City seeks community input on downtown Wi-Fi project

ZANESVILLE, Ohio- Free Wi-Fi may be making its way into downtown Zanesville, but the city is asking for community input first.

The City of Zanesville has applied for a broadband grant through the Appalachian Regional Commission. The grant would allow the city to finish the design and construction of a high-speed wireless network that would bring Wi-Fi capabilities to the downtown area.

“We want to make it free public wifi as well so anyone who whether you’re a visitor, an employee, a resident; you are able to use it, log in and have access to the internet,” said Abbey Carrel, City of Zanesville intern.

Before the city can move forward with the project, they are asking for community feedback about Wi-Fi expectations through an online survey that Carrel created.

“The big part of it is we want to get information [and] feedback from people in the community. See what they think about it, see what internet people have now, what they want, what they expect out of an internet provider,” Carrel said. “Those responses are going to be really important in order to move forward in this project.”

The survey is available online at www.coz.org on the main page under ‘News and Notices.’ It will be open until August 31st.