Chicago’s South Side is finally getting its ultra-high-speed Wi-Fi -- at least two blocks of it

Two community groups working to jump-start a delayed plan to roll out ultra-high-speed wireless Internet access throughout Chicago’s South Side will launch a Wi-Fi network in Woodlawn in mid-March, organizers said.

Though the launch starts small -- a free 50-megabit-per-second Wi-Fi connection in a two-block radius -- the project has lined up router giant Cisco Systems and its cloud networking group, formerly called Meraki, to provide the connectivity “plumbing” for an eventual communitywide network. The long-range vision is to support efforts to create a gigabit-speed fiber-optic and wireless network in as many as 15 innovation zones throughout the city, says Pierre A. Clark, who is spearheading the project as head of the Woodlawn Broadband Expansion Partnership and the Southside Broadband Expansion Collaborative.