To the editor,
Thanks for the cover story on Chebucto's wireless initiative ("Something in the air," August 3). I wanted to write to correct a couple points. First, Johnathan's last name is spelled Thibodeau and he is the person responsible for virtually all things technical at Chebucto, and can be said to be the heart of Chebucto.
Next, the line "technically, it has never been free" is inaccurate—we are a federally registered charity and have to give stuff out for free. We supply free text-based accounts accessible over phone lines and modems and we supply free web hosting to non-profit groups with few resources. The massive information resource of Newfoundland's birth and death records online, Newfoundland's Grand Banks, is hosted by Chebucto for free.
The paragraph about pricing is not quite right either. We plan to offer full internet access with a Chebucto Plus membership, currently $100 a year. We also offer this as four payments of $30, a Chebucto Plus Quarterly plan. For node hosts we are thinking $50 a year for their own internet access and a $150 deposit for the physical node equipment.
Public access to URLs of Halifax-based entities for the general public will be free, as in the article. Applications to host a node are available at wifi.chebucto.net. If enough people in an area are interested in hosting nodes, we'll see about getting connectivity there.
By Andrew D. Wright
