Telerama was an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

and technology company based in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

. It was founded in 1991 and promoted itself as the third ISP in world history. Telerama launched its

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

network in Pittsburgh in 2001, comprising over 200 nodes. It concentrated access mainly in "coffee-house" style arrangements. In 2003, Telerama's Wi-Fi network started appearing at sites in the

Cultural District, Pittsburgh The Cultural District is a fourteen-square block area in Downtown Pittsburgh, USA bordered by the Allegheny River on the north, Tenth Street on the east, Stanwix Street on the west, and Liberty Avenue on the south. The Cultural District features ...

. In 2004 it started lighting up large buildings in downtown

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

. Telerama's stated approach to municipal Wi-Fi access was somewhat unusual. Eschewing the typical Mu-Fi concept of blanketing every square inch of a town area with signal, Telerama instead concentrated on specific locations like coffee houses and apartments. Locations were usually serviced by a high-speed DSL line a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

based site router, and a handful of WiFi antennas arranged to service seating areas of a location.

Closing

In April 2008, Telerama took its web site and associated email system off-line. On April 4, Telerama founder Doug Luce stated, "We're actually in negotiations now to move service over to another local ISP. If that works out, we will actually be going out of business." On April 21, 2008, its IP space began to be announced by aspStation, Inc. As of April 22, 2008, the Telerama nameservers and website are once again available.Telerama customers should get Internet restored soon
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References

{{Pittsburgh Corporations Internet service providers of the United States Telecommunications companies established in 1991 1991 establishments in Pennsylvania