The Star Tribune’s Steve Alexander reports that March 11 is the finish date for the Wireless network. There are still significant dead areas in the City however. If I read this right, the City needs to negotiate with Xcel to hang radios in the “challenge” areas.

One of the delay problems mentioned is “foliage barriers.” So what about all the radios that have been hung since the fall leaf drop? None have been tested with foliage. Could this cause significant problems with the network as the leaves come back to the trees.

Foliage was a significant problem in the Seward pilot areas where they actually had to rebuild the network after they had sold accounts to residents. The original pilot implementation was mainly put in place when there were no leaves on the trees. When spring came, connectivity dropped for a significant number of subscribers. We will have to wait and see. (Maybe one of the Journalists-with-a-capital-J out there could consider asking this when you have their ear.)

Read the article here: Minneapolis Wi-Fi finish set for March 11