Wireless Oakland is an initiative in
Oakland County, Michigan
Oakland County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a principal county of the Detroit metropolitan area, containing the bulk of Detroit's northern suburbs. Its county seat, seat of government is Pontiac, Mic ...
to blanket the County's with wireless Internet service.
Rollout
Wireless Oakland enabled Internet service providers to install WiFi transmitters on public infrastructures (such as telephone poles and radio towers). The county's private-sector partners owned, operated and maintained the project.
The poletop radios provided access to the network,
SSID
In IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networking standards (including Wi‑Fi), a service set is a group of wireless network devices which share a ''service set identifier'' (''SSID'')—typically the natural language label that users see as a netw ...
"Wireless Oakland", which greets the user with a login page. Free internet service was being offered at a 128 kbit/s by MichTel Communications, which was to charge fees for additional download speeds and services.
As of May 2007, the phase I pilot was operational in seven communities:
Troy
Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...
,
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...
,
Oak Park,
Royal Oak
The Royal Oak was the English oak tree within which the future King Charles II of England hid to escape the Roundheads following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. The tree was in Boscobel Wood, which was part of the park of Boscobel House ...
,
Madison Heights,
Pontiac Pontiac most often refers to:
* Pontiac (Odawa leader) ( – 1769), Native American war chief
*Pontiac (automobile), a former General Motors brand
Pontiac may also refer to:
Places and jurisdictions Canada
* Pontiac, Quebec, a municipality
** Apo ...
and
Wixom
Wixom ( ) is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northwestern suburb of Detroit, Wixom is located roughly from downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 17,193.
The city was home to the now-demoli ...
.
Shutdown
Due to one of the most difficult economic times Michigan and the nation has ever seen, MichTel Communications was unable to secure funding to continue wireless internet service to the Phase One Communities and to deploy wireless internet service to the remaining portions of the county.
As a result of the lacking of funding, the contract between the county and MichTel Communications expired. Oakland County is still looking for partners to continue the project.
Officials pull plug on Wireless Oakland, citing funding problems (June 2008)
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External links
Wireless Oakland
References
{{Reflist
Wi-Fi providers