Third Meeting

Prior to our third meeting with Daryl we had to complete tasks assigned to us. I am proud to say that we were able to complete all our assigned research on time. I believe it was very efficient because of the way the work was divided. We divided our work so that we didn't have to depend on each other finishing their work so that we could finish our work. This way we got all the work that needed to be done, and we weren't at each others throats.

During our third meeting with Daryl, we went over the research that we had done prior. Daryl was very impressed with what we had done. We then looked at our business plan so far to see how we could incorporate our research into what we had. We dissected the business plan and went over some of the specifics. For example, how we would word things in order for the City of Toronto to buy into our idea.

After doing this, we headed over to 200 Wellesley St. 200 Wellesley is a Toronto Housing Building. We had a meeting with the tenant representative so that we could find out a little bit about the building and the tenants that lived there.

200 Wellesley Street is the building we are using as the basis of our pilot project. This is the building most of our research has been based around. The tenant rep was able to give us some useful information about the building. For example, out of the 711 units in the building, roughly only 400 units had internet access. This was shocking to me, because I guess I always assumed that in this day and age almost everyone had internet access. I assumed wrong. I asked what the reasoning behind this was, and I was told that most of the tenants were elderly. Daryl then spat out a very interesting fact. He said that the biggest growing population of internet users are the elderly. This was also shocking to me. I didn't think the elderly cared to use the internet.

Of course, the elderly would not go out of the way to get internet access, but if they had access to it, I guess they would use it. So by us providing free of charge internet access, these elderly people can log on. It will also give those people that cannot afford internet access a chance to log on, and use the internet.

The internet is a plethora of information, and I think it is unfair for anyone to be limited to how they access this information. This project will go a long way to helping everyone have access to the internet, and if the City of Toronto buys into the idea, soon there won't be a single person in Toronto who doesn't have access to the internet. And I'm sure everyone will appreciate having access to the internet free of charge.

Next week, we are meeting with Daryl again to test run routers to see what type of signals we get where.

Second Meeting with Daryl

I was unable to attend the second meeting with Daryl, but my teammates did attend. According to my teammates, at this meeting, we got into the technical aspects of the business plan. More precisely, we started to go over what equipment we would want to use to set up our project.

Each of us were assigned a different aspect of the project to work on. I along with one of my teammates, had to work on finding out how we would integrate CISCO into our system, and what other qualifications it would require outside of just buying the hardware.

First Group Meeting

It's been very difficult to find time to meet as a group. We all have very real commitments, and especially since it is so close to exams, many of the members of our group are spread very thin. That being said, after finally realizing it would be hard to meet in person, we decided to use the very medium that our business plan is all about. The Internet!

We had a group meeting today via Google Docs. At the same time we were also able write down our ideas, and post links to sites we found so that all the group members could see it.

We were able to  find stats on City owned buildings, since our proposal is to the City of Toronto. And we were also able to find out about existing wireless coverages in Toronto.

While researching, I found another group who seems to be doing something very similar. Their project can be viewed at: http://wirelesstoronto.ca/

This is our project: http://www.w-n-n.ca/


While we have found a good amount of raw data, we have no idea how to use any of this as we have been given no real direction, and none of us have any real business experience. Our group will be meeting with Daryl tomorrow, and hopefully he can give us an idea on how to move forward.

First Meeting

We had our first meeting with the our Service Learning Partner last week. We are working with the Community Access Program. Our main contact is Daryl Hobbs.

CAP's main goal is to provide low cost internet. The area we are working in (St. Jamestown) has a very high population density.  What Daryl wants to do is give all these people free Internet access. This would be funded by advertiser's buying ad space on a splash page that every user would have to view before accessing the Internet.

Daryl also thinks that this will in fact help the ISPs since when people who have access to free internet realize they want faster speeds, they will sign on with an ISP.

Daryl's ultimate goal is to get this program going across all of Toronto. Our main goal as a group is to create a business plan proposing this idea, and why it is viable.