

Barcelona: The most wired city in the world - jordigg
http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/barcelona-wired-city/

======
6t6t6
"Consider for a moment the possibilities of Wi-Fi-fitted lampposts, each with
its own IP address, monitoring the numbers of Facebook posts, tweets, or
credit card swipes as you stroll by with your smartphone (which identifies
where you are from) and withdraw cash, buy shoes, drink a soda, and visit a
museum."

Can the journalist explain us how a lamppost can do that? Even assuming that
the tourist is connected to the free municipal WiFi -most of them don't-, how
can the council track https traffic with Facebook, or Youtube? It is not only
technically "challenging" but also illegal under Spanish Law.

In my opinion, this is a long and sensationalist article to explain that
Barcelona signed a big contract to build municipal network that covers all the
city using Wifi and FO and that, thanks to this network, now it is really
cheap and easy to deploy sensors around the city that allow Big Data
applications.

Buy the way, Catalonia has the biggest Open Wifi network in the world, with
more than 30.000 nodes:

[http://guifi.net/node/17714/view/map](http://guifi.net/node/17714/view/map)

Many users of this network where pushing the councils of their towns to
collaborate in the project installing public nodes in order to expand the
network. Also, a lot of research has been done about protocols to manage big
open networks.

The municipal network in Barcelona is not connected to Guifi.net, but I wonder
if Guifi.net had somehow influenced the council of Barcelona to take this
decision.

I think it is also interesting to note the hate that they thrown at the newly
elected Mayor at the end of the article. But in any case, I guess that it is
always good news for the citizens of a city if Fortune.com don't like their
Mayor.

~~~
calgoo
Regarding guide.net.... The local governments are not big supporters (except
towns where the ADSL is not working).

Free or community driven projects are seen as unholy or something like that to
these mafia, i mean government workers. I would not be surprised if we get a
call soon that these installations are illegal because they are unfair to
Telefonica or something similar./Sarcasm

~~~
6t6t6
Not all councils behave like mafia. It just depend witch political party is
ruling the city. Actually, some local governments are quite open to backup
initiatives coming from the civil society. You know, governments are there
because of an election, so they are not better of worst than the people that
voted them.

------
ciupicri
> Consider for a moment the possibilities of Wi-Fi-fitted lampposts, each with
> its own IP address

I hope they're talking about IPv6, not IPv4.

~~~
prodmerc
I'd assume it's a private network, why would they need public IPs?

~~~
zz1
In order to be easier to pwn!

------
Animats
The question, of course, is who gets access to the data.

~~~
jordigg
There's an application process to access the data. The application can be
found here: [http://www.bigdatabcn.com/en/](http://www.bigdatabcn.com/en/)

> Big Data CoE Barcelona is a new centre driven by Barcelona Digital
> Technology Centre, the Government of Catalonia, the Barcelona City Council
> and Oracle that will build, develop and provide tools, data sets and value-
> added Big Data capabilities to enable companies on defining, testing and
> validating Big Data models before its final implementation. The center will
> also offer training services for professionals looking for specialization
> within the field and a dissemination programme focused on showing trends and
> Big Data success cases to spread among businesses a new culture based on the
> value of the data.

[1] [http://www.bigdatabcn.com/en/about-big-data-coe-
barcelona/](http://www.bigdatabcn.com/en/about-big-data-coe-barcelona/)

------
pcunite
"IDC estimates that by 2020, the Internet of Everything will monitor and
manage countless activities in our lives, from the moment we awake to the
moment we fall asleep, from catching the bus to filling the refrigerator,
walking the dog, and watering the garden."

And you think Revelation 13:16-17 is a joke?

