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“Do you want to complain, or do you want to do something positive?” That’s the question asked in a recent San Francisco Chronicle editorial supporting Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to bring free wireless Internet access to San Francisco – a critical first step in bridging the digital divide that separates literally hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans from the enormous benefits of technology.
Here’s what the Chronicle said:
Wire those jaws
(Monday, January 22, 2007)
With San Francisco’s plan to secure citywide wireless Internet access ready to launch, we have to ask the dissenting supervisors a simple question: Do you want to complain, or do you want to do something positive?
For the moment, the former is prevailing at City Hall. Of course the plan that Mayor Gavin Newsom has negotiated with Earthlink and Google isn’t perfect — there are legitimate concerns about privacy and the network’s planned "two-tier" speeds that bear further scrutiny. But because the dissenting supervisors don’t have a viable plan of their own, they ought to concentrate on making the best of this one, not trying to vaporize it.
Newsom’s proposal is a public-private partnership. Earthlink would build a citywide network and provide a "premium" service level of 1 megabit-per-second for an estimated cost of about $20 a month. Google would provide a "basic" service level, at a network speed of about 300 kilobits-per-second, for free. Earthlink would assume the responsibility of paying an estimated $7 million to $10 million for building and operating the network, as well as paying for regularly upgraded service, and the city, in turn, would receive 5 percent of system revenues to fund digital inclusivity programs.
The dissenting supervisors’ only legitimate complaint is about the two-tiered network speeds, but even that is for different reasons than how they describe it. They argue that 300 Kbps is a prehistoric speed that no one will use, and that’s nonsense. A dial-up modem is 56 Kbps, and plenty of San Franciscans still use those. The new, free network will be fine for e-mail and light browsing, though users will get frustrated with huge files and video. Unfortunately, it still can’t compare to the 1 Mbps base speed of other municipalities in the Bay Area. Granted, the Bay Area’s fully online municipalities are quite a bit smaller than San Francisco, and there are other parts of their deals that aren’t nearly as favorable as the city’s is. (Chris Vein, the city’s chief information officer, insists that San Francisco’s deal is the best a large municipality has gotten nationwide.) Still, speed counts in Silicon Valley, and San Francisco may have to upgrade fast.
Less convincing is the dissenting supervisors’ desire to build either a municipally-owned network, or partner with nonprofit enterprises (Supervisor Jake McGoldrick suggested community colleges) to provide free or low-cost wireless access. No offense, but why should we hand over $10 million of our tax money so the city can experiment with building a network? Wireless is an amenity, not a necessity such as water, law enforcement or sewage. The city needs to focus on its core business.
Citywide wireless is the kind of experiment that’s best left to the private enterprises that specialize in the engineering feats that will be necessary to build and maintain a network on the city’s hilly terrain — especially if they’re doing it for free. That’s what convinced our neighbors — Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Foster City — who have either public-private partnerships or privately owned agreements for their services. "It’s been a positive experience for us, a real benefit to the community," said Ellis Berns, economic development manager for the city of Mountain View. "I’m mystified about the resistance in San Francisco."
Read the Mayor’s press release.
- : 10.0
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February 11th, 2007 at 11:46 am
An Alternative to the Earthlink-Google Deal
In a recent editorial, the Chronicle says opponents of the Earthlink-Google deal should put up or shut up (“Wire those jaws,†January 22). But the editorial missed two crucial points.
First, a recent report from the Budget Analyst, a neutral third party, concluded that the process leading to the Earthlink-Google deal was profoundly flawed.
The process was off-track from the beginning. In October 2004, the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors announced broadband initiatives at the same time. According to the Budget Analyst, city staff chose to address the Mayor’s goal of providing free wireless internet access “separately and more quickly†than the Supervisors’ plan to study an expansion of the city’s fiber network.
The decision to separate the two objectives prevented the City from leveraging existing city-owned fiber and its own substantial demand for information services to get the best possible deal in the proposed contract.
Next, the City sought a consultant to conduct a feasibility study that considered both fiber and wireless. Again, staff made a decision to focus exclusively on wireless. Moreover, the feasibility study was never done. At staff’s direction, a “Request for Information and Comment was issued instead of a formal analysis of wireless broadband feasibility.â€
These two decisions, to focus exclusively on wireless and not to complete a feasibility study, eliminated a priori solutions that combine fiber and wireless to create a more robust, higher capacity network than is possible with wireless alone.
The result of this flawed process is the inadequate Earthlink-Google deal, which accomplishes little more than the most basic goal of free Internet access. The free service is decidedly slow: half the speed of the DSL access AT&T is now required to sell for $10 per month, under terms imposed on its acquisition of BellSouth, and one-third the speed available for free in neighboring communities. The need for a wireless bridge device, to bring the outdoor wireless signal indoors, forces low income households either to buy such a device for $80 to $200, or subscribe to the paid service at $22 per month. Both these options limit the number of low-income individuals that will use the network.
The network also limits potential competition. According to the Budget Analyst’s report, the Earthlink agreement “would almost necessarily exclude any potential competing wireless network providers from entering the market for a Citywide wireless network.†As both a retailer and the wholesaler, Earthlink would have incentives to limit the level of competition, a conflict of interest that can be limited but not avoided.
The Chronicle concedes the deal is flawed, but insists the Board of Supervisors ratify it because there is no alternative. Fortunately, that’s not true. The Budget Analyst’s report concluded that a municipally owned network is a fiscally viable option.
I can personally vouch for that conclusion. At the request of several San Francisco organizations and individuals, my organization, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, developed the first financial analysis of a publicly owned, citywide wireless network in San Francisco. The Budget Analyst confirmed our conclusion. A $10 million capital investment could build a network. Far from requiring taxpayer support, the network could generate nearly $1 million annually in surplus revenue to fund other public priorities. The slight risk that the network could lose money is mitigated if the public sector’s demand for network services is added to the equation.
Members of San Francisco’s robust communications technology community have put forward a model for a fiber and wireless network run by a technically competent non-profit organization, independent of the City, and open to any qualified service provider.
The dissenting Supervisors are considering both the municipal and non-profit models, but are reserving judgment until they have seen the results of a broadband feasibility study that is finally being completed in accordance with the Supervisors’ October 2004 resolution. Unlike others in City Hall, they choose not to rush into a project with long-term consequences without considering all the options.
It is hypocrisy to railroad through this bad deal under the cover of digital inclusion. The wireless network at the Alice Griffith Housing Development, and other similar projects carried out by community wireless organizations throughout California, show that underserved communities can be reached quickly and inexpensively without a citywide solution.
As Mayor Newsom said, this is “too big of an idea†to accept anything less than the best possible outcome for the City, its residents and businesses.
Becca Vargo Daggett is Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and author of a new report, “Localizing the Internet: Five Ways Public Ownership Solves the U.S. Broadband Problemâ€