Municipal Wireless Broadband Projects

"Municipal wireless broadband projects = projects that are funded or supported by cities and towns. These range from downtown hotzones to city- and county-wide wireless broadband networks." (http://muniwireless.com/about/)

Background

Why are such projects important?

"As more and more cities, towns and counties initiate projects to provide a dynamic, wireless, communications platform for forward looking civic and economic development, it is also important to reflect on the question below:

Who is the intended beneficiary of an un-metered wireless communications commons? The people or the corporations? The answer is that robust development benefits both, just as public education, public highways and public safety do.

Thus the people should expect the best possible un-metered communications commons for economic development, education, health, public safety and government services that their government can provide them. This is, after all, the proper and reasonable role of a democratic government for, of, and by we, the people." (http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/archives/000451.html)

Discussion

The Business Case for government involvement

"We need to strongly separate the transport of bits from the provisioning of services and content. Once we accept this premise, we move on to the fact that the supply of bits is infinite and the hauling of them is a very small margin business. Clearly, with a robust municipal wireless infrastructure, a for-profit service and content provider is no longer required to be engaged in bit hauling as a necessary component of its business plan.

Thus Comcast, Verizon et al should be thankful that they can use lower cost municipal bit hauling and off load, "Outsource" if you prefer, a very low margin operation they no longer need to burden themselves with. They do not build roads for their trucks -- they out source that to the public sector. They do not pay tolls to use roads either.

By shedding a very low margin sector of their operations, Comcast & Verizon can improve their profits. So Municpal Wireless Networks are, in fact, fair, reasonable and democratic. They also support a healthy market place, which, I am sure you will agree, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a robust, democratic, civil society in which the market serves humanity.

In this scenario, it would be logical for the for-profit vendors of services and content to work with the public sector to insure the most extra-ordinary municipal wireless outcomes possible.

Consider, also, that most models for municipal wireless plan to offer several tiers of service. The entry level tier may be for free, but the others will charge progressively higher fees. It is assumed that the government, which can support long time horizons that the market can not, will only provide bit transport and e-government. All other services and content will be provided by others as they see fit -- many on a for-profit business basis. VoIP, for example, is not free. I actually pay two VoIP service providers." (http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/archives/000457.html)

Why the first wave of municipal wireless is failing?

From Wired at http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/09/muni_wifi?

"Craig Settles, an analyst who follows muni Wi-Fi and the author of the book Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless, says the whole thing gives him déjà vu -- especially Earthlink's recent troubles.

When he was employed by Metricom, Settles' Ricochet network was one of the pioneering wireless internet service providers in the United States in the late 1990s. Settles said one of Metricom's major failings was that "it tried to sell to consumers a service they perceived as too slow and too expensive, while ignoring the business community."

In fact, he suggests that Earthlink's recent press release indicates the company is abandoning the consumer Wi-Fi market for one very clear reason: "Consumers are a weak play for muni wireless -- they're expensive to get, and more expensive to keep."

"If Earthlink is serious about finding subscribers who are more likely to be 'lifers,' as (the) release states, then they should repackage their muni wireless offering for governments in a way that shows (them) the return on investment potential of anchor tenancy," Settles says.

In fact, Settles says all telecoms should focus more on developing an aggressive business-focused marketing campaign that "capitalizes on a continually growing interest among small- and medium-size businesses for mobile workforce applications."

But Hendricks isn't ready to give up on the general public just yet, and says the public Wi-Fi story is far from over. "Lets just say things work in waves," he said. "You see this a lot, especially in the Silicon Valley. The first time around, projects don't go so well. Then you try again."

In fact, Hendricks characterizes the recent downturn in muni Wi-Fi projects simply as "the end of the first beginning."

The second beginning, he says, may already be underway with the IEEE's work on 802.11s, a yet-to-be-ratified amendment to the Wi-Fi standard that defines how wireless devices can interconnect to create decentralized, ad-hoc networks, or "mesh networks."

Mesh-networking systems are designed to be self-configuring, allowing wireless nodes to find one another and create links automatically or with very little user intervention. Recent reports from market-analysis company In-Stat show that the Wi-Fi mesh-networking equipment market had more than 100 percent growth in 2006, and will have more than 90 percent growth in 2007.

Hendricks says technologies like WiMax, which offers longer range and higher bandwidth than Wi-Fi, may also prove to be a particularly appealing model for cities. Companies like Sprint and Clearwire have already stated they will begin investing billions of dollars for major WiMax build-outs in metropolitan areas like New York in the coming year.

"Cities are saying: Wait a minute, if these guys are doing all the work, why should we lift a finger?" Hendricks said.

And if the larger, more ambitious municipal networks prove infeasible? Well, growing evidence shows smaller, localized networks may be the answer.

"More localized Wi-Fi is one option -- for example, deploying in areas where there are a lot of tourists, foot traffic, business people," says Vos." (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/09/muni_wifi?)

More Information

Municipal wireless projects are failing, at http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/09/muni_wifi?

A report by the Institute for the Future, at http://future.iftf.org/2006/04/adsupported_mun.html

Practical report with case studies: Wi-Fi Done Right

News at http://muniwireless.com/topics/municipal/

See also our entry on the Wireless Commons