Need a wireless connection option to span 2000 feet.

[teholdsedare]

Cost is not an issue... but I dont think I should have to pay more then $3000-4000 for something. I remember my old home town of Spokane WA has a downtown wifi and its run by the city. What type of equipment do they use for a mass wifi setup?

 

[inzone]

Mostlikely they had control of a certian bandwith spectrum so that they just broadcast like what the mobile carriers do to provide wieless coverage over a certian area. There were also most likely towers put up for the signal to be repeated. But that is on a large scale and with a cities budget to pay for it.

Judging by your requirements of 2000 feet you must be doing this outside so whatever you get has to be able to be installed outdoors. You could get a modem and router installed at a central location and then a series of repeaters to extend the range. It all depends on where your tring to install this and what te coverage area consists of.

 

[teholdsedare]

This is for a city of 2000 people, and were trying to see if its a feasible solution for a downtown (1/2 mile wide at the longest angle). If nothing else I will run it myself with a less then stellar range... but I would still like there to be no repeaters. I dont have property every 600 feet, nor do I feel like asking permission.

Small town politics is worse then trying to brush an infants teeth.

 

[john-b691]

You pretty much have to have repeaters of one form or another. You have 2 issues. The first is even if it were legal to put in a high powered central transmitter all your users would share the bandwidth of a single radio. The second is that it is easy to transmit but is hard to receive the signal from tiny devices like phones that transmit at very low power. But it doesn't matter it is illegal to put in a system that would cover the distance you want from one location.

If you cannot get locations your best bet is to try to talk to one of the cell providers since they already have lots of small cell sites in most cities. Many are putting in wifi to offload their 3g/4g bandwidth. You never know what type of deal you can work with them. They may allow some free access if you were to buy the equipment and pay the cost to installed.

 

[teholdsedare]

you say that like its not legal? If big cities can do it and get away with it, what infrastructure do they use? What type of equipment?

Links would be amazing.

 

[john-b691]

They do exactly as the other posts stated. They use lots of repeaters which all transmit at low power. No matter how big the city is the federal government ie the FCC will kick their butt if they run illegal equipment.

Try google search for outdoor repeater.

 

[inzone]

Here is an interesting option and it would take a little reasearch on your part but it can be interesting. If you have property in the town that is somewhat centraly located you can install a tower and while the initial cost might be a little high the end result is you could actually rent space on the tower to any of the cell phone providers and get a monthly income on the tower plus you could then have a place to broadcast your wifi from and depending on your equipment cover the area your talking about. Also if you do get some of the cell phone companies to rent space you could even get some info on equipment needed for your project.

 

[teholdsedare]

Best answer selected by teholdsedare.