PiSA-SA: Municipal Wi-Fi Based on Wi-Fi Sharing

Large-scale municipal wireless networks are currently being established all around the world. These networks provide a rich set of local services, such as tourist guides, environmental information, pedestrian navigation, and local shopping guides. As recent financial failures of prominent municipal wireless networks show, it is economically challenging to achieve the bandwidth and coverage that is necessary for such a network. At the same time, Wi-Fi-sharing communities achieve high bandwidth and good coverage at a very low cost by capitalizing on the dense deployment of private access points in urban areas. However, from a technical, conceptual, and security perspective, Wi-Fi sharing community networks resemble a patchwork of heterogeneous networks instead of one well-planned, uniform and secure network as required for the economic success of a municipal Wi-Fi project. In this paper, we show how to realize municipal wireless services on top of a Wi-Fi-sharing infrastructure in a technically sound and economically attractive fashion while taking into account legacy devices and mobile clients. Our solution cleanly separates the roles of controlling and administering the network from providing bandwidth and wireless access. This allows municipalities to focus their resources on municipal wireless services instead of providing Wi-Fi access.