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Non-Profit to Run Boston Wi-Fi?
isabotage3 writes to tell us that Boston, MA is toying with a somewhat unique approach to their version of the city-wide low-cost wireless network. Rather than put the network in the hands of a private organization under contract the city may allow a non-profit group to run the show. From the article: "Although Boston's strategy depends on the willingness of foundations and businesses to come forward with cash donations, officials believe having an existing or newly formed nonprofit in charge is the best way to ensure the project meets its civic goals and steers clear of special interests."
submitter seems confused on that point.
it will be comprised of a loosely connected network of underground providers running through the heart of Boston and be referred to as the "big beam". ...too obscure?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Is this supposed to be Big Air version of the Big Dig?
Someday all these cities are going to realize that wireless (b/g at least) was never ever designed to be deployed on such a scale and, really, works so pathetically horrible that I feel sorry for anyone using it.
10-1 in about a decade we'll here stories about how these things were fraught with corruption, never worked right, waste of taxpayer money, etc, etc.
Voice of experience.. I spent years at an ISP that tried to sell wireless and man, it just never ever works right for this type of thing (others in the industry will probably confirm this) without spending a whole lot of cash.
If the City of Boston holds any strings whatsoever to the contact, it will surely be a union-driven morass of special kickbacks, perks, and hidden slush funds. They'll be lucky to provide 2400 baud links to a few hundred simultaneous users, after pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.
How many days until someone is killed by a falling WAP?
What's in it for business?
While it is nice to think that businesses will just donate the money to the project, 99% of businesses want to know what the benefit to their bottom line is. There is an incentive to businesses to provide local wireless, as it draws people to their location. There is also incentive if they get some public recognition - think advertising. Yes, some do it for "goodwill" but I don't see that being as big a factor in a city like Boston, (as opposed to a smaller town), where there are a lot of businesses competing for the same goodwill. That means businesses are going to want to run their ads in return for their donations, making for an annoying wireless environment.
I think it would have been a great idea 7 years ago where companies were spending money on anything to do with tech, but I think will fail in today's economic climate.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
The best example is the city of Lausanne, Olympic Capital. There are many Wi-Fi access point at each main squares. The provider is SIL service multimédia, a department of the Industrial Services (belonging to the city) which is clearly non-profit organization.
So, there is definitely no revolution!
More infos:
"Un mathématicien est une machine qui transforme le café en théorème." P. Erdos
I know this sounds like a great idea, but I'm skeptical. Would the government have an easier time monitoring, or pulling the strings to monitor, such a network than a for-profit one?
Why not private individuals?
As with most things, if this is really something people want, they will be willing to chip in and help pay for it.
If some non-profit in my town were planning something like this, I'd probably donate to it.
If you think about it, 802.11B/G hardware is extremely cheap. Compare ~$30 for used WRT-54G on EBay with a $5000+ Starbucks/Cisco installation. Yes, you're right that B/G may be inappropriate for a municipal wireless network, but for as cheap as some of this equipment is, you can use it to your advantage anyway. There's an easy way to take control of you bandwidth, even if it takes a bit of financing to do it. Once it is there, there's no monthly service charge for your circuit, and you can do what you will. Compare that with a Verizon T1.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This is a great idea -- why have a for-profit company running a free wireless network? It doesn't happen (often). Here in Pittsburgh, a non-pennsylvanian company earned the contract to run the city's 'free (for 2 hours)' wireless network (for profit). Free wireless networks don't come from for-profit companies, unless they realize that the service enhances their business. This is the kicker. People don't want to pay for 'net. People use the net, and you could makes things easier for them. And me!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I worked at a nonprofit (job training for adults and teens) for a couple of years. We got our funding from the federal and state governments, which meant that not only did we face the red tape that government agencies face, we couldn't always do the things in the best interest of our organization or target population. Everything in a nonprofit is about getting as much money as possible in the next government grant or donation, which meant that we would burn through extra cash purchasing stuff we didn't need, just like government agencies do. After all, if you don't use it, you obviously don't need it and won't get it the next time around.
People that think that nonprofits avoid the issues that corporations face need to look at OIC in Milwaukee. Lots of corruption and wasted money for something that was a good idea gone wrong.
I'd much rather see open competition between private corporations for city-wide wireless access. Due to competition, it's far more likely to be high quality and low cost for end users.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The buildout will cost millions, all be obsolete by 2010, (http://www.wimaxforum.org/home/) and even with just 1.5mb/256k pipes, wireless does not scale well to more than a couple hundred users at best per cell site. The non-profit will be able to get cheaper pipes, and wholesale the bandwidth... but at that point, you may as well get a larger interest in there because then at least the build-out is paid for. A non-profit will not account for the budget of competent wifi engineers and technicians, which is a lot different than normal traditional network engineers and technicians. The skillset is more small-scale embedded systems configuration and administration than rip/ospf on big beefy routers. Because the field has only been around for a few years, most of the smart people have already been snapped up by these 'interests' TFA references. There are several reasons non-profits are not fit for the task: Wifi is more labor-intensive than traditional ISPs in the sense of field personnel, for installations and service calls. Much of the equipment is prone to failure, and normally is hanging 60' or so in the air. Weather like Boston has is absolutely murder on the equipment. Stuff freezes, water gets in the fittings, the antennas corrode... Maintenance most likely is not as large a provision in a small donation-only budget. The total amount of bandwidth utilized is not the greatest problem, so much as the harmonization of the spectrum caused by everybody using the access points. Also, the small embedded boards can only pass so many packets through so many interfaces before they choke up. Because of this scalability problem with wireless, it's just hard to make profitable. The delicate balance of bandwidth vs cpu/ram vs spectrum is very hard to maintain. If they are intending on it being free or low-cost, this only exacerbates the problem... because now the non-profit would be taking a hit where the independant provider would be in the black. They should do it like Sacramento wireless, actually making it like a city utility like water or trash, but outsourcing all of it. There is more profit for the independant operator AND the municipality that way. Bottom line, the consumers best interests would assuredly be best served by a larger corporation with a few muni networks under it's belt fulfilling the contract vs a non-profit.
A task force on Monday recommended that Mayor Thomas Menino assign an as-yet unidentified nonprofit to raise $16 million to $20 million. You'll need it.
Free wi-fi is anything but free.
It is paid for by tax payers.
Anything paid for by taxpayers is subjected to government scrutiny and control. Sooner or later the government agency in charge of the local wi-fi will start to exert control over what is defined as "obcene" or "offensive". When offensive material is found, it will be banned.
First thing will be "no child pr0n", followed by no "regular pr0n", followed by "no [whatever we feel is a bad thing]....
It will only take a few elections before who ever is in charge will decide what is deemed as "viewable".
Sooner or later the "opposition" will be "unviewable".
The government "SHOULD NOT BE" in control of any medium related to speech.
I do not trust my government anymore....
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Much too dangerous for Texan. Security may only guarenteed by large telecoms.
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Earth to the do-gooders, a nonprofit is just as special interest as anyone else, potentially more so, as by labeling itself a non-profit, it automatically deflects scrutiny and skepticism.
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Here in my pocket, I've got just the non-profit who should be able to pull this off. The Boston Museum of Science has been there for a long time and they seem to have some good qualifications.
The Science Museum (which it is called by many) has been around for a while. It has been very non-controversal (at least since my childhood in the 60's growing up in Winchester and going to the museum almost every week for the shows). It is also, IMHO, very non-political.
I am not aware of any scandals or controversy that involved the Science Museum.
They are also very technially savvy; they's been teaching science for all these years, including some of my own education in electronics.
Perhaps the most important attribute is that they have deep, solid roots in the area. They have quietly outlasted other institutions (and politicians) in the area. The Science Museum is one of those institutions that would be still standing even after the rest of Boston caves in and collapses.
The mayor should realise that if he turned the keys of this project over to the Museum of Science, they would have a lot to lose if they did a f**k up on this.
Luv
Cleara
Cleara
Normally, I'd be all for a public non-profit taking over the system, but with something so new and potentially a "waste of taxpayer money," it'd be better to contract the system to a private vendor for 2-3 years and let them get it started. When the contract is up, offer the people who took care of it government (well, city) jobs as its caretakers (if they did a good job, obviously).
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Seems like we Bostonians (I think I losely count up here in NH as I am in the city a few times each month) are going from one extreme to the next. The Big Dig was a ginormous undertaking that (I think) has exceded 15 Billion dollars (most of which seems to have payed for poor-engineering/low-quality craftsmanship/political campaigns (on both sides of the aisle)/etc...Now, we are afraid to spend any money on WiFi, so we are going to tap a non-profit to do it for us?!?
*cough*Big Dig*cough* Ah well, at least this one probably won't end up killing anyone.
This can only end in fire...
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
There are other groups running community wireless networks all around the world.
Air-Stream.org is one in Adelaide Australia, but yay for Bostonians starting a new project.
http://air-stream.org/
They probably wouldn't have any harder of a time in either case; if anything, recent history has shown that the biggest obstacles to over-reaching bureaucrats are ... other bureaucrats. Or at least that the public sector in some cases can be a lot more respectful of individual rights than the private, in the face of inappropriate government "interest," e.g. librarians.
Sometimes it's easier to stand up and do the Good Thing when you don't have a giant profit motive to get in the way.
Also, although I'm no advocate of big government, if the government is going to monitor your communcations anyway, it might be better for the network to be clearly identified as a government-supplied one; people are more likely to take privacy precautions if they don't have the false sense of security that comes with "private" internet service. (Those last three words being an oxymoron anyway.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The not for profit bit means the profits can be built into the infrastructure.
Privatisation has not done much for power infrastructure.
There are a number of successful existing community wireless networks around the world.
If the Science Museum is as cautious, non-controversial, and inoffensive as you make it out to be (and IMO I agree with you, it certainly does seem like they're pretty clean), who says they'd want anything to do with the project?
Frankly something like this could go south in a hurry. There are a huge number of uncertainties, ranging from sheer technical feasibility (that's one of the easy questions) to much more complex issues of maintainance budgeting, operating a huge service fleet, and all the associated logistics. If I was in a leadership or advisory position at the Science Museum, I'd probably tell them to run far and fast in the opposite direction. They have too much going for them to play with something that could easily become a political hand grenade.
After all, it only takes one election for one administration's 'pet project' to become the next one's 'red-headed stepchild.' I could easily see something like this being intentionally sabotaged politically, after a turnover in Boston, in order to make the previous guys who supported it look bad. Stuff like that is pretty common in politics, and Massachusetts politics in general (and Boston in even more particular) has a history of ugliness and finger-pointing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It would be good if it goes well and succeeds. Might set a precedent for a free internet.
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Maybe.
But there are lots of foundations and philanthropists out there with lots of money, and all you really need is one. I've worked in the non-profit sector. The good news is that people with money understand using money to catalyze change: that's what investment is after all. In fact, that's the difference between asking for a small donation and a large one. You can ask for a small thing because it will help you get something worthy done. You can ask for a large thing if will change the way things get done.
By their nature these sort of asks are unique animals. You need to research the donor, understand the foundation's mission or the donor's interests, and connect what you want to do to those things in a persuasive way. Only after you have done those things can you say whether the funding is likely or even possible.
With respect to business, consider all the businesses that provide wi-fi access. Why do they do it? To attract customers from their competition. So, these businesses are going to be either against the effort, or indifferent to it.
But the principle remains: a business may be interested in this because it attracts customers away from the competition. Except that the service would be for everyone in the city. So you need a business that is interested in the city vis a vis other cities.
You want a real estate business.
If this goes down, the most plausible way to do it will be to find some developer who has a mega-project that, as such projects do, requires a boatload of zoning variances. Normally you sit down and dicker with them over things like setting aside jobs for city residences, putting in amenities to offset problems, and, this is key, paying for improvements nearby infrastructure. Most of these things are the stuff the developer doesn't want to do, or is indifferent to. However, ubiquitous wireless may be, for some projects, a big plus.
Maybe you're putting in a development with room for a hundred stores and office space for a hundred businesses. The free infrastructure might save each store and business a hundred dollars a more in infrastruture costs. Thats 200 businesses x 100 dollars/month or 20,000 per month, nearly a quarter million per year. Using the prime rate, the present value of a quarter million per year is about a million dollars. So chipping in a million dollars is a break even proposition for you. If it's a condition of building your project, you could perhaps be persuaded to contribute more, and may be more creative in finding ways to leverage the infrastructure to make more money.
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I know this sounds cliche, but it is true. With the gazillion FOR profit businesses out there, if municipal wifi made sense from a cost/benefit perspective anywhere on a wide scale, businesses would fall all over themselves to offer it.
Er... the city gives it away for free because they fund it via other means (taxes, etc). A busines would have to charge. Your whole idea falls apart right there - I am *not* going to pay $20 a month for something I may use two days out of 30. BUt if its free and there, hey, I will pop open my laptop while I am downtown.
Saying that municipal wireless is "not viable" is totally ignoring the fact that lots of cities *have* done this, and a fair number of them operate the ISP in a *break even or profit generating* state. Municipal Wi-Fi can cut down on costs enormously for the city, and selling the surplus bandwidth on the municipal fibre ring to companies is another way to generate revenue from the free service.
I happen to live in one of these cities.
As someone currently working and typing this from my office building in Boston, I'm a bit worried about this. I've already had enough nightmares working in Boston with the tunnel collapsing, and there's enough corruption even beyond the big dig. No matter who ends up trying to implement this it's going to cost a lot of money, which Boston has already spent way too much of. I heard on the radio this morning that Boston is going to start fining non Boston residents that are at fault for accidents in Boston because of the police that are then needed to direct traffic when an accident happens. This is to generate a couple million a year. If they're that desperate for money they don't need a Wi-Fi.
Is anybody else also worried about the security implications of this. How long til someone just sits in Post Office Square running Cain and Able on their laptop just packet sniffing every worker that takes advantage of this free Wi-Fi. I know that there are ways to protect this, but it seems like it could be a major problems for the IT forces at large companies.
...in Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence Freenet is operational and giving the local mega-media broadband company a run for their money.
There's also National Public Radio, which has been doing this with radio for decades. It's listener supported. Basically, they could have a WiFi fun drive, wherein they get the thing going and it pops a webpage up on people's screen before they can use the internet. It asks for a donation and a login. Once they make a donation, they don't have to see the screen until next year (members). People who haven't donated might have the screen pop up every 10 hours or so of use, and they can just dismiss it. Then, during the fund drive, they have to look at the screen for 5 minutes an hour or something.
The page would also be a nice personalized community portal, not unlike Public Radio has. I think something like this would be great; the quality of public radio is amazing, and I think they could do the same thing with Internet Access. People need to stop thinking like money grubbing babies. It's NOT all about money. Warren Buffett just gave away all of his money, so will Bill Gates. There are a lot of people who volunteer time or give money to support the community projects. If you aren't one of them, you should try it. It feels good, and I swear it comes back to you 10x.
Next time you're getting drunk in the bar, save $10 and send it to public radio or the EFF or the ACLU or something like that. Well-managed non-profits do A LOT in this world, and any money they make they give back to their communities.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Perhaps the article submitter is confused but I think this might be a good idea. If the idea is to avoid interference by special interests then establishing a non-governmental and non-profit organisation, or perhaps something like a co-operative, would be a compelling alternative to letting the telco/big-ISP inmates run the wireless asylum with all their ideas about bandwitch-shaping their competition out of their markets and such. It would also be infinitely better than letting a municipal govenrnment, undoubtedly with a good deal of its own special interests lining its pockets, create a bungling, bureaucratic mess of the network.
So then the gist of it is that they want a wi-fi version of the FreeNet volunteer/community networks of yore. This actually was quite successful for a time, although I think if anything would be the most workable it would be the cooperative approach. It's all good to hope that philanthropy will ride to the rescue but I think that if the local businesses, computer user's groups, individual enthusiasts, etc. that funded the capital and operational expenses were also owners there would be some initiative to invest and stay involved with development--especially if the system could generate revenue and owner/customers would receive dividends...
Hmmm...sounds like a made-in-Saskatchewan approach....I wonder if they might already be doing that...
Furthermore...
The city will *not* put any money into the project. They will suggest that a non-profit raise the money to build out the network themselves, then lease the hardware to local ISP's on the cheap. Then, because these ISP's are really nice people, they will turn around and either give away the service or sell it on the cheap.
It's a great way for the city to look like it's doing something useful without putting out any money or resources, and at the same time give a nice big wireless gift to local ISP's. Business as usual in Boston...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
it's worth noting that the non-profit in question would be operating only the network - it would be up to local businesses to market & resell the service to end-users. so in this model, the non-profit entity handles most or all of the tech to transmit right up to the outside wall of building x; a local reseller signs up residents of building x, sells whatever equipment those people may need (antennae, repeaters, whatever), and handles billing, support, etc. that's briefly mentioned in TFA, but it's an important point here - it's not municipal wifi, it's not even non-profit wifi. it's a non-profit network operator, doing wholesale sales to businesses who want to provide internet access to their customers, but aren't real ISPs.
that's cool.
every good
First a point of information: The Big Dig was primarily a Commonwealth / Federal project. The city of Boston had comparatively little input. The purpose of the Big Dig was to primarily benefit suburban commuters and people going to and from the airport and other traffic passing through from the north or the south. That being said ---
About any Massachusetts initiative
You can look at your history books and recent newspapers and know that NOTHING is free of political special interests in Boston.
The Mayor seems to envision this ideal of corporate visitors and tourists (yes some of us travel with our computers) sitting in any park or along the Charles River accessing their email or IMing friends as to what a great town Boston is.
Or students doing projects away from the classroom.
What's going to happen is:
People will start demanding that the city provide everyone with a computer.
If the first wireless areas are on Beacon Hill then people will scream racism.
The 911 lines will be jammed when there is a hiccup in the wi-fi.
People in living in nearby Quincy and Cambridge will be arrested for theft of services if there house sits near an area where the free Boston Wi-fi can be picked up
As other writers pointed out, people will want hate groups banned. Who decides.
Also, what will be the priority of restoring service in event of a natural disaster?
When the non-profit(s) running the system run low on money the legendary generosity of the Massachusetts Legislature will institute a tax on something to pay for it.
OTOH - it looks like the Combat Zone will be moved to a cyberspace area where zoning laws don't apply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_zone_(Boston)
Free wi-fi makes about as much sense as free phone service. At some point *someone* has to pay.