Community Free WiFi?
One idea that Ed and I have discussed a few times is providing Free Internet to the nearby community. Hardware investment would be greater than just solving our own problem but we might be able to get a grant for this directly/indirectly.
One local new potential community partner in this is the Teen Green & Media Center that opened a block down in the former Covenant House location. Our steeple / building height (would need to be done in a way not to hurt the building or the historic status of it) might be a good place to locate it while they might have access to funding sources or donors.
If there is a reticence to making the church itself a community center physically there very well may be ways to do it virtually and give something back to the immediate area.
It could also be an advertising tool as people could be forced to see a landing page (that could have things like our calendar, etc.) and agree to certain terms before gatewaying out. Similarly a code could be required that we then used to force them to interact with us like on a weekly basis.
Yes we could limit the access to adult sites. Yes we could do some bandwidth management that keeps enough bandwidth for our uses in the church i.e. technically run 2 different wifi networks giving priority to the private network first.
wifi would certainly draw a younger, tech savvy crowd. a simple "FREE WIFI" banner could easily advertise it.
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