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Municipal WiFi Costs Outweigh Benefits
TheSync writes "JupiterResearch claims that muni WiFi costs outweigh benefits. It can cost up to $150,000 per square mile over five years, which may not even provide each user a benefit of $25 a month. They suggest that such projects only be taken on as public-private partnerships."
First, the article says the average cost is $150,000, not up to $150k.
Second, it says an assumed $25/month benefit, not that it's not even $25/month. Also, Internet access costs me $40/month, so...
Third, it says the first five years, which includes all manner of infrastructure creation. Even a major network upgrade would likely cost less later on, because you don't have to find locations, put up towers, etc. I'd like to see the per year estimates, but I'm not subscribed to Jupiter's service.
If your town/city is going through the work and effort to build this manner of network, hopefully someone is going to notify your citizens and try to get them onboard. By Jupiter's reckoning, it takes an average 100 users per square mile to cover the costs. Now, if your city/town put any real effort into this project, you'd probably let people know that free Internet access is a $40 network card away. Get local computer stores to stock up on the cards and ask them to chip in on an ad campaign. They can offer a flat-rate installation service (with caveats for running into problems, etc)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
ive heard the same said about public transportation a few times, and im sure it was said about the power system(which is municipal, at least in some areas)
I don't suppose JupiterResearch just happen to have a Public Private Partnership group for providing Municipal WiFi by any chance?
No, wait; that other word.
Boring.
Until you get a fabric network that covers multiple square miles per basestation (a la WiMAX) You'll not see a municipal implementation over a metro area.
Sure there are exceptions (where town.size approaches zero) or (starbuck.count approaches infinity) but this is just the economics catching up with the technology.
If you've got a connection at home, and you've got a connection on the Bus, and you've got a connection via your cellphone, and yuo've got a connection via your coffee shop, why does a city have to be 100% covered by 802.11a/b/g? GPRS/EDGE/3g/future can (and initially will) pick up the slack.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Honestly, wi-fi in general needs to work better before people are going to use it exclusively. We just stopped using our town's free wi-fi because it sucked. And, I stopped using it in my house a few months back, also. I've never seen a solid, stable, fast wi-fi implementation. It's fun and cute for people checking their email quickly at Starfucks, but wi-fi still isn't there (from everything I've seen) for a regular, dedicated connection.
Hear me before it is too late! SHUN the evil of the Three P's, Public Private Partnership! Turn ye either to the left, to publically funded projects, or to the right, to the blessed land of private enterprise -- but walk not the middle path, the path of the Three P's!
Once, this land of England was fair and pleasant, with mighty Industry and caring Government working hand in hand! Then came the Three P's! They promised us cost savings and social responsibility, but they delivered nothing -- nothing save gigantic invoices and permanent damage to the environmental and social fabric of the nation!
Turn aside, oh turn, I beg you, America, from this path of wickedness! For the evil of Bloated Government Inefficiency is in them, and the sin of Greedy Private Contractors they likewise have! And the private half shall spend, yea spend and spend, and the public half will know not nor care where the money has gone!
Repent therefore, repent before they do unto you as they have unto Europe!
My words have the semblance of jest, but the danger is deadly serious.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Remember that the research firm is part of Jupitier Media. A company which includes the following branches:
"The ClickZ.com Network offers cutting-edge commentary on Internet marketing and advertising from industry leaders as well as original case studies and unique insight.
The Graphics.com Network provides creative professionals with tutorials, news on the latest technologies, and community forums and galleries to display their work.
The internet.com, EarthWeb.com, DevX.com, ClickZ.com and Graphics.com Networks appeal to advertisers and vendors because they provide a community that only delivers information technology, Internet industry and creative professionals, 83% of whom make or influence technology purchasing decisions. Among our advertisers are some of the best known names in information technology and the Internet industry, including Computer Associates, Dell Computer Corporation, International Business Machines Corporation, Google, Microsoft Corporation and Oracle Corporation. " (Copied from their "About Jupitier Media" section)
Of course they back a public-private shared venture, what better way to insert ads into the public Wi-Fi network!
Let's also assume a statistical overrepresentation of "connected" workers in the areas so equipped. Let's further assume than most of the systems work acceptably well. Let's even still further more (and yet) assume that those workers are made more efficient through access to their data, their schedules, the people making their schedules, and the ability to review documentation from *wherever* they are. SO there goes Jupiter's $25/month metric.
Muni wi-fi is not intended to simply replace household ISPs. $25/month is a meaningless measure of effectiveness. For one, think of the traffic and fuel costs potentially avoided by allowing wired workers improved access. This is a direct benefit to the city. You know; as long as we're making assumptions.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
I don't know about anyone else but I'm getting skeptical about anything I read from Jupiter, Gartner or any of the big research firms. It's usually being paid for by someone with an agenda and, no surprise, the research tends to support the conclusions the customer wants. After a while you just stop paying attention to them. They've sold their credibility.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One company that I was at, did WiFi. It is not even close to 20K square mile to do it. I am guessing that we will find that this study was funded by some company such as Comcast, bellsouth, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Did anyone else see anything funny with a WiFi story being posted at 8:02.11 in the morning?
Nathan
This study needs to be looked at very skeptically, because there is a lot of money right now trying to discourage municipal wifi systems. Why? Because any new legislation being pushed by the telcom companies to ban municipal wifi as unfair competition would have to grandfather in any existing municipal wifi systems and allow them to continue to operate and even expand.
Many of the Wifi activists (Boston Area Wireles for example) are trying to convince local governments to at least establish a single note public Wifi system just so that they can continue to operate if the telecom industry manages to outlaw public networks.
It's pretty obvious which side of this battle has the money and motive to pay for "independent" research.
-braddock
Given that I could only read a short summary instead of the whole report, I could be way off on this. Nonetheless, if it costs $25/month to break even then I say go for it! Why? Because the benefits per month to an individual is EASILY $25/Month. Then let's add in the benefit to your local business. Let's not forget Metcalfe[sp?]'s law. The value of a network goes up as more people participate. Becaues municipal WIFI is free, there will be a ton of people joining and using it, especially the lower income people. This opens up that many more people as potential customers for local businesses and services. Then let's add in the value of convience. To be able to rely on a constant network connection anywhere in town is invaluable. Do they realize how much people are willing to pay just for that? I know businesses would love to send their people around town and be able to communicate with them reliably anywhere in town for free.
$25/month per person is NOTHING! Infrastructures to enable people to work together are usually good investments for the government. Let's just ask S. Korea what they think about widespread access...
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Yea and indeed verily.
This missive does indeed speak the truth. I encourage those of you blessed with the points of moderation to bestow them unstintingly and with the fullness of your heart to the above post, so that the multitudes may come to know of this cautionary tale of Britannic woe.
This "research" is almost certainly bought and paid for by the telcos.
Common sense will tell you that muni wifi is a good thing for you and me and a bad thing for the telcos. If the costs of muni wifi outweigh the benefits, then why are the telcos spending so much money buying all this legislation to outlaw muni wifi?
Also, there are cities that have already implemented muni wifi, therefore why not go loko at their implementation, and SEE what the costs and benefits are? Why bother with this fake research? And did the telcos pay Slashdot to run this article?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
There are a HUGE number of things that municpalities do that can be considered money losers. I get the feeling that JupiterResearch probably has some sort of vested interest in wi-fi networks.
As for "public/private" goes. Endeavors like that are always funded with tax money, but any income goes into private pockets. Which means that it STILL will be a money loser for municipalities.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
To actually RTFR you'll need to be a "JupiterResearch client" but here's a link to more than just that press release: Municipal Wireless.
There's not much there, though a few other places have picked up bits, no one has the actual important parts that could tell us is this report is worth the bits its printed on.
We're supposed to trust research "reported on" in a press release?
I really dislike this idea. Why force another service on the public that not every member of the public wants or will even use. There are far better outlets for the money than to provide a service for a few people to d/l their porn/copyrighted material anonymously.
I live in a New Jersey suburb, population 97,687, land area 30.1 square miles. So with 3,245 people per square mile, and assuming that $150,000 per square mile cost, that works out to $46.22 per person over 5 years, or about 77 cents a month. Now, granted that not every person will be a user, but I don't see how something like this could end up being prohibitively expensive. If only 1 in every 30 people is a user, it still works out to less than $25 a month, which is significantly cheaper than the broadband offerings in the area anyway.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
They say that costs outway the benefits. If that is true, then no sane private entity should invest in it.
The only way you would get the service then is if it became a public work. It is the same with any service that cost too much like rural electric. So they should be in favor of municipal WiFi if any. This is not a very credible report.
A city with city-wide free access wireless internet would attract more business and high tech firms, but can they do it on the cheap?
Not every square inch needs covered - just the main roadways, public buildings, public libraries.
So basically if you sit down for lunch someplace in town, you can pop open your laptop.
It doesn't have to cover all the alleyways in town...
"JupiterResearch provides unbiased research, analysis and advice, backed by proprietary data, to help companies profit from the impact of the Internet and emerging technologies on their business."
Thhat don't exactly strike me as comapatible when you're determining whether the governement can or cannot do something cost effectively. This is being sold to companies who, one would presume, would like to convince municipalities to NOT put in a competing (wireless) ISP.
To take my town as an example, we have 40,000 residents spread over 22 square miles. A lot of these are college students (I've excluded on-campus residents from that number) so I'll say 3 people per "household". That's 13,000 potential "subscribers", or 591 per square mile. I'd say more than half here have internet access of some type. If we GAVE away the wifi cards, we might double the infrastructure cost for the first 5 years (20,000x$40/5=160k).
I come up with $16.95 per month per internet-using household. Verizon (who was laying fiber down mainstreet last week) and Adelphia wouldn't be too happy, of course.
Before you think this might be too much money for a small town, we have a PPP for a new parking garage here (and retail shopping building). A developer convinced the town to float at $2M bond to help him build the building, and he gets to charge for parking during the day and for events. Even though we had to borrow the money to do it, the mayor claimed that the town would get (x) free evening and weekend parking spaces for only $20 a month. He forgot that we were borrowing the money, and the number was closer to $50 after interest expenses. That's more than the town pays to lease surface lot space 24/7/365. But, the mayor's been known to go out to lunch - on the developers tab - fairly frequently. Now that its built, of course, nobody wants the park there, because its too far to walk (2-3 blocks) to the "downtown shops", and is used only occasionally when the on-street parking is completely full.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I've also got some issues with AirPort topology (the GUI has never heard of it. It assumes a single server/client[s] installation).
Maybe its the antenas, maybe its the transmitters, but it sucks that I get better reception from the neighbor's WAP through the floor/ceiling than I can get from my own unobstructed AirPort WAP from 50 feet away.
I know about the inverse square rule with distance but it sucks that the none of the Airport set up software can understand about repeaters. I can only have a star network.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If the municipal service is being done in place of upgrading all of the radios in town trucks (garbage, parks, school-grounds, etc.) and emergency services vehicles, and incidentally giving them all access to email and other communications, the benefit to everyone else is just gravy. The goal with any such service is to make it cheap enough that it's not worth metering, and ubiquitous enough that it can be relied on. This is in direct contrast to the goal of any private company, which is to make the highest profit possible. The people who make hardware know that once the hardware is in place it runs for pennies worth of electricity with minimal attention, so they're concentrating on getting buy-in and build-out; it's the people who hope to make money renting out a service who are trying to block things.
Umm, Jupiter Networks needs some basic math skills or to stop being funded by companies who will lose if Muni Wi-Fi succeeds.
Lets see here, One square Mile in FIVE years costs $150,000. At $25.00 a month (per user) that's $1,500 in FIVE years PER user. Now as long as there are at least 10 freakin people per square mile you've at least broke even... and this is in cities, so I think there will be more than 10 damn people using the system.
God, these people who are clawing to keep this from happening to benefit the public for their own greed sicken me. I'm glad we try so hard to build useful infrastructure that is affordable and accessible to all of us who pay 30% of our paychecks to gain some usefulness besides lining some corrupt-ass politician's pockets instead. Our money is *much* better in his pocket than in the community where some benefit would be realized.
And FTR, MY internet access costs more like $40 per month and I'm sure most others do too. Give me a break!
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I love this reasoning. "It's too expensive to be worthwhile, so please pay a private firm to do it."
Mind the Gap
It costs me over $50/month for a broadband internet connection from Comcast. If someone offered me a reasonably similar connection for $30/month, I'd jump at it.
Right, a muni wifi network that is low cost or free to the user could save America (yes, pseudoLibertarians, I realize it would have to be paid for by taxes, hence the phrase "to the user").
I say this because right now the mass media is responsible for the transmission of the vast majority of political/social ideas. Outside of internet forums and colleges, very little transmission of political ideas is going on from person to person. All ideas come from the mass media.
However, the mass media is owned and operated by the elite, the upper crust, the high earners, the rich, the powerful. These people have political ideas that are different from most working class Americans. In particular, the elite have ideas that favor the elite, not surprisingly. What sorts of ideas favor the elite? Well, the idea of a flat tax favors the elite because the elite get to keep more of their wealth. And it hurts us. THe elite like regressive taxation. That hurts us and helps them.
THe elite like globalization. But it hurts us.
The elite like lots of immigration. But that hurts us working American citizens.
The elite like war. It opens up new markets for the corporations. But we die in these wars.
So, these elite-friendly ideas are favored by the elite. And the mass media is controlled by the elite.
100 years ago, most idea transmission was person to person. And not surprisingly that was when the working people fought and died for a decent workplace, for labor laws, for the right to vote.
We no longer fight for our rights. And so we are losing them. Look at Europe. They work less and get more. We work more and get less. That is because our culture has been taken over by elite thinking via the mass media.
If we want to change our culture back to a workerist-friendly one, and not an elite-friendly one, we need to have a society where ideas are transmitted from working person to working person, not from a few elite persons to muliple working persons. Muni wifi could be the way to do that. Once you get free or very cheap broadband via muni wifi, and you put that together with p2p networks to pass video from person to person, that opens up the way for video entertainment made on the cheap.
This is how the early American theater was, about 100 years ago. The first movies were not shown in opulent theaters like they are now. Instead most were shown in the corners of little urban bodegas, and most movies were made on the cheap by semi-amateur filmmakers. Many of the early movies were strongly pro-worker and anti-elite. These early movies helped start the labor movement that gave us our labor laws (see the book Working Class Hollywood for more info).
Then the big money moved in and bought some politicians and outlawed the small movies via safety regulations and political censorship.
Muni wifi + p2p could be the new movie industry. And it could revitalize America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
In the case of municipal WiFi, there are a huge number of public or semi-public hotspots all over major cities. The local governments would have to be offering a really good deal to make this beneficial to everyone. And if this is really a government service, though, one presumes it would be paid for via taxes of some kind. It would be better if the city got involved in helping private companies find places to put access points, perhaps providing some measure of physical security to those locations, for a fixed amount per location per month (let's say it's $3 per AP per month with a minimum of 1000 APs to cover a decent area). The company could then use some kind of authentication mechanism to make sure people connecting had paid for its service (maybe $25/mo).
The university I attend is modifying its wireless network to broadcast two seperate SSIDs - one that authenicated users (ie students, staff, faculty) can use (and is firewalled, etc) and a second that is wide open for anyone to use, but has no security whatsoever. Non-authenticated users could use a lower speed, and unsecured, version of the network (throttled back to a max of say 802.11b), while the paying subscribers would be able to use the higher available bandwidth (802.11a/g). This would allow people in lower income areas to still use the internet, but people who wanted more speed could pay for it.
Of course, with the new precedent set in Tampa Bay FL, how would municipalities actually be able to act on people using the network for illegal activity? (I personally think that it's the user's responsibility to not do anything illegal, but heaven help you if you believe in personal responsibility in America.)
Such muni WiFi projects could also impact other types of internet subscriptions (especially dial-up), and might be viewed as very anti-competitive to local, traditional ISPs.
antipaucity
Shhhhhh! Don't tell anybody.
I was thinking the same thing. The only thing that makes sense is that a private entity could in theory do a project that doesn't pay off as fast - the study focused on the costs over the first 5 years which contains a lot of one-off costs.
I'm doubting that too, though - seems a government would be able to leverage bonds or tax funds mroe easily, and doesn't have to show a profit. So probably BS all around.
Does someone have a copy of the report? I can only find the press release.
Being in a position to pursue municipal wifi, I'd like to study the report to see if it is correct.
Does anyone know who paid for the study and subsequent report?
they don't. Jupiter is a research firm a la Gartner or IDC.
Becaues municipal WIFI is free, there will be a ton of people joining and using it, especially the lower income people.
So there is a demographic that can afford computers with wireless capabilities but cannot afford monthly ISP fees? I'm not saying such folk don't exist; I'm saying it's probably a very small niche and probably shouldn't be factored into your scenario.
Let's just ask S. Korea what they think about widespread access...
This is a red herring: South Korea has a large market for wired networking, due in some part to the relative population density. The requirements driving wired markets are not the same as those driving wireless markets, and the two ideas should not be viewed as equivalent in a discussion of wireless.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
...from Meaning of Life in which the administrator describes how by selling equipment and leasing it back, it costs more, but the expenses show up in Operations Costs rather than assets (or Capital Outlays, or whatever). Sounds like maybe your executives have seen this movie!
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
There are already services that provide broadband speeds for 80 dollars/month on a pcmcia card. Couldn't the city have a contract with a company that provides this? Then they could workout whatever details they want (i.e. have a subsidized rate.)
Or you could have a private company put in the infrastructure and get a monopoly for X number of years with the city paying a subsidized rate until X years is over when the city takes over.
seems like there are lots of options...
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
seeing as how the only high speed alternative in my area is a motorolla canopy service which is over 400 dollars for the equipment and then 59 bucks a month for the mediocre service - 80 bucks a month for the good 1 meg down 512k up I'd gladly pay 25, hell - 30 or 40 bucks a month for community wireless.
I live in a small township of a village and we don't even have cable or dsl out here.
even at their estimated 100 people/mile it would still prove to be cheaper than any other high speed alternative the residents of my area (grafton township) have at their disposal
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
The report talks about costs per square mile. But those costs rely on the population density.
If you look at certain parts of Tokyo and Taiwan, you have some of the most densely populated areas with high rates of broadband usage in the world.
Maybe cities should not be building WiFi networks covering corn fields in Illinois, but they certainly make sense for place like Tokyo , Taipei, New York and Bombay.
-- I doubt, therefore I might be.
...or any of several small communities in this state if they'd prefer an inefficient WiFi network to no broadband at all.
Qwest has the DSL rights in Colorado pretty well locked up, and simply won't give service in the rural towns until it's damn good and ready..and that won't be anytime soon, because it hasn't even finished wiring Denver yet. Meanwhile, it's lobbying for a state law to ensure that its monopoly will continue to await Qwest's whim.
rj
I don't think that governments (municipal, state, provincial or any other) need to go into the ISP business at taxpayers expense. Private hotspots at your local starbucks is one thing, but to have a publicly-owned net available to one and all in a single local net seems to me to be an invitation for trouble. Having secretaries browing the web on their laptops (filled with corporate data of course) having their yogurt outside during lunch hour while the 15-year-old script-kiddie thrity feet away probing for any open ports available for (mis)use. Private companies are the way to go, subscription-based with authentication and have a day-pass or week-pass available for purchase for people passing through town want access.
let's take the $150,000-over-5-years and $25/month-per-user benefit numbers at face value (ignoring the comments of earlier users in here). somebody check my math:
$25/month = $300/year = $1,500 over 5 years
1500 * 100 = 150000
so they just need to get 100 users per square mile to break even, given these assumptions? am i the only one who finds these numbers to be a tremendous argument for benefits outweighing costs? add to this the fact that most people are paying more than $25/month for internet access, and i think that's exactly what this shows.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
150,000 per square mile over 5 years.
so that works out to 150,000/5 years/12 months = 2500 per square mile per month.
Which means that if you have 100 users in a square mile, which is far more than reasonable, you will be getting equivalent costs to benefits.
Let's say I misunderstood it, and it was 150,000 per square mile per year over 5 years. So then it would be 150,000/12 = 12500 ~ 500 users would be needed, again, really small number for a large city.
Finally, let's say I'm completely wrong and that 150,000 is per month. Then it would require 6000 users for there to be benefit. Which in a city like New York or San Francisco, is far more than reasonable.
Unless, of course, Jupiter is stating something way off, their math makes no sense at all. The cost they are giving is way more than reasonable for the benefits to the general population.
~ kjrose
Simply put: they aren't likely to. Mass transport systems haven't gotten rid of the highways, bike trails, or your own two feet, so i figure public WiFi won't kill off cable modems, etc. Public versions of a thing don't necessarily override the free enterprise system, they just try to provide a lowest common denominator.
Whether this effort does this successfully is what's being debated. It's likely that you will be able to get other forms of internet connection, because having a public version will just give the companies who provide it a point of comparison. But people who will be able to have at least that standard, which may be the point.
My problem with this effort is not the government possibly controlling internet access, it's a.) the governments that try to control web _content_, i.e. China, and b.) the fact that WiFi is useless for people too poor to afford computers. Are they going to provide computers, too? Because the cost per person goes up substantially at that rate- without it, though, it's a profound waste of money anyway.
Me, I'd like my town to have more funding for the library, which lets kids use the computers for homework if they don't have them at home. Or the digital bridge projects out there, which provide home computers for families that don't have them- and training to be able to use them.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
A well-managed public service will always be more cost-effective than the same service provided by a well-managed private operation, because there's no profits being taken out before the bottom line. That's basic math.
The trick of course is getting the public service to be well-managed, but that's mostly just a matter of political will. The local Chamber of Commerce will of course pooh-pooh the very notion and sometimes even stand in the way of it, because their interest is in creating niches for private businesses to exploit instead. And of course employees (especially if organized) will try to get as much out of it as possible as well. The government just needs to show some backbone and do it right, regardless.
The only reason a private entity truly needs to be involved is if investors are needed for the capital, and the government doesn't have the means to raise it through bonds or taxes. Otherwise, let the public sector hire the same people to do the same job at the same salary/wages the private company would have hired them at. If the argument is ideological (that government shouldn't do this sort of thing) that's another matter, but if it's a question of accounting, the advantage is to the fully-public approach.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There's been a lot of worry about public/provate partnerships, but I think there's a middle ground: have bonded lowest-bid private companies build publically owned services as they are needed.
Private companies are better than the public sector at two things: efficiency and providing specific services people want.
However, private/public partnerships don't always benefit from the private side. If the public sector just payed a contractor a lump sum to provide service X, the cost may not be optimal, and service X may not be what's needed.
How about a setup like this:
1) Have people in a local area agree that if a certain level of service were available to them, they'd be willing to pay some amount for it. Let them name their own price.
2) Provide public companies with data on which services are needed where, and how much people are willing to pay for them.
3) As more people get interested in public wireless, and as tech costs come down, eventually a wireless company will take a contract to ensure people get the service they asked for in 1).
Bonding the companies so they are financially accountable is important. Also it would be good to enforce a spec for the fiber optic backbone of the wireless network which could accomodate future expansion.
Advantages:
1) Market driven pricing
2) Users get to choose the level of service they want
3) No new taxes
Disadvantages:
1) Holes in coverage until the whole city is onboard
2) Inertia
What do you folks think?
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Wireless Security or lack of it isn't even being mentioned. That is where the big cost will come from. This will be a breading grounds for hackers and like minded people trying to steal info for identity theaft.
AdminPrep.com
In fact, after a bit of number crunching and using Wikipedia's list of population densities and using their numbers as quoted (ie. the first assumtion here of $150k over the 5 year period) I come up with a cost of about a buck a person a month in NYC. I'm wondering how that isn't worth it. . .Though, I can see how that would be an extremely profitable business plan.
See? These guys are willing to go so far to skew the results of a study, they actually threw in extra letters so your anagram wouldn't come out right! The NERVE!
Can someone describe how Jupiter arrived at $150K?
What is the impact of Wi-Max?
I disagree entirely. Assuming the system is encrypted and password protected then there's not that much difference between it and cable. The only difference from a hacker's perspective is he isn't immediately locatable - and the real bad guys don't hack new targets from their own machines anyway, they do it remotely from their first kill.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
This analysis is totally correct, the people who did the analysis are brilliant, here's why.
Teleco's massivly overcharge right?
Then you tax them and you make $180,000 simple!
If this were so, why would a business, which is supposed to earn a profit, be the better choice?
I suspect that this is spin, the business interests know that this is a quite profitable venture, since with the build out costs amortized over 20 or so years, operating expenses would be reasonable, and the whole system could begin generating a profit in a year or two.
Jupitermedia speaks with forked tongue.
Well I haven't done extensive research into this matter myself. But where i live in Chaska, MN. We've had wireless internet across the town for nearly a year now. Monthly costs to citizens who have elected to use the service is $15/month for a variable 256kb/s connection.
If this was such a money loser, I don't see how the service could last as long as it has.
For us, originally, town-wide wireless was a necessity. Internet access is now a major factor in people's decision on where to live. And when the larger internet companies would not lay high broadband cables out to us, we took it upon our selves to fix the problem.
The solution is a local-government run Internet provider. And although I had early issues with stability, I have been more than happy with the quality of service over this year.
Go Gusties
Look, if you people would just come out and say "I admire Karl Marx and think Che is the guardian of principled socialist ideals," at least I'd respect you. I would think you're a flippin' idiot, but an honest idiot.
Instead we have to put up with a bunch of noise about "price gouging" and "greed" and "market failure", which are just fancy ways of saying "I want internet service, and I'd like everyone else to help me pay for it -- even if they have no interest in using such a service. Government, please help me."
In my region of suburbia, there are approximately 600 people per square mile. Assume $25/mo (though, most really pay about $35/mo here). Subscription rate of 65% for broadband in this part of town; it gives us:
$9,750 per month...
$117,000 per year
$585,000 in that same 5 year period.
I'd definately consider paying $25/mo to the city for this service, if I could get >2Mbps down and >=512kbps up. Though, my current 5M down is nice when pulling large chunks of data off the net... 2M would be great for that cheap.
Generic News Flash Template:
> research group reports a study that shows that > is not well suited for municipally started or community based operation as such activity will ultimately cost its members far more than what privately funded and operated > could ever do it for.
NB. Send in the lobbyists to make sure laws are enacted to protect businesses from these rabid hippies.
Anytime the government gets involved in anything costs skyrocket beyond what a private company would pay. When you spend money that doesn't belong to you, people have a tendancy to make bad purchasing decisions. If willing members of the public want to get together and pool their funds to build a network then that's fine with me. But don't steal my hard-earned dollars to pay for a service that a private company could provide for a much cheaper cost.
Why does everyone try to reduce every question to money alone? Oh yeah, they're selling stuff.
Governments should strive to provide services for as little cost as possible, but that doesn't mean that it should fail to provide a service at all if just because somebody declares it to be not cost-effective.
Guess what, public libraries are not cost-effective.
Public parks are not cost-effective.
I'm sure others can add their own examples. Cities provide these service because it benefits the residents and makes the city more attractive to others. E.g., it might encourage a company to locate new offices in this city instead of another to keep the employees happy, and unlike the usual "development incentives" these investments actually benefit the people, not a few executives.
Should cities provide wifi - even free wifi - in downtown and business areas? I think it should - because the public good (e.g., allowing people to check their email from anywhere in the area) outweighs the cost. If the city really, really needs to offset the cost it could impose a nominal head count on the employees in the area, and by "nominal" I mean $2/month/full-time equivalence person. It won't cover the entire cost but it's a symbolic gesture.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
It has been concluded that public transportation, municipal water and sewer, emergency services, and telephone networks are not self sustaining in lightly populated areas.
Duh. The Federal/State/Local government(s) do all sorts of things and provide all sorts of services that are for the public good that don't make money. Internet access is the next utility. I've got municipal water, why not municipal internet? Sure, it may not be appropriate for rural or even some suburban areas, but for areas that have moderate or above population density, this is a no-brainer.
Even the telcos don't recoup costs in the first five years!
Very good points. Such a project would drive taxes to the skies and these taxes would also apply to people who have nothing to benefit from this technology.
You have no right to use MY TAX DOLLARS to pay for your internet service. Municipal WiFi is nothing more than shoveling the costs of internet service onto the backs of high wage earners. It's socialism and it's wrong.
The main benefit is keeping a pool of smart workers in a metro area to fuel new tech businesses. No one wants to start a high tech business in Cleveland or Detroit because the workforce is emigrating. How do you factor this into the economics?
Let me be the first to say no shit. As great as having internet everywhere would be, its also kinda useless.
Most people are downtown to work or shop. Most jobs give access to internet from their desk and most people don't bring their laptop into Macy's. It's a good idea and all but it is not a nessecaty to the people. So for now let's just keep the free Wifi to the coffee shops eh?
After reading this 'report' I was mysteriously sideswiped by a giant grain of salt being piloted by lobbyists and smear-for-hire researchers.
I live in Boston, and without mass transit, we'd all have trouble getting to work- the roads are underequipped to handle the traffic we have, let alone more. But that's close to your point- wifi won't improve the economy, and is very likely to be a drain on it in most neighbourhoods. Even the MBTA is only starting to look at options for solving their budget woes, and they are used constantly by a huge percentage of the working population.
there are other places where the money could be more useful. Say, for example, supporting those libraries, where multiple resources are available for all, for free.
But there is one place i think wireless is really splendid in Boston- the airport. People arrive and leave and can use wireless there. It makes sense to me that places where people wait to do business would have wireless. I think that shopping malls, and economic centres might look into it, and that towns might make incentives for them to do so. Because these are places where people congregate, and it would be worth it to know that there were a few places that you could go and be almost sure to get a signal. If it were run by the town, why not have it in parks and public buildings, where people most often gather?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
What's wrong with you? Tar and feathers not good enough any more?
Just after electricity deregulation happened in my province, a guy from the power company (there was only one at the time) came to our house and wanted us to sign a contract locking us into their current rates for 5 years.
"The cost of electricity is going to go up soon! If you don't you could be paying WAY TOO MUCH for your power next year! We're trying to save you money!"
So I asked him if he was doing this for free. He said no, that he was being paid for his time.
So then I asked him - "if the rates are going up globally, won't you be making less money if I'm locked in for 5 years?"
I told him that I wasn't interested.
Three months later, *two* energy companies entered our market. Prices have gone down.
Just curious how all you muni-wi-fi proponents are intending to defend a wireless network from virus activity. Switched, high speed networks can be rendered useless by viral activity; a wireless network will be even more vunerable. What would make me, an end user, want to compete for wi-fi radio time with the windows virus du-jour? And why would I, as a municipal (or any other level) taxpayer want to finance bandwidth I know in advance I am not going to be able to use because of this?
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Disadvantage #3... a patchwork of different services in different areas, requiring people to purchase multiple Wifi accounts for home, work, school, public parks, etcetera...
This is the big problem with Wifi. Since it's a mobile service, you need to follow a utility model where one company gets a franchise and a price regulated by the city (by contract or law), or you end up with a fragmented network, multiple network coverage (and conflicts) in popular locations, no coverage in others.
One possibility would be for the municipality to own the network, but it would be paid for and operated by one company who would have a monopoly on the use of the network for the first N years.
It shouldn't be hard to make the numbers work, provided that one can divide:
$150,000 Amortized cost over 5 years (whole system) $2500 Cost of whole system per month, amortized for 5 years $25 Benefit to each regular user per month (from TFA) 100 Number of regular users to break evenFinding 100 users per square mile should not be hard. Medium-density suburban lots are typically 0.3 acres, for an average of about 1000 houses per square mile (including a factor of 50% for infrastructure). So if one in ten households uses the WiFi regularly, the system breaks even at the stated price.
City centers might have a factor of 10 more people in them; so if 1% of city core dwellers use the WiFi regularly, the system is working.
On the other hand, low-density suburban areas might have only 100-500 households per square mile; those areas might not get enough users to make sense.
I think people should forget about the very idea of installing thousands of 802.11 variant WiFi transceivers just to cover the metropolitan area. Just the maintanence costs would get ridiculous pretty quickly having service all those thousands of tranceivers, that's to be sure.
The use of WiMAX 802.16d fixed/802.20 mobile works out vastly better, mostly because you need only a small number of transceiver antenna arrays to cover an entire metropolitan area. By piggybacking WiMAX antennas with current cellphone antenna arrays you already have coverage of most of the population of the USA anyway, so you only need to build new WiMAX-specific antenna arrays to cover the most rural areas.
why should poor, elderly and plain old non-computer folks have their money confiscated by force (extra taxes) to support free wifi for 20 something slackers? Tell those freeloaders to get a second job at Macdonalds and earn the extra $30 a month they need for internet access.
This seems to be the perpetual answer to a question no one asked. There is not a critical mass of people out there that want or need wireless everywhere access, except maybe in Japan. Those that do need it, have it, it's called a cell phone. If government wants to piss money away, give even more of it to the phone companies and tell them to drop their prices on data Tx/Rx. Here the cost is completely rediculus. 5 cents per kb. Yes that's right, loading one jpg off one web page will cost you $5.00. And since they promise broadband speeds, that translates to about $1500 an hour if you were to use it like your home cable connection. These inflated prices are the only reason Wifi access is even being considered as a business proposition.
There is a huge market for research that says municipal WiFi is bad. Telcos will pay millions for research from a brand-name publisher (regardless of the integrity of the brand) that they can quote when they lobby government officials. Who know even less about Jupiter Research than they do about WiFi, if possible.
--
make install -not war
JupiterMedia's Press Release Page Lists that they are also set to host a DRM Strategies Conference on the uses of DRM in entertainment and corporate domains. They also have a niofty press release detailing the fact that Cookie Blocking and Deletion hinders attempts to track web visitors.
Neither one of these is directly related to the topic of municipal Wifi but I found them interesting.
the community WiFi group I work with does the same thing, if you have a login, you get full bandwidth and all ports open.
if you dont, you get port 80 and throttled to 100K it works great. and we use only low end consumer crap for the equipment with nocatauth and other OSS solutions as well as multiple net connection points so that an outage in one location does not down the entire network.
it's fairly easy to do, many of the community wifi sites have more info on it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The study says they won't break even in 5 years even assuming a cost-benefit of $30 per person/month.
That means that cost of infrastructure + maintenance costs 60 * $30 * users
Now, in your case, the right hand side is 60 * $30 * 13,000 or $23.4M.
Now lets work on the left. A useable base station costs about $100. Maybe $80. In manpower, it probably takes at least half a day to install. with 3 people and equipment usage/acqusition costs, that's at least $1200. So let's say $1300 to install each base station. Additionally, you need to run a leased line to each base station and pay for the bandwidth to it. Those probably cost at least $5/mo/base station. So, over 5 years, thats 5*60 or another $300. We're up to $1600/base station. A base station probably provides effective coverage (into buildings not just on the street, you speak of it as being useful as people's ISPs) over a 100 ft radius. So each covers about 40,000 sq. ft. you have to cover 22 sq miles, or 613,000,000 sq. ft. So you need 15,333 base stations. That is $24.5M.
So, according to some rough math, using their figures, your city would not break even after 5 years, even assuming a benefit to users of $30/month. And this is if you don't have to replace any equipment over the 5 years.
Honestly, until WiMax comes around, this will be a tough equation. When WiMax comes around, the install of the base stations becomes much easier, you only need to plug it in, and you don't have to pay for separate bandwidth run to each base station. If you had base stations whose uplink was WiMax, you'd only need probably 4 WiMax "towers" to cover all these base stations (at least in sq. ft., perhaps more for aggregate bandwidth needs, I dunno).
Perhaps at that point you could even go to "spot coverage" where you just send an 802.11 base station with WiMax uplink capabilities to each family (say 20,000 of them), and let them self-install it (plug it in) in their house. This would remove another $15M in costs from the project, and provide better coverage for your customers.
I know you can poke holes in this, maybe you don't have to cover every square foot of your 22 miles, but I think the math in convincing enough to show that the benefit is on edge.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It is nothing like it was back in ye olden days. Globalisation where products and jobs can be moved to third world nations, and third world immigrants are "lawful" even though it still breaks their still on the books laws (legal to illegal is way skewed numbers wise yet they-the elite "they" do nothing to control it) are totally different now, and has seriously harmed and eroded all the gains made in the last century for the middle class, and it has happened over the past 25 years or so. a person simply cannot continue to compete when his basic cost of living for housing etc never goes down, but his income drops or gets lost due to inflation of the currency or outsourcing of a still useful job or insourcing an illegal to take his job, so he has nothing as income except credit. Cheaper trinkets at walmart and low level limited retail shuffling jobs with practical no bennies in exchange for wealth producing jobs and tangible wealth production jobs with great bennies have resulted in the highest deficits, highest level of personal and corporate bankruptcies, highest level of non-home ownership (people are getting mortgages now that are *pure interest* because they can't afford to actually pay them off, they are NOT home "owners"). I can remember when ten year low interest mortgages were common, and they got paid off and people lived in their homes then for a generation or more to raise their families, not these 30 year open ended pure interest mortgages like we have now. Autos used to be a 12 month note for brand-new, now they are 60 months and kmore and more are leasing because they can't afford to purchase and get locked in to a perpetual debt. Stuff like that. Our over-all savings (public and private) are at the lowest point in our history. Our governmental balance of trade is at the worst point ever in our nations history. The average worker here is losing ground, only maintained by the illusion of prosperity based on simply ridiculous amounts of fiat credit from the global loan sharks. All those are facts, indisputable facts, data, you or anyone can go look up the numbers.
It is not a level playing field, "free trade" doesn't even exist except as a theory, and it is not even close, and any comparisons with the 1800's and immigration and trade and monetary policies then to now are comparing apples to rock quarries,
Both groups are forced to breathe the pollution produced primarily by only one group (automobile users). This is an example of hidden costs. It's relatively easy to point to the cost of building and maintaining roads. It's very difficult to calculate the cost due to pollution.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
just recently there has been two critical tech breakthroughs that will help ease the pain of building a more universal high speed broadband network in the US. 802.11 is a dead end from lack of range. It just is. One new breakthrough announced recently is wave guided wireless broadband inside of existing natural gas pipelines. The other is the "whisper" wireless that can use exisiting spectrum and piggy backs at very low wattage and has tremendous range.
As a community, we could just provide wireless internet to anybody near us. Eventually, cheap wifi routers will be made that have bandwidth throttles. You give me Internet, I give you Internet, and some kid is taking my Internet without giving anything back.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
I accidentally did my math with a whole day to install each base station, not a half day. Sorry about that. I can't really imagine municipal workers installing a net connection, power and the actual base station itself in a half-day, but if you think your local workers could do this, then the installation costs get a lot lower.
I still think that given how much cheaper installs will be with WiMax, cities would be foolish to enbark on a municipal network right now. But if they did, with the revised math, some of them could make it work.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Well I'm not the OP, but so far no one's made a sound argument for community internet, except in limited cases. e.g. schools, libraries.
:Were's the demarcation line between public good, and private benefit? For roads this is easy because it's obvious that practically I can't get through the day without using a road in some manner (bicyclist, pedestrians even). Neither can others. Mutual need, mutual cost. In the case of the Internet however I'm effectively purchasing my own personal road. Others can use it, BUT they don't have to. Some may not even have a need for their own personal road. Should others pay for something that they neither need, nor want? Maybe the question should be reasked when society has a clearly demonstratable need for the Internet as part of it's functioning?
The real question is basically
My money is on EV DO technology for high speed cellular. Municipal Wifi isn't just wrong, imho (the idea of having to compete with a government owned business), but will always fall short of commercial endevours. For instance, with EV DO, you won't be stuck in one city. Also, they already have most of the existing infrastructure and a large base of existing customers.
But, even if all that were irrelevant, there remains the real killer of municipal Wifi, lawsuits. Municipals will be happy to break even. When people start getting hacked with even a remote connection to fault on the part of the municipality, cities will abandon it. Businesses, on the other hand, are used to dealing with customers and their problems. Cities are used to voters, and maybe the occasional lawsuit against the police.
I find it laughable that some cities were able to explain away their wifi dreams in that cellular providers had no intentions of providing the service, when the major ones have been planning them for a year and a half or more, just not using Wifi. It's coke vs pepsi, but its cola either way. It's bad enough that most power line broadband will be municipal owned. I'd like to have as much non-state owned connectivity as possible. If I want state owned internet where by owning the data they would never need a warrent to monitor my activity, I'll move to Beijing.
I8-D
we call that program "The Congress of the United States". More recently another agency joined in, "The Supreme Court of the United States"
Both are just as evil here as well.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
$25/month per user = $1,500 per user over five years. That means that just 100 users per square mile would be enough to break even. If one-fourth of the population would use the service, that's a population density of just 400 users per square mile. The population density of Manhattan exceeds 62,000 per square mile. San Francisco, 16,000 per square mile. Any decent-sized city or suburb is going to have more than 400 people per square mile.
Not only that, but America only came into being itself BECAUSE of promises of protectionism.
When the Founding Fathers tried to get the Constitution ratified, hardly anyone wanted to go along with it. The working people, the few of them that could vote (mostly up north) wanted nothing to do with that Rich Man's Constitution written by the Founding Fathers (Rhode Island voted 90% not to ratify it).
So the Founding Fathers decided to cut a protectionist trade deal with the artisans and mechanicks of the north (NY City mainly) to get them to vote for it. They promised to protect them from British imports.
And the artisans went along with it. And that is probably the main reason why America is in the form it is today (there were other compromises, but that was probably the crucial one)
eat shiat and bark at the moon
So, one hundred users are needed per square mile for it to be cost effective? Well, this pretty much sinks the whole idea, if you're trying to construct it in Podunk, Alabama, anyway. I live next to Hoboken, New Jersey, a city of over 38,000 people, these days filled with what they call yuppies and other such folk that commute into Manhattan. Hoboken is known for being exactly one mile square-- "the mile square city." It boggles the mind to think that perhaps in all of Hoboken, it would be impossible to find so much as 100 people who would use wireless internet. Probably more than that number already use the hotspots at coffee shops on Washington Street. I'm sure it'd be used by at least 2500 people, making the cost $1 per person per month. So, what I'm wondering is how the report used this data they estimated to come to the conclusion that public wifi was a terrible idea. I used their own estimates and came to the conclusion that it's an amazing bargain, almost a "You can't afford NOT TO DO IT!" situation.
That will tell you how the study will be distorted.
Hint: it wasn't paid for by municipalities interested in providing WiFi, but by firms that want to stop competition, and crush capitalistic competition by any means necessary.
You're either in favor of making sure everyone can get WiFi - or the Net - or Telephone - or Cable - or you just want to let those who care nothing for real competition and real access win.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
WiFi - 11Mbps to 54Mbps, regional, uses wired internet infrastructure, static (slow handoff), "lillypad" coverage, compatible with home wireless lans.
EVDO - 300kbps-2Mbps, national, uses cellular infrastructure, mobile (fast handoff), wide coverage, requires new hardware.
These are not competing services: I've done the "cellphone internet" thing, and accumulated a fine collection of proprietary widgets that would have let me use my internet service nationwide... then when the next big thing comes along, they turn into technotrash. I can get a WiFi card for just about any gadget I like and it'll work with any WiFi access point whether it's my home WAN or the coffee shop down the street.
I don't care if Verizon or T-Mobile give out free blow jobs with their gadgets: I don't travel much, I'm not in the market for Yet Another Omnisky or a drawer full of cellphone-computer cables. All my cellphone does now is voice.
But someone who does travel, who's already using a fancy cellphone, EVDO will be great. For them. Not for me.
I'm not convinced that municipal WiFi is a good use of funds, but EVDO isn't in the same market at all.
It's not coke versus pepsi, it's coffee versus beer.
So, your idea of real competition is to have a government monopoly establish free muni wi-fi networks?
You might want to look up competition in the dictionary.
(Hint: The study was paid for by the people that issued it. This isn't a university where they're selling opinion for grant money. Companies like Jupiter Research stake their entire existence on providing their customers with timely and accurate reports to allow them to take advantage of their own market position. Issuing tainted biased reports would put them out of business right fast.)
Seriously, you have less than a clue. You have -ix where x="a clue".
GPRS/EDGE/3g/future can (and initially will) pick up the slack.
What do you mean, pick up the slack? WiFi is dead because cellular broadband is here now, and it works.
I have EVDO broadband cellular modem service through Verizon. It costs me $80 per month flat, and gets me 3 Mbps. The modem is $100 with the plan.
It's NEW technology, and works currently in 43 markets. Sprint and others are coming out with competing products, so as with regular cellular service, we can expect the $80/month to come down in price as the networks get established and more people start using them.
Why would a munincipality biuld a wireless network when there's a technological equivalent already there? At the very least, why build munincipal wireless when you could build munincipal cellular?
paintball
When cell phone service costs $10 a month in the EU and $100 a month in the US, you know that listening to the large monopolies and oligopolies is anti-capitalistic.
Capitalism is founded on the existence of many players with equal entry costs into the market. Barriers from the large players create inefficiencies and sap the energy of the nation.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
so far no one's made a sound argument for community internet
Let's assume it's an essential service (I think it pretty much is, these days, and it's certainly got a huge social benefit). Internet service has only ever thrived when the last mile has been provided as a "Utility", whether through traditional regulated utilities like the phone companies (all the way back to dialup), or through cable. All the private "last mile" Internet service I know of that's succeeded has been based on making everyone in an area pay for the road: apartment complexes or similar developments where the cost of establishing the infrastructure has been shared by everyone whether they used it or not.
This is the utility model. Whether the utility is paid for by taxes or fees is a whole different question from whether it's built by the municipality using bonds or by a franchisee on speculation, is a different argument than the one I'm making. I'm just asking... why is this service which has traditionally depended on a utility model and which seems to need one different from other similar services?
Someone needs to roll out a plan that would use existing wifi APs to add public bandwidth. There is already high coverage of closed or unintentionally open APs. In some areas, there can be dozens of APs fighting for adequate signal; these need to me converted into public access points.
You could set up a system where people who need high bandwidth pay for their own broadband internet connection (already done). They then buy a router and (securely) connect their own computers and wireless devices (already done, more or less). You then provide firmware updates to the user-provided routers that allow them to also provide public wifi access without giving access to the person's home network. You could set them to provide slower 64k access for free, or full available bandwidth to subscribers. A subscriber might be anyone who has an active access point set up in their own home, or someone who pays $10/month (or something small) to the muni wifi project. The cash brought in could be paid out as account credits at about 50% to the people who are providing the used bandwidth. Pro-rated based on how much people use your AP, of course.
Thus, anyone who provides resources to the wifi rollout would get free wifi at other APs or just a cut of money coming in. Everyone gets free dialup+ speeds anywhere. Others get broadband on the cheap.
The difficulties I see are:
Providing firmware updates to a wide variety of routers, or forcing everyone to rebuy a particular router.
Can a router broadcast both an encrypted and uncrypted signal with different SSIDs at the same time?
Making sure no security holes exist that allow someone to hack into my private network through the AP. This is an existing problem, though.
Seperately logging traffic of muni users so that the AP provider doesn't get the blame when the FBI or RIAA comes looking for the person who was downloading infringing or illegal materials. Nobody should ever have to enter your home or talk to you for any information that doesn't pertain to your own web activities.
Setting up the debit/credit system, of course.
Coverage may only be 50%. If this is what it takes to reduce cost from $150k/(year*sqmi) down to $10k, then so be it. Individuals will fill in the bare spots as demand increases. Some people will have to set up repeaters, or surf from their patio. 'Good enough' costs a lot less than 'perfect'.
In poor neighborhoods, nobody may be willing to provide the AP because all their users will just be the 64k people. Actually, they may barely be able to afford a machine with wifi in the first place. Though subsidized wifi in poor neighborhoods could be where it does the greatest economic good.
My instinct tells me that one in five homes would actually be providers, three would pay $10/month into the system, and the other one would take the barebones 64k. That's $6 per month, per home, average. The city gets $3 of it, the providers get the other $3. The city wouldn't have to pay for bandwidth, or set up and maintain boatloads of hardware.
An AC flaming someone on the intarweb! How very brave and informed you are! log in if you want to flame like that. And I never said 802.11 was dead, I said it was a dead end the way it is now, especially for the purposes of widespread municipal deployment in particular.. Big difference there. It's low powered and limited range. It's fine for closeby connections, but anything beyond that requires massive hoop jumping, that's why it's so expensive to deploy in large areas and it's why most of the big money is looking elsewhere. Engineering is just engineering, the regs are the regs, 802.11 is extremely limited in what it can do. And chances are you don't even know about the tech I was talking about that was announced publicaly the last week or so.
where is the community WiFi group you're involved with?
antipaucity
The $150,000/squaremile is inflated by almost a magnitude. However, the real future are neighborhood mesh networks that are created by individuals. All it takes to participate is an accesspoint that is mesh networking capable. This type of networks have the potential to make the costly and congested wired network and the subscriber model obsolete and provide truly free internet and a much more secure and resilient distributed internet infrastructure.
Adam Smith never wrote or taught anything of the sort. I have read - cover to cover - the books which make up his "Wealth of Nations" series, and he is adamant about government non-interference in markets in order to allow the invisible hand to properly maintain equilibrium.
What you discuss sounds more like Karl Marx than Adam Smith.
Dammit, I don't care how much this costs, I want my free wifi!!
</tanstaafl>
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The study ignores a basic item: the municipalities that're looking at this are doing so because they can't get broadband service to residents any other way. Whether it'd be more expensive than private service isn't relevant if the private companies won't provide service in those areas. When one of the lobbyists for the cable and telephone companies gets up and blasts the cities for wanting to waste taxpayer's money, I'd love a legislator from the affected area to get up and ask "So then, will your company agree right here and now to provide broadband service at a price no greater than what we're proposing (that you say is too expensive)? What's that, you won't? Then if you won't provide service why are you complaining that it's unfair that we go ahead without you?".
There seems to be a real reluctance for America to accept free, prolifant wireless data networks. I am sure this report is skewed so that any city looking to provide wireless municipal service will be easily disuaded. Anytime a municipal government finds out that money is involved in establishing any kind of service, they usually baulk at offering it.
But I mean, in reality, what do you need to offer ubiquitous wireless networking? I get it already (if I were not ethical) from the countless number of people running wireless networking in their home without passwords or encryption. Fire up ANY wireless communication device on any city block, and you pretty much can browse the internet for free anyways.
All a city has to do is simply distribute wireless routers to busniesses, or put them up on some telephone poles, and your done. There is enough fibre and cable running through the cities that I am sure some can be diverted quite easily to connect to wireless router boxes. Perhaps you need something a little more substantial then your hosehold consumer wireless routers, but I don't think the cost is that prohibitive.
I think this is a big cop out, and completely biased report, hopefully another less skewed report is done to get the real truth behind the cost of municipal wireless networks.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
http://www.edsopinion.com/modules.php?op=modload&n ame=News&file=article&sid=67
The question is what are their assumptions about "what's a user" and "what's feasible"? I've seen several models for community wireless, and they've got much different definitions
- Free service that makes the community more friendly, so that the citizens are happier and businesses make more money, similar to the ways streetlights and socialized baseball stadiums do. In this model, success means "everybody loves it, tourists find it easier to get around, people drink more coffee, eat more restaurant food, and use the subways and city museums more."
- Quasi-commercial service with subscribers who pay by the month, or occasional users who pay per use/hour/day/etc. The city's basically competing with T-Mobile, Boingo, etc.etc. and Starbucks for roaming, plus competing against the cable modem and DSL companies for residential business. In this model, success is defined as "subscribers/users paid enough money to pay for the costs of the service", and "feasible" means "there's a reasonable chance that the service will succeed, given some pricing model." It's a much different concept.
- Volunteer-hobbyist-run networks like BAWUG that provide free access - the city doesn't do the work of running it, and maybe it's less scalable, but the city provides access to streetlights and well-placed rooftops, and doesn't abuse and extort them the way they would treat a commercial provider.
- "Public-Private Partnership" is usually that the city hires one of the mayor's buddies to implement the quasi-commercial model instead of having city workers do it, and ideally is friendly and cooperative and doesn't abuse and extort them the way they would treat a normal commercial provider.
$150K / 5 years is $30K/year or $2500/month. For the quasi-commercial models, yes, that means they need 100 subscribers/square mile at $25/month or 500 subscribers at $5, which is probably easier to get if the performance is ok, but there are cities where it won't work. For the public service model, $30K/year/square mile isn't a lot of money - it's certainly cheaper than paying police overtime for baseball games, and it's more likely to attract geek tourists and business tourists than a baseball stadium is, so at least in San Francisco, you'd probably justify paying for it from the hotel tax fund or something for downtown, but in residential neighborhoods it's a tossup of whether it's a win or not.Obviously a private company is only going to use the commercial models, not the streetlight model. In a purely commercial model, if the costs look feasible, there will be a bunch of competitors; in a public-private partnership model, the costs are usually cheaper because the city government causes much less trouble to the service provider, but there's less likely to be competition unless they assign different territory to different providers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And that a government implementation might not be the most efficient surprises people just why now?
:rollseyes.
At least it's not like proposed socialist medicine where competitors are outlawed.
Curiously how people seem to desire something so vitally much more important to be government owned, lock, stock, and barrel.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm perfectly fine with buying a T-Mobile Hotspot subscription if I need Wifi on the go -- pretty much every Starbucks, Borders, many malls, T-Mobile shops, etc. all have a Hotspot, and a lot of other shops too. $20/month for unlimited access, generally. It won't get me wifi in the park, but it will get me wifi in the coffee shop on the park's perimeter. Good enough, for most of my purposes. (If I bother with my Orinoco card and Blade antenna, I actually can extend the hotspot into the center.)
I'm bothered more by the fact that, at home, I'm paying close to $50/mo for 1.5/256 ADSL (no caps/only port 25 filtered), or I could be paying about $50 a month for 4/1 DOCSIS (but, pretty much all lowports are blocked, and there are usage caps, after which you're 128/64)
In Europe, for 30 a month, you'll get 8/2 DSL. It says it is use-capped, which might not be that bad.
We don't even have anything close to that over here. I don't care about "wireless broadband" (EV-DO) and I don't care about municipal or otherwise, wifi coverage. I want *fast* fixed-point Internet access, that just doesn't seem to exist.
Verizon FIOS is getting there -- but thats only very limited areas. Our telephone system here in the US is superior to that of Europe's but our Internet access is lacking, severely.
As with all of this there will come a day when the benefits GREATLY outweigh the costs and we will simply become accustomed to having wiress internet all around us at all times. Just give it time :)
$150,000 over 5 years. That's 60 months. Suppose it provide a benefit of $25/month to a person, that's $1500 for 5 years. That just means you need 100 person per square mile to use the service to break even.
That means it is a great idea in cities and very doable in suburbs.
It is interesting to read the entire set of comments on this article based on a primarily US viewpoint. In Australia, PBA (Personal Broadband Australia, http://www.pba.com.au/) has opened it's WiMax network across the major centres of population on our East Coast, and has been running for over two years. Called iBurst, it offers city wide 1meg/384k transfer speeds and is resold through a number (currently about 12) of ISP's. There are a number of issues that this then brings up regarding the installation of WAN Wifi. Firstly, there is the costs of installation for reception density across an area of population, and the density required to achieve transfer speeds without the transfer rate across the WiFi link decreasing. This brings the simultaneous issue of RF interference between multiple base stations, not necessarily from the public network, but from private nodes that do not have their channel allocation controlled. The number of nodes required in a city such as Melbourne, Australia (where I am writing from) to cover even our densest areas of population is large enough that between the cabelling, WiFi nodes and back end network would out weigh the return that could possibly be generated. Secondly, the dual faces of the security issues. Face one is the network security issues that plague all network administrators 24 hours a day. But for a person like myself with multiple email accounts, having to modify that many settings to be able to send through remote mail servers becomes a major issue. And then what occurs if Port 25 is blocked? No need to discuss this any further. Face two, especially after the the events of the last few days in London, is the issue of being able to trace data back to the originator. With an open public system, how would this be achieved? If this was then circumvented by the use of login data, the bureacratic overheads of maintaining this would then outweight the benefits of providing access. Finally, with the PBA network infrastructure being based on the ArrayComm technology from California, and implimented nationwide it then creates a roaming network. In the modern context of a travelling public who work remotely much of the time requiring VPN access to private networks I have already chosen my system.
... can be found in the comments section of this blog post. Executive summary: "organizations" have exactly NOTHING intelligent to contribute because their premises are flawed, and fail to take into account the fact that economics of such projects vary vastly from one community to another.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Lets see, you incorrectly attributed to Adam Smith the belief that government monopolies are beneficial to the free market. You then cited him as the author of "The Tragedy of the Commons", which he wasn't. Now you throw insults about, and challenge my knowledge of economics? I've no time for your ill concieved stupidity.
*plonk*