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By Esme Vos
Founder, Muniwireless.com
The ink is barely dry on the contract between EarthLink and San Francisco, but the factions have already lined up on either side of the debate. In other cities it’s been the pro-muni broadband activists against the anti-muni broadband crowd (the telco and cable incumbents).
In San Francisco, the opposition to the EarthLink plan comes from those who want the city to: (a) deploy a fiber network and (b) own the underlying infrastructure. I can see their point – having a fiber network guarantees high-speed Internet access and a city-owned infrastructure will prevent another cable-like monopoly from developing in San Francisco. But I will make the case for deploying the citywide Wi-Fi network now.
I agree that a citywide Wi-Fi network needs a robust fiber infrastructure to handle all of the traffic on the network and to give users a lot of bandwidth, but I don’t think the city should wait until all the fiber is laid out, as this could take years.
(1) It’s not about fiber versus wireless. It’s fiber and wireless.
Take the case of Estonia. Estonia was once part of the USSR. It is close to Finland and has a Nordic culture. Since its independence in 1991, Estonia has been busy improving its telecommunications infrastructure and developing a tech-based economy. Skype’s R&D team is based in Tallinn, the capital. Many foreign tech companies develop software in Estonia. Estonians use mobile phones to pay for gas and groceries, and its parliament uses technology intensively.
It’s not surprising that a country like this would have so much free Wi-Fi. Now they are extending Wi-Fi access everywhere – to buses, trains and ferries.
While these Wi-Fi networks were being deployed, Estonians have also been deploying fiber networks. In fact, they deployed Wi-Fi first because it was the cheapest, fastest way to get access to people. Estonia is now most “fibered” country in Europe with 17% of total broadband connections through fiber, followed by Sweden (14%), according to the latest broadband scorecard from the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA).
Fiber and Wi-Fi go hand in hand – it’s not one or the other. But wireless networks are faster and much cheaper to deploy, as Estonia found out, so it does not make sense to wait if you can deliver wireless access now. You can always improve wireless service as you add capacity to the network using fiber.
So why can’t EarthLink start deploying the wireless network now while the city figures out what to do on the fiber side (and on ownership)? EarthLink’s contract isn’t forever – the initial term is only four years. If San Francisco finds a way to provide cheap fiber backhaul (whether or not city-owned) to EarthLink’s network, do you think EarthLink will protest?
EarthLink and the other service providers on the wireless network would love to be able to buy wholesale (fiber) access at low prices because then they can offer cheaper, faster wireless broadband service and compete with the landline and cellular incumbents.
(2) Citywide wireless networks provide an alternative to incumbent-controlled broadband and the networks generate competition.
There is no meaningful competition in the market for broadband services in most American cities. Prices remain high because there is a duopoly: it’s the cable guy or the telecom incumbent. In a lot of places, there’s no broadband at all. They’re still on dial-up.
Why is this? The FCC failed to open up the incumbents’ DSL lines to independent service providers. The opposite happened in Europe. In the EU, incumbents are required to share their lines and sell wholesale access to competitors at low rates.
The result: competition and choice. I live in Amsterdam, a city with roughly the same population as San Francisco. Today, I can choose from among 10 different ADSL providers. Because there is so much competition, the prices of ADSL and cable Internet access have been dropping. For 25 EUR per month, I can get 20 Mbps ADSL service from Orange (a mobile operator from France) bundled with landline VOIP.
Operators – landline, cable and mobile – are putting together creative bundled offerings all over Europe. Vodafone and Orange (UK and French mobile operators, respectively) have partnered with broadband providers to deliver cheap broadband with mobile phone and landline VOIP service. And they work across borders.
Independent ISPs are buying access wholesale from the telecom incumbents and putting together their own packages –- for design/media professionals who can pay more for high bandwidth, top-of-the-line service, and for families and students on a budget. There’s something for everyone. This is the sign of a healthy market.
In the near future, I can get inexpensive FTTH service (100 Mbps) thanks to the fiber network being rolled out by Citynet BV, a company in which the city of Amsterdam is a shareholder. Note here that the city will not own the fiber infrastructure. It is a minority shareholder. The fiber network will be open to all service providers, including the Dutch telecom incumbent and the cable operators, so that they can in turn deliver high-speed broadband service to end users. But even having fiber to my house does not solve my pressing need to have broadband everywhere in Amsterdam. And that’s where wireless comes in.
Recently, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media (in charge of regulating telecommunications in the EU) said two things about the European market:
First, “Competition has been a key driver for investment and innovation.”
[Source: The Review 2006 of EU Telecom rules: Strengthening Competition and Completing the Internal Market, Annual Meeting of BITKOM, Brussels, Bibliothèque Solvay, 27 June 2006]
Second, “In the telecommunications market, the most significant factor enabling broadband growth is the existence of alternative infrastructures.”
[Source: From Service Competition to Infrastructure Competition: the Policy Options Now on the Table, ECTA Conference 2006 Brussels]
Reding cites to the growth of cable access in particular, but we can also point to the successful deployment of fiber networks in Northern European countries, together with the EU’s policy of forcing incumbents to open up their lines – as drivers of broadband growth and competition.
Following Reding’s conclusion, which is based upon data collected by the EU, we can see that alternatives – such as citywide wireless broadband networks open to all competitors who want to provide access – will also result in greater broadband penetration, lower prices, creative bundling of services, and innovation in applications that people can use on these networks.
American cities can’t afford to wait until Washington gets its act together – if it ever does - to enable the kind of broadband competition that Europeans take for granted. As it stands, the US is sinking lower in world rankings for broadband penetration and cheap bandwidth.
By rolling out these wireless alternatives NOW, US cities can force this market to become more competitive NOW.
The contract between EarthLink and San Francisco requires EarthLink to sell wholesale access to competitors and to other companies that want to deliver services over the network. This is an open network. If you don’t like EarthLink’s service, you can buy Internet access from another wireless service provider.
Recently, Vonage, the VOIP service provider, bought wholesale access from EarthLink to deliver Vonage wireless service in the cities where EarthLink is deploying a network. So it is working – even before a single wireless node has been installed. The open network model is attracting companies that compete with the incumbents. Do you think an incumbent such as AT&T would have been as open to working with Vonage?
This bring us to the position of EarthLink. Articles in newspapers and blog posts make it sound as if EarthLink is one of the big nasty incumbents with disproportionate market power to force people to do as they say. The fact is that EarthLink needs to expand its business beyond dial-up and citywide Wi-Fi is the best way to do that. They don’t have the kind of market power that AT&T enjoys.
The merger of AT&T and BellSouth is just as threatening to EarthLink as it is to any independent service provider. EarthLink needs to keep its customers and city governments happy to have any chance of surviving. If EarthLink rolls out a citywide network where the privacy invasions are egregious, the bandwidth is so poor that people can’t do their work or the network keeps going down, it won’t be around much longer. Unlike AT&T, EarthLink has to play nice.
(3) There’s no reason to wait.
A lot of cities have already deployed citywide Wi-Fi networks. In St. Cloud, Florida there’s free service everywhere and the city was named the No. 1 metro Wi-Fi city in the US, proving that free does not mean inferior.
The hardware and software for creating these giant networks are here. Sure, they’re not perfect, but no technology product is ever perfect. Your Windows PC, even with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, will get viruses, adware and malware. As for the argument that “the technology is rapidly changing, it’s risky, so why put up a network now”, consider this: the minute you buy a computer, there’s a faster, more advanced one being unloaded from the docks in Oakland. But you buy a computer anyway because the present benefit to you is much greater than the possible benefit of waiting longer. We did not wait until the perfect computer came along before we got rid of our typewriters. The same is true for citywide wireless.
As for risk, if you don’t want it, stick to the tried and true landline phone and dial-up service. All new technologies and new ways of communicating involve risk, even fiber networks. When I had DSL installed in my house in the late 1990s, it required hours of calls to the helpdesk. It was really a pain. I was, in essence, a beta tester and because of people like me – early adopters willing to take a risk – the service providers learned a lot and tweaked a lot so that now they can offer easy-to-install DSL to everybody.
The great thing about San Francisco is that it’s filled with early adopters who are willing to be part of the test of an “experimental” network like EarthLink’s. And the city does not spend a dime. In fact, it gets a cut of the revenues. EarthLink bears all of the costs. And it’s the participation of people who are open minded, willing to take risks and who enjoy being part of the experiment that drive innovation. And there’s lot of those people in San Francisco.
People really want to have access to the Web, email and other services everywhere and they want it now. I can’t even count the number of times I wanted to do a Google search while walking around San Francisco. The Internet has become such an indispensable part of my life, and, I suspect, many people’s lives.
Fortunately, device manufacturers are making it easy for us to leave the laptop at home, and still have some way to get our email and browse the web on the go via Wi-Fi – a truly mobile experience. Nokia has already released Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones (the N and E Series) and a Wi-Fi tablet (N800). Sony and Nintendo are selling Wi-Fi enabled portable gaming devices. Apple’s iPhone goes on sale in June. More portable Wi-Fi devices will come on the market and their prices will drop.
Personally, I’d like to see the San Francisco Wi-Fi network go live tomorrow. I will be in San Francisco between February 7 and March 4, and I’d love to have access everywhere with my Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, the Nokia N80i. As a visitor, I would definitely take advantage of the free access offered by EarthLink to check my email and do light web browsing when I’m running around the city.
Finally, can you imagine what an incredible testbed the city would be for people developing new applications for citywide networks? San Francisco is home not only to a lot of tech-geeks, but also to people who like to try new things. Whether or not the Board of Supervisors wants to admit it, it’s a place where trends start and get adopted. It’s time to accept this fact about San Francisco and celebrate it. There’s already an ecosystem of software developers, entrepreneurs and venture capital firms in and around San Francisco, many of whom are already developing applications to take advantage of ubiquitous connectivity. The city will be the hotbed of all that innovation and attract even more talent and investment.
(4) What about EVDO or GPRS? Aren’t the mobile operators already rolling out “Internet everywhere” service?
EVDO and GPRS services are not available everywhere. They’re slow and expensive.
If you want to know what it’s like to receive a surprise 250 EUR bill at the end of the month for minimal web surfing and email downloading via a GPRS data subscription, talk to me. At 15 EUR per megabyte (the roaming rate for Orange outside the Netherlands), I’m sticking to Wi-Fi. The worst part is not knowing what the final bill will be since you don’t have a clue how many megabytes you were uploading and downloading at any time.
A friend of mine got a bill for 10,000 EUR because she used her mobile phone (and the GPRS data connection, not Wi-Fi) to upload 450 megabytes (mostly video) in Paris at conferences where she was video blogging. She has no idea how she’s going to pay for that. She’s a Wi-Fi convert now.
In fact, did you know that only 10% of Europeans who have access to mobile Internet (i.e. GPRS data plans) actually use them? [Source: Research and Markets Report]
That’s right. After millions of Euros and all that time spent on the last round of 3G auctions, marketing of GPRS data plans, upgrades to the networks, only 10% have bothered to sign up. If you ask those 10% what they really think of it, they’ll say it’s too slow and too expensive. If you offer them Wi-Fi everywhere, they’ll dump those mobile data subscriptions.
So it’s not surprising that I am a huge fan of citywide Wi-Fi (and to a lesser extent, hotzones and hotspots). I use Wi-Fi for making voice calls via my mobile phone to avoid roaming charges when I am outside the Netherlands. I downloaded a program called Gizmo Project (it’s like Skype) onto my mobile phone and use it to make a call. I can check email and browse the web on the same mobile phone without paying 15 EUR per megabyte – as long as I use Wi-Fi. There are a lot of people like me who visit San Francisco or reside there.
But without a citywide wireless broadband network in San Francisco, I still have to run around looking for a Wi-Fi café. I can’t walk down the street talking to my friend via my mobile phone using Wi-Fi because as I leave one café and go into another, the connection gets dropped. If, however, San Francisco had a citywide network, this would not be a problem.
Finally, think about this: most people call locally on their mobile phones. They call their friends, parents, the pizza guy, the Chinese takeout. Why would you need an expensive mobile phone subscription (with horrible cancellation terms) if you can use a cheap portable Wi-Fi phone running Vonage or Skype on the citywide Wi-Fi network? Why would people need to go through a mobile operator if they only make local calls on a wireless local area network – one that just happens to encompass a city?
(5) San Francisco’s municipal government will become more efficient if they take advantage of the citywide Wi-Fi network.
There are so many applications that municipal government employees can use on these networks: mobile VOIP (imagine the cost savings if the city drops all those mobile subscriptions), public safety (fire, police, emergency services), vehicle and asset tracking, automated meter reading, RFID, code inspection, etc. Anyone who goes out on a work order today becomes more productive by being able to do his or her work from anywhere.
Many of these applications are already available. Corpus Christi and Burleson (both in Texas) have wireless automated meter reading networks that also offer citywide Wi-Fi. Police departments from Ripon, California to Riviera Beach, Florida are also using citywide networks to access large files (data on suspects) and monitor wireless video cameras.
I think it’s outrageous that city governments do not take advantage of existing technology to save money, improve efficiency and deliver better services.
In summary, although I have questions about the EarthLink-San Francisco contract, when I balance out all the pros and cons, I’d like to see this network go up right away.
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Esme Vos is the founder of Muniwireless.com, the portal for news and information about citywide wireless networks around the world. Esme is an intellectual property lawyer who lives in Amsterdam.
Note: Articles are posted for the purpose of generating ideas and honest debate on how San Francisco can live up to its full promise and potential. Posting of an article does not imply an endorsement by the author of Gavin Newsom for Mayor, nor an endorsement by Gavin Newsom for Mayor of the positions set forth in the article.
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February 9th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Esme was at the Board of Supes meeting on Wednesday and had some interesting observations on her site http://www.muniwireless.com/
“What struck me was that the representatives of low-income community organizations and retraining programs all came out in favor of the EarthLink contract. They urged the Board not to delay. Their message: their communities do not have the luxury of waiting any longer for free or inexpensive broadband access. They need it now. They do not need another study.
It’s interesting to watch this because although I agree with some of the points made by Ralf Muehlen (SFLan) and Bruce Wolfe, both of whom argued against the plan, I also felt the urgency coming from people who have been excluded too long from broadband access. Although the people who are demanding another study have very good intentions, those from the other side of the digital divide feel that the Board will let their communities down if it delays approval of the EarthLink contract.
Heather Hudson, a professor of telecommunications at the University of San Francisco, also testified yesterday and urged the Board to approve the EarthLink deal because there is no risk to the city. There is no cash outlay and indeed, the city will even get a share of the revenues from EarthLink.â€
February 11th, 2007 at 11:40 am
+ Heather Hudson refuses to have an academic debate about the merits of various models including NonProfit and Municipally controlled WiFi.
+ Supervisors announced intentions to obtain $1M for Digital Inclusion funding in a Budget Supplemental now.
Statement to the Budget and Finance Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Prepared by Becca Vargo Daggett, Director, Telecommunications as Commons Initiative, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
http://www.ilsr.org/
As Supervisors, you are routinely told that an immediate decision is required, that time is of the essence. And you also know from experience that in the vast majority of cases, haste truly does make waste. In this case, there is another factor to take into consideration when deciding how much haste is needed. Your own coherent initiative for a city wide, fiber-based high speed network, which was passed by this body about the same time as the Mayor’s more fragmented and truncated initiative, was ignored by the Executive branch, while the Mayor’s was fast-tracked. Your input was not requested at earlier points in the process. You were not given the opportunity to weigh in favor of other responses to the RFP. For example, the one submitted by the consortium that is now building the Silicon Valley network, a proposal that would have resulted in a city-owned network.
Now you are told that you have two choices: approve the Earthlink deal or lose a vital opportunity. Some say there may be a third choice: approve the Earthlink deal and pursue the citywide fiber-based system simultaneously. These are both false choices.
As to the first so-called choice, you are told that to reject the proposed private network is to further neglect the many needy people in San Francisco who can’t wait any longer to get Internet access. You will be told today, have already been told many times, that you must vote for this to bridge the digital divide.
That’s not true. The proposed arrangement with Earthlink does nothing of consequence for those who are not currently connected. It offers a “Digital Inclusion Product†for $13 per month to a meager 3200 households – just one percent of households in the city. The franchise fee will direct just $300,000 annually toward the goals of the Digital Inclusion Task Force. By comparison, the first financial analysis of this project, done by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, estimated a municipally owned network could generate up to $1million annually for digital inclusion and other city priorities, a conclusion recently confirmed by the San Francisco Budget Analyst.
A student who is likely to speak here today, Andre Chan, just issued a paper regarding San Francisco’s digital divide. His interviews with people who are currently working to bridge the gap in San Francisco elicited the following key problems for unconnected households: lack of funds for a home computer, language barriers, lack of space in the home for a computer, and lack of access to computer training and support. Nothing in the Earthlink agreement addresses these concerns. Indeed, Mr. Chan concludes that there is little government can do to address these concerns. Nothing in Mr. Chan’s paper or in the work of the City’s Digital Inclusion Task Force suggests that low cost, citywide access is a necessary or even particularly useful component of an effective digital inclusion strategy.
Will rejecting the Earthlink proposal measurably delay wireless deployment in San Francisco? No. Indeed, it could actually speed deployment of digital inclusion projects in areas that need it most. San Francisco could follow Boston’s lead and invite interested companies to show the City the quality of their technology by deploying pilot projects throughout the city. While San Francisco has been negotiating with Earthlink, at least four such pilots have been deployed in Boston, at no cost to the city.
Some argue that the contract’s term is only four years, and the City can choose a different type of network or business model and simply not renew Earthlink’s contract. In fact, the contract calls for automatic renewal for three more four-year periods, with very specific conditions for terminating the contract. Like the cable franchise, once this is in place, it will be difficult or impossible to change course even a decade from now.
Some argue that you should let the Earthlink network proceed while the City pursues fiber. That’s a poor choice. A fiber to the premises network would take several years to fully build out, and in the meantime would need to use wireless for at least the last few hundred feet to the customer. Both networks need access to the same poles and airspace. You have heard technology experts, including Ralf Muehlen and Tim Pozar, who explain that multiple commercial-scale wireless networks cannot coexist. And the financial viability of both networks would require the same customer base: the city itself, small businesses, and people who do not currently have high-speed connections.
This is not a choice between approving the Earthlink deal and doing nothing. The Board could and should direct the Public Utilities Commission and DTIS to proceed with an unconditioned fiber network connecting 250 public buildings. This strategy is recommended as sensible and cost effective based on the city’s current and future needs, regardless of the choices made regarding a public access network. The Board could also encourage wireless hardware vendors to begin deploying pilot projects so the Board and San Francisco residents can get a better sense of what these technologies can and cannot do.
It is regrettable that the Mayor’s process has proceeded so far without a feasibility study or a proper needs assessment. Now that you have the Budget Analyst’s report and CTC’s fiber optic feasibility study, it would be irresponsible not to draw on their findings to create the best possible information infrastructure for the City of San Francisco, its residents and businesses.
February 11th, 2007 at 11:43 am
ACLU presentation from the meeting:
We will present an analysis of the final Earthlink/Google contract and its implications on privacy and free speech.
Click here for a link to the letter and chart we sent to the members of the San Francisco Supervisors this afternoon.
http://tinyurl.com/yp6q3b
The ACLU of Northern California strongly supports the growth of wireless access and looks forward to a time when all of San Francisco will be able to utilize the wealth of information available on the Internet. However, none of us should be forced to pay for it with our privacy and free speech rights.
There are four key principles for any municipal Wi-Fi service :
1.
The service should collect the minimum amount of personal information and maintain user records only so long as operationally necessary.
2.
The service should not track user activities from session to session.
3.
The service should not commercialize user data.
4.
The service should only disclose the personal information of users when it is truly legally necessary and give notice to users about disclosures as quickly as possible.
We are concerned that the final Earthlink/Google contract does not have adequate safeguards in several of these key areas.
February 11th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I’m so tired of watching the same shot-down arguments arise from the dead, over and over again like Freddy Kruger.
“(1) It’s not about fiber versus wireless. It’s fiber and wireless.”
This statement offers zero endorsement to do a crappy wifi network, sooner OR later. A rebuttal to the “while waiting for fiber” point follows.
“(2) Citywide wireless networks provide an alternative to incumbent-controlled broadband and the networks generate competition.”
Wow. Now instead of two gougers (AT&T and Comcast) we get three: add Earthlink. Some people arguing to do fiber have their own superior alternative:
get rid of ALL the gougers. That’s the solution I like and it’s the Only one I like.
“(a) Competition has been a key driver for investment and innovation.”
Perhaps, in a city and country that understands that having multiple providers for the same service should be better for the consumer. We live in a country
where business plays by no rules that they can’t buy off. Our choice? One telco versus One cable provider. Add to that a “wifi provider” learning by doing
(what fun for us.) I remain lethally underimpressed.
“(b) In the telecommunications market, the most significant factor enabling broadband growth is the existence of alternative infrastructures.”
The pro-fiber anticorporate camp HAS an alternative infrastructure: get rid of the nonsense about pretense to competition. SF does it, SF owns it, and SF residents
won’t be subsidizing thirdpartyco’s dillying and dallying. Telcos have had 22 years to give us something better and they essentially still haven’t. Pacific Bell
released DSL in California only after my company had taken out an ad in Computer Currents saying we could already do it. All the rhetoric about innovation and
competition is gasbag stuff nobody needs to listen to anymore. {clue: roll the calendar back or forth and the rhetoric never changes.}
One other point: the pro-fiber(-now) alternative is 100 gigabits per second to your house. No such thing is on the horizon from any telco, period. Period.
“The fact is that EarthLink needs to expand its business beyond dial-up and citywide Wi-Fi is the best way to do that.”
I thought ELNK was a proud corporation with a business model and all that good stuff. It seems to me that since San Francisco owns no shares in ELNK, it has zero
incentive to help out that for-profit corporation at the expense of its citizens’ future. Namely, who cares what benefits Earthlink? That’s THEIR problem, not ours.
Unless perhaps they’d like to sell themselves to SF, and then I’d argue it would be a very bad purchase.
“(3) There’s no reason to wait.”
Yeah there are plenty reasons to “wait”, wait defined as cancelling the commercial/corporate deal and having SF do the wifi itself. For the price of a short wait for
retooling, we (a) won’t build wifi networks where they’re not needed; (b) will start serving the underserved within WEEKS - if Gavin Newsom was ever being honest
in claiming to want to serve them - instead of the up-to-18-month wait the underserved will get if the corporate deal goes through. Moreover you offer no proof
whatsoever that if SF were to do the wifi itself, there /would/ be a significant delay in deployment anyway.
“The great thing about San Francisco is that it’s filled with early adopters who are willing to be part of the test of an experimental network like EarthLink’s.”
Right now, SF is filled with early adopters who would like to run their Own, Real, Production network. Experimental, nothing. Two guys in their garage can do EXACTLY what
Earthlink intends to do with the same off-the-shelf hardware Earthlink would buy. I say again: I don’t care In The Least what Earthlink’s future is. Neither they nor Google
are “innovators” in telecommunications. They just hawk wares, the same wares anyone can get from anywhere. So maybe “Earthlink can’t wait”, but - that’s THEIR problem.
The rest of us can wait a little bit for something 100,000 times better, can’t we? Or is it “STOP THINKING!! WE GOTTA HAVE IT NOW!!” — exactly like the IRAQ WAR.
“No time to think! If I wait for people to look at the thing they may not want to do it!” says Bush; and says Newsom. We saw how the first one turned out.
“People really want to have access to the Web, email, and other services everywhere and they want it now.”
They already have it now. Find me those who do not and then build enough of a network to serve them and only them - I don’t need to paint your whole house to make sure
the side wall gets covered.
How many San Francisco citizens will say “What I want, I have to have NOW; I cannot wait; I cannot be talked to about alternatives; and I can be told that a small delay
could reap big benefits, but I just don’t care.” I’m sure there are such people, but then I wonder why they (with no attention span and no self control) get to call the
shots — and not the larger number of people in SF who are already on the internet and who have the time to hear what the difference is between 5mbps for $60/month and
100000mbps for $20/month.
“(5) San Francisco’s municipal government will become more efficient if they take advantage of the citywide Wi-Fi network.”
This statement makes little sense at all. (1) They’re sitting in their hardwired offices. Do they care about wifi? No. (2) They’re out in the field talking to someone.
Can they deal with being close to a free-wifi cafe (strung out Everywhere in the City?) Or do they “just gotta have” - not just an SF-deployed wifi-everywhere network,
but indeed an Earthlink-deployed wifi-everywhere network? If it’s not an Earthlink network then they can’t use it? They can’t sit in Joe’s Bar and Grill and use wifi
that is already there, they’re just hosed?
Sorry, the statement is vacuous.
“mobile VOIP”
While you’re at it, why not throw in streaming video and a bittorrent server? VOIP will suck over the wifi network, whether Earthlink does it or SF does it.
It might work great one day. Don’t hold your breath for two. It might work great for one minute. Don’t hold your breath for two. For those unthinking people who just
“gotta have it”, I can hear explosions of ballistics when they find out that the marvelous wifi network — in fact sucks. Dropouts, slowness, congestion, unusability.
It will not work as a “reliable and always-on” connection for very many people.
A wifi (802.11a/b/g) network is NOT a robust service network. It can be used to “fill in” for some people while they’re waiting for fiber - but the only people who NEED
the infill are those who do not ALREADY have service. We don’t need to deploy a City’s worth of equipment to serve people, 89% of whom WILL NOT USE the wifi network.
Have you ever tried to run an extensive wifi network? They’re not fun to maintain. There is Always something failing here and there. That’s not the reason to have
“someone else do it”; that’s the reason to NOT DO IT. The technology was intended for very-local service, not citywide operation in the 2nd most heavily RF-congested area
in the nation.
“I think it’s outrageous that city governments do not take advantage of existing technology to save money, improve efficiency and deliver better services.”
Strange, that is what the pro-fiber camp has been haranguing the City about - and the City (Mayor/DTIS) are totally deaf to it.
The US government could always nationalize the telecommunications infrastructure in this country to get something moving in the way of a future. Short of that,
SF can build its own fiber network and integrate it with its own wireless network. The wireless network should be a GSM cellular system because that WILL provide
streaming video to handhelds, mobile VoIP and residential users, but the FCC is still wholly-owned by corporations against the public interest. So we will get a
“wi-fi”, a.k.a. “toy” network, and we will be observant enough to not waste additional monies providing an extra (crappy) service at places it’s not needed.
And if SF does it, it can give away a lot more free service than ELNK/GOOG ever will;
And if SF does it, it spends no time arguing how much SF citizen data is lifted by thirdpartyco for their exclusive benefit;
And if SF does it, it builds a smarter network (better laid out and better intergrated) than ELNK/GOOG can;
And if SF does it, it doesn’t have to wait 15 years to do its own wireless network; it starts immediately;
And if SF does it, the “underserved” start being served in weeks - not 1.5 years, as I said above;
And if SF does it, all the proponents of “I just gotta have an inferior mostly-for-profit network done by an unaccountable third-party for-profit corporation RIGHT AWAY”
can go back to sleep, for they’ll have justifiably lost their case.
There are in fact almost NO reasons to do the wifi thing “gotta have it now”, but many reasons to get it straight, now, before SF sells out its citizens.
===
Heather Hudson’s article might as well have been written by DTIS. Dr. Hudson paid no attention to counterarguments. Here is my rebuttal to Dr. Hudson:
>SAN FRANCISCO - In mid-2005, San Francisco established TechConnect to promote digital inclusion
>by ensuring affordable internet access … to all San Franciscans …
>After soliciting public comments, The City requested proposals for a community wireless broadband
>network in December 2005. In April 2006 The City selected a consortium headed by EarthLink and
>Google as the winner.
>After more than eight months of meetings and negotiations, the parties signed a contract on
>Jan. 5, 2007. The contract must be approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the
>San Francisco Public Utilities Commission within 180 days from the date of signing.
Before proceeding let me say that this editorial sounds almost verbatim like a DTIS pro-contract
piece. As a work of propaganda, it serves. As an accurate summary of the pluses and minuses
of having Google and Earthlink build a wifi network in San Francisco, it fails. It argues one
side exclusively and gives weight to its arguments only by excluding arguments to the contrary,
at the expense of the truth. I doubt that the ideas presented are the author’s own original ideas,
but that’s not important. What is important is to show what happens to the arguments the author makes
when examined in light of arguments to the contrary. People pursuing political objectives often use mere
suasion to bring people to their point of view, but in this context and given my personal preferences
for the outcome of the corporate wifi deal, the thorough and explicit truth will serve admirably.
I claim that the opponents of the project can rest on the facts, thoroughly examined, and have no need
to write propaganda to win their case to have the corporate deal canceled.
Below, “SFcans” is short for “San Franciscans” and “G/E” means “Google and Earthlink”.
>I urge them to approve it without further delay. I believe we will not have another chance
>for a citywide wireless broadband network including free service at no cost to the taxpayer.
1. We can cancel this contract and restart the bid process at any time.
1a. And a very important subpoint too, much noise has been made about “serving the underserved”,
a flag wrapped around this project to protect it from its detractors. If SFcans did the wifi
themselves, the “underserved” could start considerably be being served within One Month.
I believe the author never mentions how long it will take to serve these underserved; and
that implies that serving the underserved was not such an overarching reason for the project.
2. The assertion that the broadband network will be provided at no cost to the taxpayer is FALSE.
The author assumes that only cash represents a tangible cost, but that is obviously false.
The author ignores
* privacy concerns
* for-profit company controls a whole segment of SF’s telecom infrastructure for a decade or more
* poor coverage, poor service
* the network is barely “free” and hardly worth using in “free” mode
* SF has more and better options for wireless
>Why not wait for the perfect deal? It wont happen. Much of the cost of this network is being
>underwritten by Google, which is clearly interested in a test bed for new business models for
>wireless services, as well as in technological philanthropy. But Google also won the opportunity
>to install wireless broadband in Mountain View, its own backyard, in August 2006. Much of the
>network has already been built. Google now has its test bed.
1. Which means that Google doesn’t need SF; they already have their test bed, they don’t need another.
2. Service in Mountain View is not marvelous everywhere, and some remarks by locals were unflattering.
3. I don’t see participating in any way whatsoever with a Google or Earthlink project of any kind,
for the sake of access to a supposedly “free” wifi network. That’s noxiously presumptuous of those
companies. I know what “free” means; it means Unencumbered. It means, in an explicit sense, that
neither Google nor Earthlink can benefit from installing and maintaining the network in any way.
For the network to be “free”, it has to be a gift, a grant. This is a commercial network. This is
a franchise. The notion of “free” is a complete dodge; free here is but the tail of the dog. G/E
expect to make “serious” money from it, as reported from a remark by a Google employee. That’s not
economically efficient for the people of San Francisco; it simply saddles them with another kind of
telephone company, and not a very good one, either. The first structural reason to have SFcans do
such a network themselves is that they (SF) can then do what they wish to it at will, without regard
to contractual obligations to a “disinterested” third party. The third party is not disinterested,
though; it is in it for the money. The second structural reason for SFcans to do it for themselves
is that it disposes of the issues of privacy and surveillance immediately. No reason to worry if
one is being data-raped or followed, the SF policy says such things are prohibited.
I think references to philanthropy are naive. Corporate philanthropy is still Corporate, done with
and eye to the Corporation’s goals. Those goals aren’t SF’s goals and SF has no need to fulfill
those goals for
>What about the public interest? Some consumer advocates have questioned the capacity of the
>network, the cost to The City and privacy, among other issues. However, many of these concerns
>have been addressed through the contract with EarthLink and The City’s Digital Inclusion initiative.
1. What does it mean if “many” concerns have been addressed? It means that other concerns have Not
been addressed. The author doesn’t mention that SF has made concessions (remember we’re talking
about privacy concerns) to G
>There is no public outcry against building the network, despite claims of some activists.
A logical fallacy. There is no public outcry to build the network, either. For shame, professor.
>It appears that most residents dont know about the wireless project and its opportunity for free
>Internet access. Most who do know about it, largely through media coverage of Google’s involvement,
>assume its already being built. What will it cost The City? Nothing.
>The contract states that EarthLink will design, construct, install, test, operate, maintain, upgrade
> [the network] at its sole cost. In fact, The City will gain revenue from leasing access to its utility
> poles, where the wireless equipment will be mounted.
1. Revenue is marginal and not as much in various instances as other cities have gotten in proportion.
2. See above for recitation of undisclosed costs.
>Some opponents of the deal think The City should build and own the network. Why would the
>taxpayers want to take on the cost of building and operating a wireless network?
1. Because they would own it, and could do as they liked with it.
2. Because it preserves privacy.
3. Because it gives San Francisco economic power in behalf of its citizens. San Francisco in building
its own network now bargains with telcos and cablecos as a giant, and not an ant colony.
4. The wifi network will get attention where it is needed, specifically and immediately, according to
SF’s allocation policy.
>San Francisco has better things to do with its staff and our money.
Actually, building an integrated citizen’s fiber/wireless network is an excellent use of the City’s
money, as it can save its citizens tens of millions of dollars in telecommunications costs. It is,
in fact, a better idea for the citizens than it is for the City. That is why a leader with vision
would not cede what should be an integrated chunk of the City’s telecommunications infrastructure
to a for-profit third party for their explicit benefit at SF citizens’ expense. A real pioneer would
seize the moment, which is that fiber to the premises is now commercially viable. That is the argument
the “opponents” and “activists” are making. This contract is a giveaway and a boondoggle, powered
by the words “free” and “underserved”. The SFcans can in fact immediately begin deploying wireless
service to underserved areas; there’s no need to wait for G/E. G/E don’t know more about this than
the SFcans offering to assist the City, either, a point to consider when pretending that G/E know
what they’re doing. And the spectrum: in fact no other operator can coexist (meaningfully) with a
citywide wifi network in the intended frequencies. Therefore, if any entity should so dominate the
spectrum, it should be the City itself for its citzens’ purposes. Another nail in the spectrum coffin
is the questionable legality of a city soliciting the total consumption of frequencies allocated by the
FCC under Part 15 to the Public for the Public’s general use. If the City ran the network and Joe Blow
interfered with it, the City could tell Joe Blow to fix his problem, and it would be the rest of SF telling Mr. Blow that; not a for-profit corporation which issues a threat from a lawyer’s office which
reads “cease and desist from using that which was given to you by the federal government to use; we
have the exclusive right to operate in your frequencies in order to run our for-profit network.”
I would see them in court.
>Does the contract limit The City’s
>future options? No. The City is not required to use the wireless network for its own government services.
>The contract is nonexclusive; The City may also grant rights to build wireless networks to other
>operators.
See “can’t meaningfully coexist”, above. The promise is empty. The spectrum is channelized and independent
channels are scarce. It would be difficult to integrate a second similar network with the first. The only
other players are those who hold the licenses for the licensed frequencies for use with such as WiMax,
and nowhere in the discussion of this project have I heard that these other operators, with the ability
to build a superior network, were consulted either in respect to their ability to create a citywide network,
or in regard to the leasing of their licenses for SF to build such a network itself.
>Does the contract limit access to the network? No. The network will provide wholesale access to
>other service providers. At least three service providers are to be available on the network.
If I were Joe Provider, I would not be pleased to pay a tithe to Earthlink for the privilege;
besides which it should be SF picking up any such extra profit.
If I were any SFcan, I would think: would I like the City to negotiate with a for-profit corporation
to give me what amounts to floating vending machines? Or would I rather the City ran the whole network
and got me bulk internet access rates?
If SF ran the network, it could provide its citizens access to an unlimited number of providers on a
nondiscriminatory basis, and that would be a comfort to all providers as well, as it normalizes costs
and means no provider is paying any portion of its fees to a competitor, as the current contract has it;
no provider is favored over another for access.
If SF ran the network, there would be no need for Obnoxious Advertising.
>What about speed? The contract promises only a minimum 300 kilobits per second for the free layer,
>about like DSL lite but in both directions. This is slower than many would like, but certainly
>better than dial-up and adequate for many services including Web access. The fee-based service is
>to be at least 1 megabit per second in both directions. The contract also requires the network to
>be upgraded to remain comparable with other cities.
These speeds are already obsolete. There is no upgrade for the wifi network; the network built will
be the final result. If the Part 15 bands were expanded, there could be with a complete replacement
of the equipment, but it’s doubtful the FCC would expand the unlicensed bands beyond their current
allocation. The network that SF needs is the GSM cellular network such as they have in Tokyo. That
network delivers streaming mobile video, so there’s no comparison: the wifi network is totally
outclassed. I see little point being excited to have some for-profit company crush the Part 15
spectrum in order to build an inferior network with poor coverage.
>What about access for low-income users? In addition to the basic free service, the contract calls
>for a digital inclusion price of $12.95 per month for high-speed access (1 megabit per second)
>for 3,200 customers.
1. Wasn’t it up to 200,000 people somewhat to severely disenfranchised from the internet?
2. Mountain View’s Free service is 1 mbps, and 1 mbps is not high-speed. $13/month charge
is not a gift to a poor person. Since the marginal cost of serving one more client is slight,
SF can give service away in sizeable amounts (truly free and to considerably more than 3,200
people) without an undue burden on the other consumers.
G/E will not.
>Wireless modems (needed to get good reception inside buildings) will be made
>available at cost ($100 or less).
1. Is that a wholesale cost from the manufacturer, or the cost of buying the devices at the manufacturer’s
retail price? If at wholesale, which manufacturer is being so generous in G/E’s behalf? But otherwise,
the users are paying more profit than they would otherwise have to.
>There are many ways to cover this cost, ranging from grants to
>monthly leases or installment payments. Other vendors could likely be persuaded to donate
>additional modems.
1. Whatever money could fly in to rescue the users could begin installing fiber for them as well.
2. Even if it costs $500 million to build a fiber network to cover San Francisco, that is a moderate
expense as expenses go in the City’s finances. Nobody on the fiber network would have a need
at home for a wifi connection; a citywide wifi network would be largely superfluous unless it
was very well maintained.
>What about user privacy? Here the contract is not perfect, but workable.
>It requires users to opt
>out of making the personal information that they must provide to use the network available to
>EarthLinks third-party suppliers for marketing purposes. Wireless users may also opt out of >providing location information (where they are using laptops, for example) to third-party
>marketers. Stronger privacy restrictions would require users to actively opt in to make this
>information available. Consumer education will be necessary to explain this process, which is
>similar to the model for do-not-call lists, where consumers must take action to prevent
>telemarketing.
>The contract provides for trial phase or proof of concept to test technology and design for the
>project. The City should choose high priority areas for the trial, such as open spaces, community
>centers and low-income neighborhoods.
>Fostering competition among cable, telco, wireless and other services is the best way to maximize
>availability and minimize price of broadband for San Francisco.
A quick look around shows this to be almost amusing. Independent operators are vanishing from the scene,
media is being consolidated into the hands of very few companies. Who delivers the internet? The consumer
has, basically, two choices: the phone company, and the cable company. The wifi network as proposed, will
be a “toy” network. It will not handle much load from any one source; it will be maintenance-intensive;
it will frequently fail for various users, rendering it uninteresting as a presumed “always-on” connection;
my telephone company doesn’t eavesdrop on my conversations to find out what I like, even if the cable
company is extracting that information from my selections.
>The EarthLink/Google wireless initiative should be part of that strategy.
I think it’s time for the people of SF have SF build a world-class fiber network for their social,
non-mercenary use, to form a consumer’s union of a size to deal with entities like AT&T on even terms.
>The supervisors and the SFPUC
>should not wait 180 days.
>They should approve the contract now so that San Franciscans can benefit from the first phase
>of free wireless service by the summer.
The supervisors and especially the SFPUC should not rush into anything so unwise and so strongly
challenged by many professionals directly involved in the same and similar work. It’s time for the
City to invest in its own doing of things its citzens need.
February 11th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Esme, I value you expertise, insight and foresight but you really have this wrong. To insinuate that there are factions caused by opponents of the MAYOR’s plan is totally incorrect. San Francisco embarked on Citywide Broadband back in 2004 when Supervisor Tom Ammiano introduced a request for feasibility study of creating Citywide Broadband to be installed along with our upcoming sewer improvement project. http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/resolutions04/r0617-04.pdf
The Mayor and DTIS sat on this for three years plus there was $300k set aside for the study. Now, what was that?
And, why was it conveniently released a week after the Google/Earthlink contract introduction to the Supes?
And, the Mayor is calling us out as making this political?
Sorry, we resent this. The actions of Supervisors in 2004 was forward-thinking and in reaction to the franchise agreement renewal of Comcast. San Francisco does not want to go down that road again. By the Mayor introducing this particular Wi-Fi plan, HE (or his PR staff) has created the factions and caused it to be political whether he intended it or not. He’s in the big seat and should be well aware what is going to raise San Franciscan’s haunches.
It is the introduction of this particular Wi-Fi plan and contract that is the imposition on a plan that the city was already undergoing without the need for all the fanfare, sizzle and photo-ops. In fact, Supes went ahead with the idea of the study and the Mayor signed it with the advice of the City’s own Telecommunications Commission that was decommissioned without fanfare by DTIS and has yet to meet again.
The public and elected officials that are interested in bringing the best access to the city are still going about it business as usual. The Mayor wants to introduce a suggestion towards bringing Internet access to the City, that is fine. But, let it go under the same scrutiny and rubric as every other utility or capital project. This is no small affair and is not like going to the consumer electronics store to get a simple Wi-Fi access point that has barely indoor coverage. Tech professionals are saying it is like setting up a baby monitor when they should be installing HAM radio. The people have a right to evaluate any major project that is essentially being provided by a single source under the City’s confines unlike what happened the past four instances of ownership shifts of our cable franchise provider.
*This is more about municipal self-determination and governance than it is about Wi-Fi.*
The concern we have is to make sure that the fiber network is under city governance and maintained ownership, that it is considered as an element of the vision in the future of the city, and that it could be used in some capacity now.
Using the current fiber optic network now as the backhaul is correct and appropriate but the Google/Earthlink plan doesn’t even ask about it which leads many to believe there is some ulterior motive. 60% of it has been sitting there “dark” for three years.
Yes, the most obvious plan is for a hybrid system which is what many tech professionals, local techies and regular users have been asking for since the public hearings started. There have been 12 public hearings since. The same message goes out for using the fiber net as the backhaul and expansion using WiFi on top of it now. Plus, as the city does its sewer improvements and above-wire undergrounding, to start Fiber-To-The-Premises installations (the hardware will be much cheaper by then) with additional support for wireless as needed.
But, this Google/Earthlink Wi-Fi plan doesn’t even look to the future. It is simply a quick-fix install of an access point over the entire city that is rife with terrain and building issues that are not taken into real account. No one knows if it will work. It’s conceptual, at best.
If the rest of the city were allowed some involvement from the beginning instead of this being behind closed doors, we would definitely have a different outcome.
There are many critics of the so-called critics abound. The so-called critics are not the critics, the opposition, the naysayers (that’s us). They are the tech professionals whom live and work in San Francisco that are in abundance unlike other major capital utilities like other delivery systems of fresh water, waste water, electricity, etc. There is plenty of expertise to go around. This is not rocket-science, especially, when there is significant wireless transmission existing already. SF has the most saturation of general Wi-Fi per capita and square mile than any other city in the country. Haight Ashbury area probably has at least 5 live access point on any one block.
I am not being naive about this. Get a hybrid Fiber/Wi-Fi system going. There will be people who already can afford the hardware for fiber installs. Let them pay for it out of their pockets but make fiber access available. For those who can’t afford it now, build out a WiFi network on top of the fiber net but spread the wealth and allow competition among many WiFi vendors that could or would provide WiFi access plugged into our backhaul. Get the variety of Wi-Fi systems which offers plenty of test cases; contracts to be short-term so there could be customizing of the network as more FTTP moves in and wireless hardware becomes obsolete is best. Let the WiFi companies deal with that obsolescence. Maintain taxpayer-owned assets, the Fiber net.
This is a very fluid and incubatory time for Wi-Fi technology now. We have seen companies like Buffalo Tech get sued by the Australian government over 802.11a & g on patent infringement. Intel owns 802.11n.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061116/001301.shtml
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6137372.html
This is no time to secure ownership of white elephants and leave the ass-end of the digital divide in the digital dust. Allow the Fiber projects to move forward now. Let Wi-Fi be the perfect parasite on the Fiber host until everyone gets fiber at home.
February 11th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
With regards to Brian’s report of Esme’s observations, all the speakers were predicating that Digital Inclusion is hinged solely on the Earthlink/Google contract.
I think not. That is such hogwash and no one will buy that argument. That is like saying all homelessness will be solved with Care Not Cash.
First, show us it works.
Second, there are far more better ways to solve this issue plus the Mayor hasn’t issued one dime for Digital Inclusion yet but the Supervisors did at $1 million.
Let’s get real here and stop the window dressing.
February 24th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Who cares about getting the City wi-fied?
I mean, really, seriously who does care a fig about it?
Just get City Hall wi-fied, and leave it at that.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I think Esme provides a sound, informed and informative argument. I concur with her sentiments.
March 6th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Available WiFi would be useful to many of us. Those with privacy concerns can still subscribe to paid services.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
It makes sense to have free citywide wireless internet. To those that oppose it, I would suggest that they travel a little bit and come out of their small caves. I recently traveled to Taiwan and they had free citywide wireless. It completely makes sense from a business and tourism perspective. And last I checked, tourism was one of the biggest industries in SF.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
At some point it’s best to take a Machiavellian approach, and please, for god sake, install the fiber and wireless. In a few months most will have forgotten all about the ‘debate’. Hello!?!?! It’s free! And don’t use it if you don’t want to!
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Patrick Berkeley Said:
“It’s free! And don’t use it if you don’t want to!”
But, it’s NOT FREE. The 300 kilobit “free” access is subsidized by plenty of cash dollars paid by people who want to use the service at better than tablecrumb speed, and by stopping SF from doing any wifi of its own.
The 300 kilobit free service is what Newsom gives to his precious underserved - the people he repeatedly uses to justify the CORPORATE wifi deal. They can’t have anything better because that would interfere in the PROFITS to be derived from the so-called “free” network. That speed won’t support watching the SFGOV site! The underserved remain underserved! If he REALLY cared, he would say, “let’s give the underserved FIBER instead of wifi.” Instead, it’s “let’s hurry up and give Earthlink a 16-year lock on profits from San Franciscans to give a sop to the underserved!” which is impossible to swallow.
The LOCAL PEOPLE who have ALREADY been providing service to the underserved are doing service for FREE at better than /One Megabit!/ If there’s anything defensible about replacing THAT with inferior service to the underserved to subsidize profits to Earthlink and the cash-starved Google, then the Mayor and/or staffers from DTIS should be willing to hold an Open Debate about the issue and confront the activists head-on. Rather than answer the activists’ challenges, instead the Mayor and DTIS ignore the challenges and just keep trying to convince people that any delay to the corporate wifi deal will deprive the underserved. Nonsense, but they cannot be questioned about it and won’t argue it.
People shouldn’t vote for candidates who hide from the issues, and they shouldn’t vote for one side of an issue based on politically-made promises that the candidate refuses to defend. A vote FOR the wifi deal is an utter waste of city resources for a fraction of what the underserved could otherwise get. The underserved will be served FASTER if the deal is cancelled in favor of a city-based initiative. And you readers who do not “just gotta have free 300 kbps wifi right now”, can spend your time salivating for a connection worth using - 1 GIGABIT to your APARTMENT.
WHERE’S MY FIBER?? I WANT IT NOW!!
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 am
Community : Featured Guest Articles (MuniWireless)
• Posted by Esme Vos at 3:51 PM on March 10, 2007
Commentary: How About Truly Public Municipal Wireless
San Francisco’s budget analyst estimates that a ubiquitous San Francisco Wi-Fi network could be built and operated for one year for $6-$10 million. Ongoing maintenance and operations might cost $2 million a year, and equipment/technology replacement might add another $1.5 million annually. That’s less than $30 per household one time ($10,000,000/360,000 households) and less than $10 per year per household for ongoing operations, maintenance and technology upgrades for an outdoor solution that could equally serve all citizens and guests all year much better than dial-up services! That’s an incredibly cheap and efficient use of public Wi-Fi spectrum, and it overestimates the costs and does not count the benefits of a truly public network.
A serious flaw in many cities’ decision-making process is they assume a subscription model is the only valuable and viable one. However, it’s not necessarily always true the best way to finance a network is to have individual subscribers buy service, preferably with somebody getting a shot at getting rich on the deal as a traditional service provider. (Even the Budget Analyst’s report above assumes a subscription services model, thereby overestimating the costs for a truly public network.)
A subscription service model adds significant costs to an overall solution from the perspective of society. It requires the creating and managing systems and organizations to handle customer relationships. It costs a lot of money to install and maintain billing and collections, track and enforce service level agreements (SLAs), market and sell services, manage and provide benefits for all the additional personnel required for these functions.
Multiple levels of service and paid subscription services degrade network performance. Technical solutions have to be layered onto the network to segment traffic, rate limit users according to their paid tier of service, monitor SLA performance. A wholesale model requires staff to negotiate and manage wholesale customer relationships, interconnections with wholesale customer service provider networks, systems integration between the network provider and its wholesale customers, wholesale billing, collections, accounting, audit, SLA enforcement.
All of those additional elements add unnecessary complexity and cost to the overall network and much of the additional money taken from subscribers for those purposes goes elsewhere, to corporate operations, staff and investors elsewhere, rather than staying in a municipality for the benefit of the local economy. From the perspective of society, profit is also an unnecessary expense with a subscription-services solution, and that money also typically leaves and does not benefit the local economy.
Finally, subscription service models risk business failure and closure, by not achieving required levels of paid subscriptions to satisfy investors and managers, and they create conflicts between public service and profit maximization goals.
Free is free! Let’s just put Wi-Fi networks out there as an amenity, a public service to citizens and guests on a best efforts basis, without rate limiting anybody. Let users share bandwidth on the network at any given time. If there are few users of the network in a given location, a user will get better performance than with a rate-limited subscription service. If there are lots of users in a given location, performance is shared between those users. With no performance guarantees and appropriate communications and setting of expectations, that’s OK. It makes the network simpler and less expensive.
There are individual citizens in most communities who could just write checks for a muni Wi-Fi network and its operations. Corporate citizens or government certainly could. Give citizens or philanthropists an opportunity to say whether they are willing to pay for the solution, via general funds, property assessments, bond financing, gifts or grants. A truly ubiquitous and equitable solution would cost less than 1% of a typical municipal budget. Offer the service free as an amenity to all citizens and guests as a digital inclusion strategy. The stimulus to the economy should more than make up for the costs. A city would be a more appealing tourist, convention and business location, attracting new hotel, convention and service revenue. Telecommuting and mobile work would be enabled, reducing traffic and traffic related expenses and inefficiencies, benefiting the economy.
An appropriate model for such a free network is the public library, or public TV or radio. Libraries give citizens the ability to access books, magazines and information, even if they cannot afford to purchase them individually. They allow users to share costs, rather than inefficiently each having to purchase everything and then leaving those assets dormant or discarded after they’ve been used, rather than reusing them. Libraries don’t put bookstores out of business any more than a free Wi-Fi network would put commercial network service providers out of business. The message to industry is “We welcome you to come provide advanced communications services in our city. However, to be commercially successful, the services should be better than what our citizens already get for free.”
As a true public-interest, public network, a city would not have to collect, disseminate, sell or use any personally identifiable data about any individual network user for any purpose, unless required by law. There should be at least one network alternative in a city that adamantly supports a user’s right to privacy. A public, not-for-profit network operator would have no perverse motivations to collect and sell such information for profit or to conceal user data collection and dissemination practices from the public.
Similarly, everyone should have at least one network alternative that is not subject to abuse by advertisement. Many citizens would simply prefer not to have to be exposed to unwanted ads. Some citizens and guests view advertisement as a form of pollution, not unlike garbage strewn on streets. Advertisement is offensive to some and is avoidable. A Wi-Fi network option is cheap. Why pervert it? A public network should remain free of profit motivated ads, just like our libraries and schools.
The municipal wireless movement has an opportunity to significantly raise the bar for electronic communications solutions. With a true public network, modeled after public libraries, public television or radio, we can provide everyone, everywhere in a municipality, at all times, network connectivity many times better than dial-up, at a fraction of the cost of dial-up, that adds no new abuse of personal information or intrusive ads. We can radically reduce digital divides and equitably improve economic opportunity for all. We can reduce automobile traffic and improve the delivery of public services. All in the spirit this country was founded on: efficient, equal respect and opportunity for all.
When we can do that for everyone for less than $25 one time and $10 a year each, why would we settle for anything less?
By James Jones
- - - - -
James Jones is an MBA who has been a telecom optimization consultant to San Francisco Bay Area enterprises, a financial planning manager for Pacific Bell wire-line operations, an SBC custom contract manager, a key contributor to Metro Ethernet pioneer Yipes, and a consultant who helped City College of San Francisco partner with the City of San Francisco to expand public benefit fiber networks. These comments are excerpts from his open letter regarding San Francisco’s muni Wi-Fi efforts, which can be viewed here*. Feel free also to check out his cover story on City College of San Francisco in the February 2007 issue of Communications News.
*
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfwireless/message/657
June 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Folks,
Here is the simple answer. We should not go into business or contract with companies that have publicly stated they are tentative of projects they have been courted by the city to work on.
Additionally, we also must know if there is solvency of those companies, that they will stick around long enough to finish and carry on the project especially when it needs constant maintenance. These concerns and others need to be part of the balancing test when making these long-term decisions on services the city is well equipped to provide and afford with little affect.
Whether we like the contract or not, we really have to pay attention to the winds of change in the marketplace. Despite the want or need for this contract to be successful, the market doesn’t wait for the public or government. It has investors and market standing that is far more priority to leveraging their profits and cash flow. This may mean for any good businessperson that a shift in strategy is essential, if not, imminent.
With that, we must keep our ears to the rails.
Here is a major rumbling that we must not discount on our issue at hand from the new CEO of Earthlink, Rolla Huff.
Respectfully,
Bruce
=====================
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200000837
“The real question around municipal Wi-Fi is, ‘What is the economic model going to look like?’” said Huff. “At end of day, we all have to understand what it’s going to take to make money at this.”
If he decides the business modwl is cloudy, Huff said, he won’t hesitate to pull the plug — even on highly visible projects like the Google-Earthlink effort to build a wireless network for San Francisco. “To the extent I don’t think we have the capability to get to the point of profitability, I’ll make that judgment, too.”
July 20th, 2007 at 9:16 am
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July 30th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Jessica
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