I heard it through the grapevine: It seems we have wireless antennas on the poles on my street. I also see a new wireless access point available on my Mac’s wireless menu. It’s called ‘USI Wireless’. It requires a password. (Right after the antennas were installed, there was an access point called ‘test’ and that disappeared when the USI one appeared.)

Googling ‘USI Wireless’ turns up this blurb for Universal Scientific Industrial Co., LTD in Taiwan. They make wireless equipment. USI could also stand for US Internet, one of the vendor finalists (along with Earthlink) in Minneapolis.

The City says the pilot wireless test will start around July 1. I didn’t think my street was part of the pilot (it’s not if you check the map). Get the pilot maps here (south) and here (north). (PDF files, you need Acrobat.)

I checked the City’s Wireless Minneapolis site and there are no updates on wireless deployment, or the pilot projects or even the event scheduled for July 8 to demonstrate Wireless. My information comes from the Communications department ( see my previous blog post).