Knock, Knock... Who’s There?

Final Report -- December 28, 2008

West End Cafe Patron Shawn Rogers using our Free Wireless Internet Service.

Volunteer Linda Hopkins looks on as Fran Smith checks the Free Wireless Internet signal at the West Union War Memorial.

At the beginning of our grant funded program our goal was to provide: “A Free Public Wi-Fi access program, utilizing state-of-the-art technologies to foster community awareness, growth and social intercourse for the citizens of Doddridge County, WV in areas of education, business development and tourism via the Internet.”

I'm glad to report at the conclusion of our grant period, that we have been very successful in meeting our objectives. It has been a very fun project for all the volunteers involved; we even managed to effectively adapt and change our program, as we encountered a few obstacles along the way.

Initially, when we proposed our budget and request for funds, the cost of the hardware involved was half the cost of what we proposed. The company we had selected as our provider is Meraki. They really did great things to pioneer freeing the web, with inexpensive “standard” equipment, changed their business strategy to now only offering “pro” equipment, by phasing out the original, and doubling their prices, they effectively rendered half of our investment as obsolete, and went from “Freeing the Web”, to charging more, or as we like to say; “Feeing the Web”, and they added paid advertisements on-top-of the service, which we were providing for free. The reality is the equipment was the same -- they just now make more than twice as much profit. Hey that’s the American Way!

So we found it was necessary to take appropriate military action! We divided and conquered! We placed half of our equipment, the new “pro” edition in the Town of West Union, WV. And we placed the other half of old “standard” edition in the City of Clarksburg, WV since that was the type of system they had implemented. Then we continued phasing in our plan as originally intended. We would not be defeated!

We pitched our plan at the Doddridge County Courthouse, to the County Commissioners and they unanimously passed a resolution allowing us to implement the free service. The very first location we installed service was at the West End Cafe, which oddly enough turned out to be the business of the newly hired Director for the Economic Development Authority for Doddrige County, WV.

Then we met some of the officials from the Town of West Union, WV where we found our angel, Fran Stewart, the owner of Web Hicks. Fran, whom we had never met before, was an instrumental person in helping the town also receive funding grants from our same sponsor, the Alliance of West Virginia Champion Communities. With help from our angel Fran, we redistributed the location of our equipment around town to more effectively serve the needs of the community. We have placed the future expansion in her most capable hands. We couldn’t have done it without Fran!

After the completion of equipment placement in both locations we forged ahead with our software implementation. We are very pleased with the initial and final results of our project, both in West Union and in Clarksburg. Precisely as we stated in our Grant Proposal “each community has their very own Community Map showing where the Free Public Access Points are located, as well as the small businesses, and community services, using GPS data, digital photos and You Tube Videos.”

Our project can be easily sustained and we have designed it in such a manner that it can be easily replicated with each small community being represented on a county-wide map as well. We have plans to reach further once this Project is complete, utilizing remote solar powered repeaters, built into birdhouses and street light poles.

When we originally began planning our project, the national economy was doing OK, except with a slight downturn in the housing sector. Since that time the economy has gone to hell in a hand basket. Banks have failed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with numerous others needed bailing out. What the average American had known for some time, was taking the economists forever to finally say; we were in a Recession. The good news was, as a nation we elected Barack Obama as our 44th president. The FCC, which had been preparing to offer up the “white space” currently used by the nation's television broadcasters to provide more free high speed internet access once the country converts to digital TV on February 19, 2009, has stalled it’s decision until the newly elected president takes office on January 20, 2009. We feel this was a wise choice and we remain hopeful that a “real change” is in the wind, and will be sweeping the country under the next administration.

In these hard economic times, we can take great pride in knowing that our program Knock, Knock...Who’s There? has made a difference in many people’s lives by bringing them free access to high speed internet. With access comes the ability to promote small businesses, and their services to a global marketplace at no cost to the business person. With access, our neighbors have a world of information at their fingertips to help them explore and discover new technologies and techniques used around the globe and assist them in the pursuit of their personal and professional goals. With access, we can continue to build upon the offerings we have started here today.

Thank you Alliance of West Virginia Champion Communities for placing your trust in us.

Actual Usage Statistics confirm that when we said Knock Knock... We know that a total of 614 users, were there! Thet were downloading 105.01506 gigabytes as of December 28, 2008, benefiting from our Free Public Wireless service and over 177 people have viewed locations on the West Union map and 2,435 visitors have viewed the Clarksburg map. Not to mention the numerous internet searches that will now find our local businesses when surfing the web, with more interactive content that previously didn't even exist.

Clarksburg, WV Free Public Wi-Fi Signal

6 users downloaded 440.8 MB in the last day.

Total of 394 users transferred 80.420912 gigabytes

West Union, WV West End Cafe Wi-Fi Signal

2 users downloaded 102.5 MB in the last day.

Total of 90 users transferred 13.006411 gigabytes

West Union, WV Free Public Wi-Fi Signal

7 users downloaded 597.3 MB in the last day.

Total of 130 users transferred 11.587737 gigabytes

This report was prepared and transmitted to the world using our free high speed public wireless internet service, by Thomas “David” Franklin with free open source OpenOffice* Writer software. The best things in life are free!

* OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.