Municipal Wi-Fi Networks In Trouble

imamac writes "According to an AP story, municipal Wi-Fi is going nowhere fast. A think tank research director quipped, 'They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered.' Subscriptions to the services are much lower than expected and lawmakers are concerned that millions of dollars will have gone to waste that could have been better spent on roads or crime-fighting. Satisfaction with the quality of service has also been low, which give some insight into the low adoption rate. Is municipal Wi-Fi just a bad idea, has it been poorly implemented, or is the technology just not there to support such an endeavor?"

Comments

Re:The major issue

[Shaman]

I operate a fixed wireless ISP with 40 towers and over 1,500 (deeply) rural customers. Just so we're clear on the level I'm speaking at.

Actually, you have several things wrong. Mesh radios CAN be set to low power modes but invariably they are not. They are set to blast at or near full power because nearby interference causes issues that only power output can solve. Sectorizing only solves so much. But even those that aren't set up that way still exhibit many issues. At a full 36db EIRP, 2.4Ghz will indeed go 20 miles line of site and beyond, if the noise floor is low enough and the radio is high enough. 5.2Ghz cannot use reflectors and only has a useful range of a few kilometers, but it's the lowest power of the available bands.

Take a look at the 2.4Ghz backhauls that go over 40 miles with standard EIRP. Not that PCMCIA cards will power that far, but the A.P.s will. One company makes a product that claims 216Mbps full duplex over 20 miles, in fact.

So the question to you: If mesh gear worked so well, why is everyone having trouble with them?

As for interference... 5.8Ghz noise levels are horrendous around here, 2.4Ghz is only good for backhaul links for towers that are way out in the middle of nowhere, for multipoint it's nearly unusable, and 5.2Ghz is moderately noisy as well. I'm hoping the 5.4G and 4.9G radios will be available really soon because I need them. Speaking of that, my damn Motorola OFDM radios still can't be set to 4.9G even though it says right on the box that they support that band.

Then there's 900Mhz... the interference in the top of the usable unlicensed band made it unusable and if two WISPs in an area decide to use 900Mhz, they'll both lose... and the beat goes on.

The only real way out of the mess is to go with proprietary WiMax type products, and if you see another one of my posts, that's not a completely infallable solution, either.