Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
tion as a constitutional right to the city and should be ensured by the deployment of
networks that allow people’s universal access to worldwide information.
This path began to consolidate with the urban infrastructure for the establishment
of community networks, spreading the birth of digital cities as a meeting place
real and virtual, as a place and non-place.
The composition of digital cities expanded with the use of wireless technology
- most notably Wi-Fi and WIMAX 1 . The first experiments have emerged as condominium
networks of organizations that have their individual networks collectively
and share the cost of maintenance, as was the experience of CANARIE (Canada’s
Advanced Internet Development Organization). This company, a nonprofit, is part
of Connecting Canadians program launched by the Canadian Government, and
was created with the purpose of accelerating the development of the Internet and
ease the innovative applications development that exploit the infrastructure of highspeed
Internet power for the benefit of Canadians. Several cities in Canada have
already established their fibers condominiums 2 .
Canada has defined public schools as anchors of fiber networks for several reasons.
First, because ensuring access to broadband Internet is a vital step towards
teaching quality improvement at schools. Second, because schools form the focus
points of residential neighborhoods, making feasible a network architecture intended
to extend the fiber cable to homes. Besides schools, other institutions also serve
as anchors: hospitals, universities, public administration bodies. Although in many
cases it was necessary to conduct new implementations, in most of the cases the
project was able to incorporate fiber cables that had been installed for companies
adhering to the condo or that provide services by renting or selling such resources.
Another country that has expanded the experience of condominium networks
for various cities was the U.S.. In the Chicago experience, CivicNet, also based on
1. There are various wireless technology forums ( http://www.wirelessbrasil.org, accessed on December
20th 2005) declaring that in future this is the Internet course. The Wi-Fi technology is used for
short distances, but has enabled networks installation in small cities and neighborhoods and WIMAX
allows radio transmissions over long distances more quickly.
2. CANARIE is the advanced Internet development organization in Canada. It was founded in 1993
and works with government, industry and research and education communities to improve infrastructure,
application development and progressive use of the Internet in Canada. The company has created
one of the largest research and education institutions networks in the world using broadband Internet
(http://www.canarie.ca/about/index.html, accessed on December 18th 2005).
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