Imagine you are sitting on the Wall in front of McMurran Hall on German Street. A colorfully named juice sits next to you. Your children are sitting on the lawn happily eating ice cream. You open your laptop, click on the internet icon, and off you go into the wonderful world of wireless—for a price.

Yes it’s true, after many months of rumor and intrigue, beginning in July 2007, wireless internet access is hitting the streets of Shepherdstown. It is offered as a service by Frontier Communications. Anyone will be able to hook up to high speed internet within the borders of the Corporation of Shepherdstown. The zone, called a mesh, will extend as far as Sheetz on Route 45 to the west, the elementary school to the south, and the day care center to the east. Frontier says they plan to extend the service to Charles Town soon and then later to the entire Jefferson County area. They are in talks with Shepherd University about extending the service to the campus.

According to Frontier Account Executive Cindy Littleton, the speed of the service will be 2 megabytes, which is as fast as a DSL hook-up. The price of the service is not yet fixed, but Littleton says it will be around $10 a month for existing DSL customers, and $15 a day for visitors to the Town.

The plan is not what many Shepherdstown residents had in mind when the Wi-Fi idea was first proposed. “I am all for having Wi-Fi in Shepherdstown” said Town resident Josh Stella, who provided early consultation on the project. “However, my concern is that the 802.11 frequency that will be used for this network is owned by the public, and the Town is not being compensated fully for this. For example, I would like to see a free service

provided to low income residents in Town in exchange for the Town providing telephone poles and radio frequency space. I am also worried that this wireless network will interfere with domestic wireless systems. There will be some interference, the question is how much.”

“When we first moved our business into Shepherdstown we could not get broadband at all,” said David Levine, a local technology entrepreneur. “We had to set up our own microwave connection across the river with a friend in Keedysville, to get high speed internet. And now Shepherdstown will have its own municipal wireless network. This is an embarrassment of riches.”