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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?"
The WiFi will go to Shelbyville!
"I'll say anything if you give me money."
As a tech, I'm dying for these things. I'm getting more and more wireless networks where it just doesn't work because there's too many people with wireless devices in the area. I had one house with 6 wireless networks in range, cell phones, wireless security systems, 2.4 Ghz wireless on the land line, and even a few wireless mice and keyboards floating around. It was too much.
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Let me say this, Metropolitan networks, whether Wi-Fi or otherwise need one thing to make them both competitive and financially viable; the metropolitan network needs to be owned by that cooperative body within the municipality's control. That means every last 'last mile' connection.
When the city/county (whatever) owns all the last mile physical plant/infrastructure and ISP's simply rent connectivity to end users the municipality will be functional and profitable. Yes, that is how we would see big bandwidth to every home, and each home would have the choice of ISP services. It is possible to do this and would instantly flatten the cost of entry as well as the rules of engagement.
Then, if you ad Wi-Fi support to parts of the city that is subscribed to by users who already pay... well, it's not such a stretch to support financially.
Does anyone see any downsides to this?
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Google's wifi here in Mountain View is not very good. I can't get any reception on it, and I live less than a mile from their headquarters. If even Google can't get it right, city governments probably . . .
The rest of the above sentence is left as an exercise for the reader.
The major issue has been that they have given the contracts to implementors that are paid for the number of radios that they install and by gosh they will install more radios than anyone every imagined. But, see, the 2.4Ghz bands were already polluted BEFORE they started and installing 2.4G radios on every block for several square miles when each mesh radio has a practical range (line of sight) of around 20 miles is really not helping things. And just as bad, the backhaul of the mesh radios is almost always 5.2Ghz or 5.8Ghz, which have only a few channels each to choose from (5.8Ghz has more, but still...)
Don't believe this could happen? Ask anyone that has tried to use the Toronto mesh network downtown. It's flat ugly.
...Steve
Internet as a utility needs time to develop if it is ever going to be adopted. Take a look at my situation. I pay for a cable modem and not for a municipal wi-fi connection. Why? Well, because I occasionally like to watch television and television service is bundled with internet service. If I buy them separately I'm paying a whole lot of extra cash. What would make me change my mind? Well, if I could rent legal TV episodes over IP for a very, very low price akin to that portion of what it costs to see them on cable TV. Until that time, however, why should I pay extra?
Here in Oakland County, Michigan, they took a different approach. Our nascent, county-wide wifi network was almost entirely privately funded. The county agreed to provide the space to mount the antennas (on land already owned by the county) and to promote it. The actual design and implementation was bid out to the private sector. The winner agreed to pick up the infrastructure tab and to provide free wireless to everyone in the service area. In exchange, they are permitted to offer plans with more bandwidth and traffic prioritization to those willing to pay for it. It's a win-win: It didn't cost the taxpayers anything and we all get free access, and the private company gets to keep any profits that they make from the premium service.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Most other people might have a slight interest in being able to get on the internet anywhere, but not enough to pay for it.
The reason that subscriptions are so low is that they've concentrated on the business districts.....
1) Most businesses have their own network (which, BTW, is faster than the service provided)
2) Most CBD's are "vacant" during the evening when individuals would be using it.
3) It doesn't make it to the 'burbs where I live.
Layne
Municipal WiFi is hard. Municipal WiMax would be a lot easier.
...if a broadband or near broadband wireless connection is not available everywhere, then it is pointless. People cannot run their lives hoping to find a connection. Far better to put up with a slower but acceptable 3G or equiv connection through the cell/mobile providers where coverage is often assured. I reside in the UK and have a Vodafone 3G connect doo dah connected to my Macbook via USB and it works like a dream, anywhere I go. Even when it slows to GPRS, it is fast enough to surf most websites. I only use WiFi when back home or at the office where I am more likely to waste time watching YouTube videos and downloading stuff. :-) Seriously, my point is valid and when 4G is introduced (Google Samsung 4G trials), that will be it for public WiFi.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
When the internet was taking off, we had great catch-phrases like "Information Superhighway"." Now that's a name I can get behind.
"Municipal Wi-Fi", in contrast, sounds so lackluster, like "Deparment of Leisure Services". Proponents use lame slogans like "Wi-Fi? Wi-Not?" and "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not useful."
We need something that will make folks excited, like "Naked Bimbos Everywhere".
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1. Unlike the free market, they only answer to the people every couple of years. The sellers must respond to the buyer every single day.
2. When government screws up they spend your money to figure out what happened and to come up with a solution. In the free market, you can just change providers.
It is not that City-wide Wi-Fi doesn't work or there is no tech powerful enough to run it; it's just poor implementation and, more importantly, poor advertisement.
For one, rural and suburban municipal Wi-Fi would be a much better implementation because some of these cities are still on the lower-end of personal internet connections (think low-speed DSL...). Running a Wi-Fi network with its network connection coming from an area with a much faster internet connection or a satellite-capable connection could possibly happen...
Also, I live in a fairly popular city in the United States. I believe we have city-wide Wireless internet, but I have not heard a WORD from our city's government (either that or it was taken down). Plus, another poster mentioned a good point that there is just too much cross-talk; I could be in a cafe with Wi-fi enabled, but it will not be that advantageous with the SEVENTEEN other wireless networks that are in the air...
I think this is a case where 802.11a might hold a candle. But that's just me, and maybe it's not right either ;-)
Right - interstate highways suck. I could have built the whole system solo in a week. National Parks - who needs-em. World War II. Give me 100 men with rifles and we could have beaten the Jerrys and the Nips. Nuclear weapons - HA - my own cousin has THREE in his garage next to his GTO.
Hey swallow some assholes book - he needs the money.
"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?"
Well, based on my experiences with municipal bureaucracies, I'd say yes, yes, and maybe.
http://xkcd.com/386/
A lot of these municipal wi-fi efforts have arisen just because the private sector has failed so terribly to bring decent Internet access.
Hell, scroll down the front page here at Slashdot and you'll see a story posted today about the failure of many ISPs to provide adequate service. Of course, we've seen many, many stories like that posted here. I'm sure we've all got our own stories to tell about the trouble we've experienced dealing with various ISPs.
So every time that somebody comes along and says that the private sector or corporations are the solution to the problem of shitty Internet service in so many areas, I want to laugh right in their fucking faces. Their solution has had a decade-and-a-half to prove itself, and it has failed! It has fucking failed outright!
Now, a government-backed solution may not be the best. But it's far better than what Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, or most other ISPs are offering. We only need to look to Europe to see how our American communication services should be. Over there, their governments tend to be heavily involved with making sure that a quality service is provided. And it's more than just stringent regulation, too. In the end, we see European consumers getting access to far better mobile phone services, not to mention much, much better Internet access than we usually have here in the States.
Sometimes the free market fails. That's usually the case with essential services, of which the Internet is quickly becoming one. So the government tends to be the only party who can step in and make a positive difference.
802.11 wasn't designed to be used city-wide. Of course it's expensive and unpopular to try to blanket the town with WiFi, the stations barely enough range to cover a whole house well, much less a whole block. Furthermore, 2.4ghz is way too overcrowded for this sort of thing. Better solutions would be WiMax or a simular tech using the analog TV frequencies when they finally get auctioned off. The idea of Municipal Internet is very good, but this isn't the way to do it.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
better spent on roads or crime-fighting.
Did anyone else instantly think "SimCity" when they read that?
Yeah? No?
Simple question is why have wi-fi everywhere in a city? What problem does it solve?
Do people constantly use their computers in parks? On the sidewalk?
Most people use the Internet in their home. A few will use it at a coffee shop or restaurant.
If you want to provide Internet access then a community DSL or fiber network is the place to start. Then selective hot-spots. like at schools, libraries, community centers, and maybe some parks.
Why would I pay for access to a metropolitan wifi network when I have a WAP at home, internet at my office, free wifi and a couple of restaurants I go to, and a browser on my phone?
metropolitan wifi networks are a solution seeking a problem.
Now Monorails are cool. Actually they do tend to be cheaper than subways and a lot more attractive than elevated trains. I think they are a good solution to mass transit. Too bad buses and light rail are cheaper still.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Ridiculous article yestersay in the Wash. Post about a large outer-suburban MacMansion-style development that is stuck in a 75-year contract for internet/phone/cable. Some years ago it seemed like a good deal since the company ran fiver optic to each house. Now it's a ripoff monopoly. Hard to feel sorry for the MacMansionites, who are busy violating their own association rules by sprouting satellite dishes, and should have known what a contract meant.c le/2007/05/20/AR2007052001724.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
If you don't know about these U.S. developments, almost all the "affluent" growth goes into outer suburbs, while the inner ones, not really built to last, start to peel and crack. Many or most new developments are private entities, with "association" rules and regulations layered on or replacing normal local law.
So if you're looking for virgin territory for high-speed internet service, that's where it is. Or was.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Um, what gives you the "right" to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine? Are those people who are engaged in the manufacture of those products and services your slaves? Why not a right to free music, free sex, and free insert_whatever_you_want_here? You should really think about differentiating between "rights" like (life, speech, etc), and consumer products.
If there weren't so many damn idiots in this world, I'd just be average.
You should really think about differentiating between "rights" like (life, speech, etc), and consumer products.
Good call.
Given that life at least requires food, and according to many, also clothing and shelter. having a right to life implies having a right to those things as well.
That sets them apart from whatever_you_want
Hence. maybe you should follow your own advice before starting to sound like a fanatical non-thinker.
I've sold municipal wi-fi to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
You support slavery, do you? When all resources are owned, all non owners are slaves. If rights to basic necessities are not guaranteed, I can get you to do anything by denying them to you. You want a world where a small owning class controls all resources and the rest of us all have to do what you say, don't you? That is what libertarianism necessarily leads to.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Don't get me wrong: I like the fact that they exist. They can, in fact, be done right. They should exist and we need them and other services like them to break the horrific stranglehold legal monopolies like cable and the Bells have over our connections.
However, they can be done very, very horribly. Case in point: Tempe, AZ (think Phoenix) has municipal wireless. They got it right with allowing some free services to everyone (you can visit asu.edu and such without paying), but the service is run by complete morons.
That's right, utter morons. Their "transparent" proxy isn't. If you're having trouble connecting, you'll run into it constantly and it breaks all downloads because it wants to direct you to their crappy page of news and ads and open your originally requested site in a (blocked) pop-up. Did I mention that you get this page sent even when the program you're using isn't a web browser? Believe me, it doesn't play nice with telnet, non-HTTP downloads, etc.
Oh, and if you're having service problems, well, umm, tough. All of their websites only have useful information if accessed over the wireless link. If you go to the same URLs from the web, you get pages of ads. I don't know if they belong to the same company, or if they're from domain squatters, or what, but it really, really sucks when you have no one to contact about problems.
Also, all the links here are unencrypted. Set your laptop up to sniff traffic and you have a goldmine of passwords to steal, you can launch MITM attacks, or whatever you want. Yeah, they use SSL while you log in, but that's not much comfort.
So please, if your city plans on setting this up, make sure it's run by competent people! Otherwise, you too may feel like strangling whoever made that damned semi-transparent proxy and decided to make sure that support was almost impossible to locate, let alone contact.
And if you're ever in Tempe, don't bother connecting to the WAZTEMPE SSID for any reason. I had nothing but headaches trying to use their services and I never want to use them again. Find a cafe or something with its own wireless link. They can hardly do any worse.
Uhhhh, I am an anarchist. An anarcho-syndicalist. We think your concept of individual ownership of natural resources will automatically lead to an oligarchy of a few owning class people. We believe in democratic control of natural resources by the workers actually using those resources.
Government is a control structure, and like any it can be abused. That includes the control structures of private ownership, which aren't as efficient as you may think. In studies of privatization, privatization of competitive industries works well, while privatization of natural monopolies has always failed.
With government, there is a system of checks and balances. In the free market, there are no checks and balances to curb the runaway positive feedback loop of wealth accumulation. There are no checks to stop the exploitation of the natural failure modes of the free market: information imbalance, natural monopoly, and externalities. I have yet to hear a Libertarian give a cogent explanation of how their system would deal with those three factors.
You accuse me of not understanding Libertarianism, I accuse you of not thinking through the consequences.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is far from flamebait. When it comes to something that needs to help the public in general, the government can be trusted to do it much better than any corporate entity. Roads, parks and military are three good examples. Just because the government can screw up doesn't mean it always has or always will. Municipal Wi-Fi is a good idea, but it was farmed out, in most cases, to groups that have a lot to lose from it doing well, or to groups that didn't have and weren't given the resources they needed. This is an instance of "Crap in, crap out." not government deficiencies.
Clones are people two.
Let's look at this:
Find a government employee that you would hire to do a job.
Find a politician at any level that you would trust to be in charge of ANYTHING.
Now, let's make it a little more complex by adding millions of dollars, multiply it by several thousand government employees, and let's throw in hundreds of politicians. Let's make it really entertaining by throwing in the left wing news media that is fed by the hands of BIG GOVERNMENT.
Most of you people have this belief that because the government is throwing money at technology, that it's a GOOD thing. Frankly, I know I don't want the government to "invest" in anything. I want them to provide roads, police, and jails. If I want Wi-Fi, I want a private company to invest their money, and produce a service that is WORTH paying for. In fact, I'd like 2 or 3 companies to come in and COMPETE with services, that way I can buy one that is full-featured, or I can buy one that is cheap. Or I can buy services that fit somewhere in the middle.
Instead, I'm stuck with a poorly implemented, over-priced, under-performing tax burden that no one wants, yet everyone is forced to use because some politicians thought that they can't have any private competition. I think you'll see the brighter side of DIALUP after a few more years of Municipal Wi-Fi.
I said it years ago. Go look at Municipal Cable. Ask the locals in those areas how they like Muni CableTV, adn I bet you're lucky to leave the room without any serious scars. Municipal services suck. Government projects suck.
I think there's plenty of evidence to support that the only thing private companies do "better" than government is enrich themselves. You may not have noticed, but to a great extent, many of the economic problems we're facing in the US at the moment are the direct result of the fanatical belief that "free markets" are good in any way shape or form.
The reason we had a strong middle class in the US during the second half of the 20th century is because of the "socialist" programs of FDR and his followers. That, and Labor Unions were the two forces that created a middle class where families could live off the salary of one working parent and kids could expect a better life than their parents (mostly gone, now). All unfettered capitalism and free markets got us last century was a whopper of a Depression and a tech bubble.
By the way, after a decade of Republican, pro-capital, "free market" rule in Congress and 5 years of Bush, we've just about done away completely with the American middle class. Things like thederegulation of the banking industry have leeched an incredible portion of the wealth that had been gathered by the middle class. If we keep this nonsense up much longer we're going to have a very small group of rich people and a whole lot of serfs. That may suit some of you, but I don't really have the temperament for serfdom, and I certainly don't have the necessary greed and lack of morals required to become one of the elite.
I get such a kick out of midlevel techie "managers" who swear they're doing so much better under Bush, until you find out the amount that they owe has been increasing every year, and their real income has been declining at about 7 percent annually (despite their 2 percent "raises").
You are welcome on my lawn.
I use an ethernet cable. Its faster , cheaper , more reliable and impossible to hack from over the air.