St. Gallen student union helps build first wireless mesh network in Switzerland
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007[Oops, this post from two weeks ago got stuck in my drafts folder.]
The Student Union of the University of St.Gallen has a long tradition in community-related work. It all began in fall 1956 when the Student Union was in the front rank of the massive effort of St. Gallen’s citizens to accomodate a large portion of the 14′000 Hungarian refugees who had fled from the Red Army, and especially the fifty refugee students the University of St. Gallen admitted at that time. (The number sounds ridiculous, but school enrollment was about 500 at that time.)
In 2000, the Student Union granted the crucial seed money for what has become toxic.fm, the first radio station in the country to offer on-the-job training for students and other young people and vibrant news hub for St. Gallen’s young and young-at-heart.
Last Thursday, the city council of St. Gallen announced that the city is going to install the first city-wide wireless mesh network in Switzerland. (Yes, we’re lagging a bit behind the U.S. in this respect, which may be partially due to better broadband access and connectivity.) In order to implement the project as fast as possible, the city’s IT department has teamed up with a number of organizations, including our Student Union, which is in charge of the administrative, organizational and legal aspects of the project. Currently, a few dozen students are test-running the network, and early in 2007, the network will be open to the public.
Needless to say that I love the project! (Note to self: check security issues before terminating broadband subscription next November …)
(Disclosure: Like every postgraduate student, I am a member of the Student Union and affiliated with toxic.fm as one of its founders.)
