Muni WiFi Takes A Beating
from the weak-signal-strength dept
Municipal WiFi's been having a rough time lately, as the ridiculous levels of hype that built up around it comes back to bite it in the backside. Things have taken a turn for the worse over the past week: EarthLink's deal with San Francisco (which garnered tons of hype) now looks like it's dead, while its deal in Houston looks like it's dying as the company pulls back from muni WiFi altogether. Meanwhile, city officials in Chicago have dropped their plans to get a vendor to build a citywide network there, after balking at demands that the city become the network's anchor tenant, and guarantee certain payments to the vendors. Elsewhere in Illinois, AT&T has decided not to move forward with plans to build a muni network in Springfield.All in all, it's not been a good week for muni WiFi and its backers. But does all this bad news spell doom for muni WiFi as a whole? Perhaps -- but the idea of municipal wireless in general still could hold some value. Muni WiFi is bound to fail when it's being judged by unrealistic expectations -- as so many muni networks are. Vendors and politicians have whipped up a frenzy around the networks, while a willing media lapped up the stories and fed them to an easily excitable public. The fact remains that there are plenty of useful applications of municipal wireless; delivering widespread public internet access, and making money from it, may simply not be one of them. Also, as we've stated before, WiFi -- a local networking technology -- may not be the best technology to use for covering large areas. WiMAX could hold some promise in this regard, while in terms of muni broadband in general, fiber is probably even better. And, as Rick Martin points out, many smaller communities are seeing more success with their muni WiFi efforts, an indication that smaller-scale installations are much more workable than huge citywide installations in places like Chicago and San Francisco. He also passes along the quote that muni WiFi is "the monorail of the decade" -- meaning it's the boondoggle du jour for local politicians. But as Martin also notes, that while the monorail has never really lived up to its hype as the solution to cities' public transport ills, the concept and some of the technology has lived on in the form of light rail and other transport projects. In the same way, while muni WiFi might be looking pretty poorly, the idea of municipal wireless, or municipal broadband, should live on.
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Filed Under: chicago, muni wifi, san francisco
Companies: at&t, earthlink
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Is it too early...
This multi-rail (poor mono-rail simile) public transportation to the internet is a great idea on paper, but anyone with the experience of deploying wi-fi of any significant scale knew this was a dead horse before anyone got in the saddle. Good luck to the taxpayers left holding the bag and I hope they remember who frivolously wasted their money.
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AWFUL
Awful, Carlo! Awful!
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Half a loaf?
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Lost the F7 key again...
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Muni WiFi
As an aside though, the one place I did see real value in a city-wide WiFi network was for public safety services (police, fire, etc). There are a lot of great applications in that line, such as high-speed connectivity for mobile data terminals for police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, etc. Would be great for interdepartmental collaboration in emergency management situations.
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Plenty of "hotspots"
Unrestricted WiFi is getting to be pretty much ubiquitous without any special effort to implement a muniWiFi. So what was the point again?
--
www.chl-tx.com Texas Concealed Handgun License Training
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Light Rail?
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Warning: Idealism here.
In cities with existing fiber networks, though, I'd like to see the city lease the fiber and provide service at a reasonable buy-in rate to businesses and private citizens. A stipulation or a discount for businesses to provide free wifi on that connection would achieve nearly citywide wifi anyway, without forcing the city to maintain access point hardware or taxing those who can't afford it.
#5, the existing model for broadband in most cities is a monopoly or near-monopoly of one or two giant companies fixing prices, restricting connection use, and generally exploiting their customers. This is exactly the sort of area local governments should step in and control.
#6, this differs from the existing (so-called free market) model in that the businesses aren't being charged an arm and a leg by a monopolistic private provider who gouges them for the privilege. On the contrary, they'd get perks for sharing their connection with their customers.
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Wifi is the way to go
The real reason municipal wifi isn't taking off has nothing to do with logistics and everything to do with people who make billions of dollars every year who are very against the whole idea. In the end, this type of wifi would replace all internet, phone, and probably even cable TV as well. This means that although it would be an enormous public good it is going to meet a huge amount of resistance.
As far a technical feasibility of such a network, I think we are clearly capable of developing a system like this even for the densest of populations. Keep in mind the SR-71 spy plane project was conceived of even before the materials to build it, such as titanium, were even invented. Where there is a will there is a way and this project seems trivial compared to some of the amazing thigs we have created.
We are really standing at a crossroads of a society that can either free itself or enslave itself with technology.
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don't forget Milwaukee!
3 of the state 'lawmakers' got paid 88K in bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions by Ameritech^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAT&T to forbid local governments to make local networks.
City of Milwaukee pulled dark glass fibre in its right of ways - and never made a map. So they claim they want '1 million dollars' so they can document where the fiber pulls are - but if you look for the blaze orange paint you can see the pulls as you walk the streets.
A 'minority owned firm' wanted to 'provide WiFi' for the entire city - provided they got the contract to use the dark fiber the city had already placed....but did not document.
Midwest Fiber Networks has shown themselfs to be a toothless paper tiger-cub. And really, with state law - forged by AT&T - to prevent "government backed" networks....is any other outcomes to be expected?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:officia l&hs=JSI&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=milwaukee+wifi&spel l=1
( Joe would like to see the dark fiber lit up under a co-op model where any one/corp who pays the 'entry fee' is equal to anyone else. Thus if Time Warner pays the fee, they are the same as little-guy-provider who paid the same fee.)
http://www.joeklein.org/bio.php
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