Persuading A City To Go Wireless?

An anonymous reader submits "We keep reading about cities dishing out free wireless; Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, TX, and many, many others. But how does one go about forming a group to get their city to go wireless? Looking around, there are a few articles out there, but most deal with selling it to businesses. I haven't been able to find a definitive guide to "Getting your city to go wireless". So I send my plea out to the Slashdot community - just how does one go about getting your city to go wireless?"

Comments

Need

[regjoe]

The first point you need to sell on is need. Can private business fill the need in the area, if not, then Govenment has the responsibility to listen to its citizens and make an informed decision. I would personally like my ton to offer this, but we already have companies providing it. Govenment should not compete with private business over such matters.

Re:Need

[Anonymous Coward]

Govenment should not compete with private business over such matters.

Why not?

Re:Need

[pigscanfly.ca]

The best way is to bypass your city and instead go after the individual business that would benefit from this. Citys tend to be fairly beurcratic, but if you can go to say a coffee shop and say X more poeple would buy coffee from you if you had wireless which would cost Y dollars (where Y is less than X multiplied by there marginal profit over the span of 3 months) then they will almost always go for it because they can increase there profit
As for convincing an entire city, unless its really small I think your pretty much screwed.

Re:Need

[RollingThunder]

Govenment should not compete with private business over such matters.

I disagree. When things are best provided as a localized monopoly, I would rather the government (yes, with it's inherent inefficiencies, which are magnitudes less than rabid conservatives would have you believe) have that monopoly, than a for-profit company that will eventually abuse that monopoly.

You can prevent the company from abusing the monopoly with government regulation, true - but then you're spending money to regulate the industry. Better you just do it yourself, via the government.

Re:Need

[Moderatbastard]

Citys tend to be fairly beurcratic

So they differ from cities (or their governments) which are usually bureacratic.

Re:Need

[Skim123]

When things are best provided as a localized monopoly, I would rather the government (yes, with it's inherent inefficiencies, which are magnitudes less than rabid conservatives would have you believe) have that monopoly, than a for-profit company that will eventually abuse that monopoly.

While I agree that in a service that is "best provided as a localized monopoly" that, yes, gov't is much better than privitization. But must there be a monopoly? Why can't there be multiple wireless service providers, competing with one another?

Also, whenever you have a gov't-sponsored program, like a monopolized WISP, you have to remember that (in theory) everyone's paying for it. So it should be a service that virtually everyone utilizes/benefits from. I agree that electricity, water, sewer, etc., fall under this category, but wireless Internet access? This benefits only those with a means/interest to go online, and with the appropriate hardware. Personally, I'd rather pay for wireless service myself (or not, if I decide it's not worth it), than not have the decision and be forcibly taxed for this service.

Re:Need

[zorander]

I would say that "magnitudes" is unreasonable. Many government programs have high levels of administration overhead. This is a fact. Government overheads are also much higher than corporate ones, in general. Logically, a company with a profit motive has much more reason to be efficient than a government program run by bureucrats with no personal stake in the matter.

Conservatives often claim numbers like 70% as far as administrative overhead goes. "Orders of magnitude" would imply that the real numbers are more like 0.7% (two orders of magnitude). This is ridiculous. If you're going to claim that conservative's claims are ridiculous then at least don't make unreasonable claims doing so.

Re:Need

[icebike]

This is NOT (yep, yelling) something that requires or even suggests a monopoly, any more than cell phone service requires a monopoly.

So your arguments are moot from the start.
No service providers other than water an sewer (and in some places Electricity) can count on a monopoly anymore, and as a consequence people can vote with their pocketbook.

Such is not the case when the government steps in, and abuses of power happen far more frequently when the government is involved than when people are free to take their account elsewhere.

'Fraid you will have to find some other excuse for living off the public teet...

Re:Need

[stephanruby]

"I would rather the government..."

If the government takes care of this instead (instead of private individuals, non-profits, local businesses, and coffee shops). It will be run just like your local Public Library. You won't be able to access porn, games, and mp3s (even legitimate ones). Your access will be monitored and tracked for "security" reasons (remember the story about Homeland Security complaining about free wireles access points). And just to err on the safe side, your wireless connection will be crippled, this way you won't be able to bypass the controls that government will impose on you (for your own good). And eventually, the city will propose a bond measure and a new tax to pay for it.

Offer to pay for it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm serious. Cities have better things to spend the tax money on, if you really want it to happen then find other people that feel the same way and offer to fund it.

Re:Offer to pay for it

[FauxReal]

Yes, take the Personal Telco approach.

Re:Offer to pay for it

[fyngyrz]

I disagree. The government currently has the role of maintaining transport infrastructure. With good reason: It is critical, and it is very darned big. I'm pretty sure that in addition to transport of land, air and water vehicles, cargo on same, water supplies, and pedestrians, that the transport of electricity, heating fuels and information/communications are appropriate for the government to (a) manage the infrastructure of and (b) ensure that everyone has the opportunity to use the resource without surcharge other than the flat tax (the flat tax being the only fair tax system possible IMHO.)

The idea that some family can't get heat, light, or information/education should be enough to see why corporations should not be allowed to limit access to those resources to those who are cash-heavy enough to support the corporation.

YMMV (but I doubt it.)

Tourist hot spots?

[NoInfo]

I'd start by trying to get the most touristy areas covered by wireless. Beaches, Main street, historic district, etc.

It's much more likely to happen there since most cities have no problem providing this sort of support to non-citizens.

Over time, this might grow to your local parks and hang-out areas.

A city is a business.

[mind21_98]

Except that it doesn't usually make a profit. Just convince it that it'll bring in business people and the like and increase city revenues. Of course, if your city's a hick town in the middle of nowhere or fairly small, it might not be popular, especially if it's going to be geared towards business people (no offense).

Re:A city is a business.

[captnitro]

Your point is correct, but I wouldn't necessarily say that people in the middle of nowhere wouldn't benefit or want it.

For example, I live in the New River Valley (Virginia), where the entire place is practically nowhere. However, we're expected to grow immensely within the next 10 years because of, among other things: suburban sprawl, low cost of living, cheap real estate, and so on. While the town I live in has a poverty rate of 43% (!) as of the 2000 census, the population is split between poor farmers and businesses attracted by nearby Virginia Tech, which has been very active in the past few years in advertising "you could be home by now" for business because of the aforementioned reasons, as well as the proximity to a Top 30 research institution.

In this case, wireless has popped up all over in the past year because our town council is smart and realizes that if we want to attract business, we should offer business perks comparable to that in a larger area. Similarly, it gets the townfolk out and about and spending money because whereas they might not be able to get DSL at home, they *can* get wireless anywhere downtown. It also costs less in terms of coverage area, despite the startup costs taking a bigger chunk of available funds. Several years ago, towns in the area decided to pay for an assload of fiber, most notably Blacksburg, where VT is located. By doing this they lessened the cost for private owners to roll out wireless, among other connectivity, around here.

The point is, I think there's an even bigger incentive for smaller areas to roll out wireless, or at least the connectivity to make it happen. In a large area, a greater percentage of persons will have broadband, or even Internet access in general, so the argument could be made that wireless is a benefit mostly only for visitors. But in a small town, it can benefit the entire community with a much bigger payoff.

Re:A city is a business.

[UserGoogol]

A city is not a business. The goal of a business is to make money. The goal of a government is to serve the people. (Of course, in practice the government might acquire greedy people who wish to control the government for their own personal profits, but that's not what's supposed to happen.)

As a result, businesses will try to have their profit margins as large as possible, whereas governments should not, because serving the people is their end goal, not making money off of their services.

Austin is wireless?

[dougmc]

Living in Austin, I was quite astounded to find that the city had gone wireless.

Clicking on your link, I learned what I already knew -- many businesses offer wireless access. Oh. Hardly news.

So, to answer your question, you do not convince a city to go wireless. You convince indivual businesses to do so, or if you run a business, you do so yourself.

Angry mob

[JorDan Clock]

You could try the good ol' angry mob o' citizens :) Some other, less angry methods include: - A petition. Get enough people to sign a petition (get some tourists too) and someone's bound to consider it. - Resarch. Conduct your own research/study (or hire a research/studies firm) on the desirabiliy and benefits of wireless access points through out the city. Be sure to include cheap methods. - Set up a small wireless network at a local park to demonstrate to the city that people want it.

Muniwireless

[YeOldeGnurd]

A few of us in Medford MA have just begun discussing how we would go about convincing the city to offer wireless. We've all been reading the reports at MuniWireless.com"

You don't

[cbelle13013]

No offence to any government working /.ers that operate the computers, but having the government offer "free" wireless internet is a horrible idea.

Besides tax dollars being used to kill the competition, you'll end up with a low quality service. The same types of people that work at the DMV will work at the Municpal Internet Department. I'm not talking about the techies that know what they're doing, I'm strictly talking customer support.

Also, why would you want to give the government easier access to your internet data? Most of the folks here are adamently against the Patriot Act, but free governemnt sponsored wireless seems to be okay?

My company uses Verizon with the EvDO cards and have "wireless" everywhere we go, at near cable speeds. Its $80 a month and I get a real human to answer the tech support line after i prompt for English. AT&T and others have very similar solutions.

I can only imagine tech support through the government.

Re:You don't

[dogfart]

I actually find that many government agencies provide better customer service than many for-profit entities. Perhaps because government customers are voters, while private sectors customers are a cost to be minimized (e.g. post-sales support).

I get a much prompter response from the California DMV than I do from SBC Global, Earthlink or just about any other private entity.. It actually shocked me that I was able to set up a DMV appointment so effortlessly without being on hold for 30 minutes, going through multiple useless IVR options, or having my call dropped for no reason and having to start over. All of these annoyances are just standard for private sector so-called customer support.

A municipally run utility is less likely to cooperate with Patriot Act searches than a large national ISP dependent on Federal government favors. Remember many cities have gone on record opposing the Patriot Act, and many local police departments have witheld cooperation from the Feds (where they can). Cities tend to be subject to open government laws, requiring that their actions be available to members of the public - as opposed to private companies that can seal their records up at their whim.

Re:You don't

[josh3736]

First of all, why would a city government offering free wireless even have tech support??? If you can't figure out how to pop in a 802.11 card and connect to "CityWireless" that's your problem-- you get what you pay for!

Second, there is no law forcing you to use the government-sponsored wireless connectivity. If you don't want them to have "easier access" to your internet data, connect a VPN or SSH session back to your box at home. Problem solved.

I'm not going to pay Verizon $80 a month so I can check my mail and browse Slashdot from the park when the city could put up a public AP that would cost me nothing.

Re:You don't

[Darth_Burrito]

I dunno. People, myself included, have hated dealing with the DMV for as long as I can remember. Long lines, complicated fee structures, very few if any online capabilities.

I've seen people wait in line for 15 minutes, then, after being served, be told they had to go wait in a different line for something else. I've gone to DMV stations where I've been told they only offer a subset of services there, and I'd have to drive 15 miles to a nearby town to take care of the rest.

That said, I also hate dealing with the ISPs. But in all honesty, I think I'd rather deal with them. They may be rat bastards from hell, but they generally have it together a little better than government entities.

Besides, an ISPs core business is to provide internet service. A city government's core business is to govern and manage. I wouldn't expect a city to get into the ISP business any more than I would expect Kraft foods to do the same.

Justification

[Agilis]

A good part of it is justifying the cost of doing such a project for what might be little benefit to city budget committees who are always strapped for cash. Other than "hey look we're tech savy come here!" what benefit do you derive from paying for free wireless upkeep in a metro area?

We're getting there, but I am still screwed

[multi-flavor-geek]

I live in Duluth, Minnesota (great white north), and we are making a lot of progress througth tech kiosks and access points in touristy areas to become more and more of a wired city, unfortunatly duluth is geographically a huge city since it is about 50 miles from one end of town to the other despite that we only have about 85,000 people. Since I am in the hinterlands on one end I woul never be on an access point, and even if they did set one up it would only be able to serve about 20 houses. And since, despite being in town I am in the middle of nowhere I can't get wireless, dsl, or cable, and those phone wires hand hammered by Thor himself don't support anything faster then 28.8. Help!

Simple .... Money!

[polyp2000]

But how does one go about forming a group to get their city to go wireless?

Tell them that its a great way to make MONEY...

$$$$$

Resistance

[Anonymous Writer]

Wouldn't mobile phone network providers lobby against this sort of thing? If a city went wireless, portable WiFi VoIP devices could be used as an alternative to mobile phones, without the call charges. Since mobile phone carriers have deep pockets and people wanting a city to go wireless wouldn't have as much influence, chances are politicians would go in favor of maintaining "soft money" lobbyists protecting their source of revenue.

Provides government infrastructure...

[neiffer]

I think the article author might misunderstand what it means for a "city to go wireless." Many of the cities mentioned don't have any sort of universal infrastructure, but rahter a network of patchwork wireless ranging from free hotspots from ISPs promoting their service to wireless home users who intentionally (or unintentionally) allow people in their area to use wireless. As for a city, Spokane, Washington has a large, city-supported and funded wireless hotspot in their downtown area which they greated to give public servants (from parking ticket writers to police officiers) a data network using cheap, off-the-shelf technology. You many want to consider that route.

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

[nenya]

Talk about your massively insecure network...

Do we really want to encourage everyone in an entire city to take part in a single network which seems almost inherently insecure? I can't imagine they'd use any kind of WEP, as that would defeat the purpose of having a city-wide network. I know I feel a lot safer behind my router's firewall than I ever do warchalking.

Re:Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

[bob65]

Do we really want to encourage everyone in an entire city to take part in a single network which seems almost inherently insecure? I can't imagine they'd use any kind of WEP, as that would defeat the purpose of having a city-wide network. I know I feel a lot safer behind my router's firewall than I ever do warchalking.

Why couldn't you just treat it with the same trust as you do the internet? That is, always have a firewall between your system and the wireless connection.

Re:Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

[OrangeSpyderMan]

Talk about your massively insecure network...

Wake up and smell the coffee. The internet is as insecure as it comes - anything you don't feel comfortable sending across WiFi you shouldn't send across the Internet either. WiFi has the advantage that only people in your neighbourhood can break in - that's heaven when you compare it to the internet :-) Encryption exists, use it, you should do anyway if it has to go through the internet - no difference.

"Backbone"

[lkstrand]

The wireless "backbone" could be running OLSR - as described here.

non-US cities?

[Saville]

This is off topic, but this discussion really made my curious. All those cities listed are American.

How do cities in other countries compare? London, Paris, Tokyo, Toronto, Athens, Seoul.

Hermosa Beach, California

[valmont]

the city i live in has been unwired since this summer.

no need to persuade them

[wikinerd]

Instead of whining and trying to persuade "the dad" to provide us with wireless, isn't it easier to build it up by ourselves?
There is no need to persuade them to go wireless if they don't want. They see the initial infrastructure cost and are afraid of it, but I think we (the ppl) can volunteer to build up a city network.
Just sacrifice some of your $$ to buy equipment and find some friends in the neighboorhood to start a small wireless network. Then, find more friends to join the network and collect money to buy more equipment. Be sure not to break any laws and not to allow piracy etc, so that your network will survive. After your network grows, startup a nonprofit to collect donations etc and buy a fatpipe to connect it to the Internet.
There are already many projects working like this and they succeed. When they grow up, they even get the gov support and if they are lucky they may even get founding etc :)
volunteerism is always better. This is clearly shown in cases like BSD and GNU and Linux and open content encyclopaedias where unpaid volunteers create much better products than business solutions etc.
See an example in EU: http://www.awmn.gr/

Find/Start a company

[g3head]

Last year my community went wireless thanks to a small start up. 802Link started by going to the chamber of commerce and the various downtown improvement groups and convinced them to launch a wireless network, working a lot on tourism (the community has 3 or 4 big festivals a year).

His original plan was to sell the service like an ISP but last time I talked to the owner he had made it more reliant on consulting and setting up wireless networks. Now the business is attracting as many industrial clients as commercial operations.

To a degree the city has also latched on but working with the local businesses is the key to getting your own city to go wireless. And it does attract people. In a city of around 10,000 its pretty common to see two or three laptops or palmtops downtown on any given day

Ah, yes: Wireless. Bad idea loved by all.

[crazyphilman]

The popularity of wireless mystifies me. Although it is riddled with problems, from poor security to unreliability, people love it. Even when they're in their own homes, and all they have to do is run an ethernet cable to have a completely reliable, secure LAN, they STILL go with a wireless solution -- usually at a much higher price (paying for a base station, wireless card, etc).

Before anyone responds to tell me how wonderful wireless is, until you can convincingly make the following issues go away, you won't get anywhere with me:

1. Security: Anyone with a net stumbler can see your network's parameters and possibly use them to play with you. Even if you're using WEP, it'll only be as secure as your implementation. And don't forget, someone can just log all the packets you're sending and try to decrypt them later.

2. Reliability: weather conditions can screw up your wireless signal, as can anything else that causes interference, from electrical equipment to thick walls. Furthermore, someone who doesn't like you can jam your signal fairly easily. Which, by the way, would be a lot of fun if you didn't like your neighbor. Wait for him to look really busy at his computer, and turn on your jammer. Hilarity ensues. Great fun for the jammer, not so fun for the poor sap who loses his net connection right in the middle of a download.

Some will say that with improving encryption, squirt transmissions, better equipment, etc, wireless will improve to the point where the two issues I mentioned will go away. Fine. But this requires more processing to handle the connection, which slows the connection down. And the FCC limits how strong your signal can be.

I just don't see how wireless is ever going to be a good solution. People will continue to use it -- of course. But people still use Windows 98, too.

Persuading the goverment to waste money?

[Luscious868]

I don't think the goverment should be in the business of wasting the publics hard earned money on wireless internet access.

Correction

[stephanruby]

I don't know about the other cities, but in San Francisco, it's not the city that has gone wireless -- it's a group of people within the city that have set up free wireless access points.

It only takes one person to set up something like this. You set up your own free wireless access point and then you tell people about it. Eventually, you can meet with other people that have done the same, share information, and form a user group. And when enough of the people at the right locations have joined your group, then you'll have pretty good city-wide coverage.

Free wireless = BAD idea

[mageos]

I am no expert, but I have had the oppertunity to work with public(government) IT admins. No offence, but some are fairly clueless. Most professional network admins have a hard enough time keeping spammers off their networks, but could you imaging a free, public WIFI city? That would be every spammers dream come true. Besides, I can thing of a million better things my taxes could do.

Persuading a Continent to go wireless

[gtoomey]

In Australia we have a numerous local wireless meshes that are being joined to make a mesh spanning a continent.

The infrastructure you need included:
- IP assignment policy across the continent
- a node database that has a Geographical Information System to tell you where to point your antenna to find neighbouring nodes
- local interest groups that help businesses & individuals go wireless & advocate at the local level

Unfair

[math major]

It is unfair for tax money to pay for a service that is useless for most of its constituents. Only the people who can afford laptops will benefit from this. Do you really think that people living in poverty should have their taxes raised so rich people can get internet access in more public areas?

Re:You don't - The Myth of Business and Gov't

[LikelyStory]

Look, this is a myth, folks, that needs to be beaten with a stick until it's good and dead.

1. When you think "wireless utility", how about you think "water utility" - yeah, that stuff that pretty much just works, so much so you take it for granted. Designed and run by gov't employees.

2. The reference to the California DMV is exactly right. It's impressively low hassle, and has been for some years - but before that, it was hell-on-wheels, fulfilling every bit of that myth. It's pretty clear that what happened is, somebody took control of the California DMV and, well, fixed it. Made it run sensibly and effectively (not so easily done). It's amazing the difference. There is an unsung hero in that story.

3. The well-known comic, Dilbert, is about government bureaucrats, ineptitude and inefficiency... oh, wait.

4. Others have pointed out such companies, so...

The point? The performance of an entity, whether a piece of government or a private company, depends primarily on its internal culture (which is itself influenced by individuals like the unknown hero of the DMV). It has very little to do with whether the service it provides is for-profit or not.

Of course, companies can go out of business, but it's pretty damn obvious - if you look at evidence, instead of relying without thinking on that that myth/theory - that plenty of companies with abysmal customer satisfaction profiles merrily continue to profit.