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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."
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.
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?
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.