surprisingly 'egalitarian' for a management-heavy corporate like BT. All of us could share our wifi now, but people don't want to - what would it take to persuade owners to share their access?
A special Harringayonline.com password only obtainable here?
Or everyone adopt a password of, say:
snowden
to give free access to passers-by? Yes, they could digitally 'burgle' you if they knew the password, but they can do that now without knowing it, so the risk isn't significantly increased...
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