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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.
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.
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.
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....
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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
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/
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.
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...