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

But if we don't have it

[Anonymous Coward]

The WiFi will go to Shelbyville!

A think tank research director quipped

[Ice Station Zebra]

"I'll say anything if you give me money."

WTF?

[rsilvergun]

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.

At the risk of being repetative

[zappepcs]

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?

Re:At the risk of being repetative

[davygrvy]

zappepcs has it right. I am 100% for the success of municipal fiber networks. Financial payback comes from renting access to the service providers, which results in competition for the end user. Slap on some wifi access points on some poles where the fiber trunks are located, and poof, wifi, too. The end user has choices and price per Mb goes way down to Japan/Korea pricing (Why aren't you jealous?). The USA still has the highest $ per Mb of broadband in the world for no good reason except that us silly consumers expect the private sector to solve it.

Like bridge and road construction, its up to the local communities to solve their "last mile" problem.

Google's Wifi

[James_Aguilar]

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

[Shaman]

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.

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.

Anecdote

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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?

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?

Muni wireless done right: Oakland County, MI

[XorNand]

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.

Re:the answers:

[SQLGuru]

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

It's the marketing

[L. VeGas]

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".

Re:Harry Browne said it best...

[XxtraLarGe]

I like being called a socialist. Anarchosocialist, anyways. There is nothing wrong with caring about the important rights: the right to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Without those rights, all others are meaningless. Libertarians want the right to economically enslave others. When all resources are privately owned, all non-owners are defacto slaves, and it is this goal that libertarians work towards: the enslavement of the poor, worldwide. 1984 called, it wants its Newspeak back. We have a right to medicine? Suppose all the pharmaceutical companies closed their doors tomorrow. Where would your right to medicine come from then? The only way people can have a right to any good or service is if the government can FORCE somebody else to provide it through taxation. When you are forced to work to support others involuntarily, that is the definition of slavery.

Re:Harry Browne said it best...

[SillyNickName4me]

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.

Worst since the monorail eh?

[bizitch]

I've sold municipal wi-fi to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!

Re:Harry Browne said it best...

[spun]

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.

Re:Harry Browne said it best...to sell his book

[trianglman]

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.

Re:Harry Browne said it best...

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe - just maybe - we noticed that everything the gov't does could have been done better, chaper and faster by private companies or individuals?

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").