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Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan
thatshortkid writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a proposed plan for municipal wi-fi in Chicago has fallen apart. The story cites contract disputes and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing. 'Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined ... Even if Chicago declines to back a municipal wireless network, city residents soon will gain more Internet connection options. Sprint Nextel Corp. is building a wireless WiMax network here that is due to offer service next spring.'"
So I'm going to try & compare this to water to citizens, but I recognize it's not the greatest comparison--people need water to survive, most people don't need wi-fi to survive, etc.
... why? The water wasn't the greatest quality, you had to actively go to the well, it might be limited during dry spells, someone devious could poison the water, etc. So we now pay the city to ensure that water is delivered us via a system of tubes and that it is potable.
Back in the day, when a town was being settled, they would have a well. I think it still works this way in most rural parts of third world countries. You thirsty? Walk down to the well & pull up a bucket.
What did you pay for that facility? Probably very little--if anything at all. Someone fronted the stone and labor to drill the well the whole bucket rope system was a one time cost.
Years later, people got sick of this
The attempt for AT&T or Earthlink to blanket wi-fi is kind of like the last step in this equation. Except there currently are no town wells (with the exception of some establishments implementing free wi-fi). I think we need a 'town well' style implementation before we advance to full blown municipal need. There's plenty of people out there right now getting by just fine with no wi-fi, they don't know why they should pay $2.87 a month (that's just a guess, by the way) in taxes for something they don't think they need. Likewise, there were probably settlers drinking from streams that didn't think an intricate pipeline of water to every home was necessary.
So what's the solution here?
Enter mesh networks, something similar to how the OLPC is supposed to function. I submitted a story a while ago about Meraki, a startup that is threatening Google's push to blanket San Francisco in wi-fi. They are basically giving out solar powered routers for people to mount in their homes that will become part of a mesh network.
It's kind of like the town well approach: low start up initial cost that someone pays, at first it will be limited and a bit cumbersome, it will probably be very vulnerable to attacks, the people that don't think they need it will still get some low quality service for free, etc.
Will city wide mesh networks be the final answer & solution to the municipal wi-fi demand? I don't know. I would doubt it since I wouldn't see it working in the countryside very well and so I think the ultimate municipal wi-fi will indeed be local government run and include massive coverage via some sort of technology I don't know enough about.
I think it's necessary to have this intermediate stage because it will give businesses, people & institutions the power to experiment with the unlimited possibilities that a city WAN would provide. I think wi-fi as a municipal service is a great idea for everywhere but I acknowledge that I make a lot more than the average citizen of the world.
If I were Chicago or a large city government, I would be seeking the attempts of companies like Meraki that want to build mesh networks and look at ad hoc networks as a temporary or starting solution. They may not be the best but it something to experiment with and learn from before you implement the final solution.
My work here is dung.
Comcast hasn't dropped my broadband price a single time (they have raised it, however). That said, has anyone actually figured out exactly *how* to get the $10 DSL that was the FCC requirement of the BellSouth Merger?
With every day, I become more disgusted with the corporate greed stranglehold. Even more so, I amazed that consumers largely don't care.
More
If Chicago managed a WiFi infrastructure, it would manage to cost the taxpayers $400B and give everybody cancer within a week or two, and even then the aldermen would find a way to stick up for it so long as Daley approved.
I live in Chicago and regret to hear this. Comcast, Chicago's largest broadband provider, pillages its customers and I'd love to see some competition!
I can't see how a public works effort such as this would work because I'm looking at it from the admin/engineer side of things. So here we have Chicago creating a network that will be funded how. Firstly officials there wanted freebies, they didn't even offer a bone. So having worked at a provider, I can say the provider's first mode of thinking was "Why should I". Think about it, the city charging $20 the provider gets what? Why would the provider dish out all that cash when all it takes is a cluster of people to open WAP's all over the place to let their neighbors surf for free. Sure people do it now, but there is no city official dipping into a providers pockets right now.
Provider --> resells to City @ say 10.00 per person/etc (who cares) City --> sells to citizens @ say 20.00
City now also has to hire network engineers, admins, tech support etc. Higher taxes.
Provider --> resells to City @ say 10.00 per person/etc (who cares) City --> sells to citizens @ say 20.00 Citizens --> Opens WAP's citywide leading city to lose revenue
Infiltrated dot Net
i guess it was safe to assume that the wi-fi system wouldn't work... mainly because they had been putting up signs saying it was coming for the last year...
in a similar vein, i believe they've been putting up signs for the last 2 years proclaiming that we have, in fact, won the 2016 olympics... which clearly isn't going to happen either...
i guess the moral is, don't trust signs in chicago... i mean everyone has already learned to ignore the traffic ones... how hard could it be?
now is the winter of our discotheque
If this had gone forward we would have spent something like $100 million, the work going in no-bid contract to Friends Of Daley, and ended up with a few "hot zones" in inconvenient parts of the city, with coverage conspicuously absent from any area covered by a commercial provider.
You say that "most people don't need wi-fi to survive". Actually, I'd say that nobody needs wi-fi to survive. In fact, wi-fi is really useless for anything important. There's simply no reason that our government should get into the business of becoming ISP's.
I don't respond to AC's.
Next election I'm using all my votes to throw the current officials out.
Big telcos/cable companies have shown over the past decade that they're not interested in anything that benefits the customer nor anything that progresses technology. Hence we have multiple examples from other countries where they have 100mb net access or statements from AT&T's CEO where he said "no one want's $10 internet access". They are only interested in maintaining the status quo. The dream of supply siders that the market will decide has definitely died on this one because the market is stagnant, highly profitable for the monopolies, and essentially dead.
I live in San Francisco and it's a little disheartening to see the wifi thing going nowhere. I would say it's more typical of the corporate mindset nowadays in that they want to not just own everything or every angle, but they want to control it forever. The fact that SF can't get its shit together with Google and Earthlink is beyond me - this has been going on for a long time!
I feel the only difference with SF and Chicago on this on is Chicago knew when to call bullshit. Is it too difficult to create some new office of the city for digital initiatives or something and then just have them do it? I mean, start small, start in an area where there's a lot of tourists or businesses and just start putting up mesh routers. The city owns the goddamn light poles, so attach them to that. Then they could get a crappy 6/768 DSL line and see if it ever get's maxed out. If so, great, incentive to expand. If not, ok, well at least we know.
This reminds me of some software projects where everything is planned out to the max and meetings go on forever and there has to be some broad consensus on everything. I say screw that. Get a small team together in the city, give them some money, and let them do something with it. Start small, go big.
I feel these big negotiations with the telcos is a waste of time. They're quite content with the U.S. being, like 30th or something in rankings of broadband penetration because they're still making loads of cash. They have no interest outside the buck. So remove that faulty part of the equation - permanently - and let the next generation of thinkers and doers take over and actually do something.
All techy people from Chicago will find what they want in the historic English city of Norwich.
Peter
[...]and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing.
Would like to see where prices go over the next couple of years now that a competitor has been eliminated...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I don't live there any more, I live far, far away in a smaller city in Kansas. We have our own problems, just like any other city, but with the cooperative efforts of our city commission and a non-profit organization, we figured out how to make a successful, inexpensive, functional, municipal wireless ISP using a mesh network that covers the entire city.
Why can't anyone else?
San Francisco is mired, Chicago gives up but Wireless Oakland chugs along. One of my ex-Michigander Bay Area friends can't believe that I have free wireless but the Googlenet (or whatever SF plans) is still not working.
Here, In Winston-Salem, the Municipal WiFi project is getting off the ground and into testing as of this very week.3 31/1/23/
http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/6
It's Chicago. What do you expect? Don't get hung up on all the details. It all comes down to greed and payoffs. Big Chicago he-man payoffs.
At least with a wi-fi public rip-off project no civilians are going to end up getting killed, like what happened with the big Mafia payoff 'Big Dig' project in Boston, or the 'look the other way, shut up, and be happy' corruption of the Minneapolis. And wi-fi isn't going to be an ultra-high-tech masturbatory death machine for greedy military psychopaths like most American military weapons contracts. Our wi-fi fuck-ups aren't going to make the rest of the world hate us for the next hundred years.
There is another issue that makes the inability to arbitrate the pay-off structure a positive thing. That is the fact that public wi-fi is technically simply not ready for prime time yet. The systems don't work or just barely work.
Here in Portland, Oregon, where the graft gets allocated more smoothly that other third-world American colonies, the local new wi-fi simply doesn't work reliably with Windows. Which is the OS used by 90% of the people who would be using the metro wi-fi. No one notices because the execs and 'first users' all use Macs and all the tech support people use Linux. Both these work OK with the local wi-fi. But they give the impression that the system is actually functioning as it should. But it's not and the execs and the techs don't get feedback from the masses of would-be users on the massive problems. So a long period of several years will go by before anyone realizes the extent of the underutilization, if they ever notice it at all.
This creates a massive opportunity cost for the metro wi-fi system. If they had waited for five years then they would have become aware of the Windows problem from the examples of other cities. Now the other cities that aren't installing wi-fi will be able to avoid Portland's mistakes, and we get stuck with a total turkey wi-fi system.
So yes, waiting, not installing, and delaying implementation of any public wi-fi is probably the best course of action until the huge numbers of bugs in these systems get addressed (and solved). Preferably with other people picking up the expense.
But City Wide WiFi nteworks? Why?
Hi. The Internet needs to be everywhere, and accessible in every and any way. WiFi is a very low cost solution for spreading the Internet around. Because the Internet has things like Wikipedia, and Make, and blogs, and maps, and train/bus schedules, and VOIP -- there is a need for the Internet to be ubiquitous. WiFi is a stone-knives-and-bearskins method of making the Internet available everywhere.
Why do you need WiFi near the dumpsters? That's where your systems administrators smoke cigarettes. Why does a City need WiFi? At the bear minimum, that should lessen the ammount paid to Verizon/GTE/SBC/etc every month. Municipal WiFi everywhere should directly equal less taxes -- except that it is against the law, at least here in Pennsyltuckey.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2007/08/t he_earthlink_wifi_saga_waiting_for_the_other.html
Interesting commentary from Houston Chronicle technology writer Dwight Silverman. His suggestion is to socialize municipal Wi-Fi and have the city run it.
technical writing / development
Rio Rancho, NM (where Intel made Pentiums) went this route beginning a few years ago. It's had mixed success, with the city threatening to rebid and other actions. One of the allegations made in a local paper (maybe not online, not sure, but you can try AbqTrib links from googling "rio rancho wireless broadband" and getting a trial access or something - I won't) was that the contractor was using home-grade rather than industrial-grade components in severe-environment areas. The following link discusses that they're fixing this and Wichita's POV on it.
0 7/06/04/story3.html
http://wichita.bizjournals.com/wichita/stories/20
I really don't want to fuel discussions about the evil-ness of businesses but I do want to add to the debate about whether government control or free enterprise are the ways to get this done, and I just want to share - as an admittedly-ridiculous data-point-of-one - views as a resident where this occured, in response to many comments made already.
1. Unfair/hidden taxation. Rio Rancho has a lot of retirees, but it also thinks like it's the 2000s, not the 1990s. IOW, no one really questioned if it were fair if taxes were required for this if they didn't want the service, any more than they question if school taxes are fair if they don't have kids. It adds to the quality of life and with taxation, there has to be give and take. If you live somewhere where quality of life isn't a concern, I suggest moving.
2. Should it be a utility-like thing like water, under city control, etc? Yes. No one trusted that any vendor or vendors could serve students in hard-to-wifi areas, schools, Intel, the city, unless contractually required to do so.
3. Should it be a utility-like thing.... (same question). No. No one trusts city hall to understand the internet correctly.
4. Should it be franchised, like cable? Absolutely not. Horror stories abound with last-mile-of-cable problems, access rates being fixed to near-impossible-to-change copper/fiber/switch infrastructures, not to mention all of the other evils associated with cable franchises. The goal of city-wide wireless access is to fix all of that.
5. That Rio Rancho had trouble and had to re-groove the supplier means the supplier, like any other, will be greedy. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they just got in over their heads by inexperience. But having contractual control by the city meant they could be compelled to fix things or face a contract lawsuit - way different than the steering-committee nightmares associated with listening to a cable franchise explain (lie) about why something cannot be done. IOW, swift action is occuring.
And I guess that's my overall perspective. It's a new area, but not without precedent. Vendor/providers are still discovering the right way to execute the business, or discovering new business models for this. Cities need to find the right balance between control and bureaucracy. Citizens need to hold their cities and vendors accountable.
Not trying to suggest a utopian model or claim that Rio Rancho's way is right - the jury is still way out on that, but maybe it will be ok.
Just want to emphasize - there are good and bad precendents to study on this.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Pittsburgh failed to create a WiFi network in '02 a while back. It cost a bunch of money for almost nothing done. Actually, some lady had her picture in the paper, and there was some hooplah for a day or two.
Then they hired some out-of-state company to install a little hotzone downtown, with two-hours of free access. This was after the other local players tried to bring some sense to whichever committee that was.
In fact, all of the local WiFi businesses in Pittsburgh have all left the city for the west coast, and other cities -- because they can't get any traction, or generate any local business.
Then this guy gets a bug up his ass, and starts installing Meraki boxes in his neighborhood. Didn't cost a fortune, didn't take forever, and he didn't have any help. Funny how one man with some money and initiative, can outperform a corporation funded with millions of dollars. Shadysidewifi.com
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This is the start of the Wi-Fi turf wars. Earthlink is going to host hotspots inside AT&T's territory. "They can't muscle their way in here. Everyone knows that we own the south side." Disputes will be settled with tommy guns. There'll be secret meetings with the leaders of the five telecoms. That's Chicago for you.
Price is falling BECAUSE of the talks as one of the reasons.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Here is the news today. I know the link is in the blog, but it's far down the page and people might miss it:
. html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5092403
The local governments shouldn't be in the business of offering services that already exist, especially when most people don't want YET ANOTHER stealth way for government to engage in TAX GOUGING to give a free handout to 'poor' people (whatever the hell that is).
What I WOULD like to see is competitive market forces that compete with government for our UNETHICALLY EXTRACTED DOLLARS. I would like to see an OUTSOURCED entity that can provide the equivalent services - but for a much lower price. Government has no "competition" - WHY IS THAT?? Why can't we select an entity that is our designated alternative "government" to represent us for a "fee". Their motto would probably be, "We'll screw you less - GUARANTEED!".
Perhaps it's time to explore a "Pay-As-You-Go" government. A government that charges for service as you use it (much like you get a bill when you call for an ambulance). This way, only the TRULY USEFUL government services will survive the marketplace because the revenue it receives will sustain that service. You call the fire department, you get a bill. You call the police, you get a bill. Why should I, or anyone else be FORCED to pay for propping up a school system with run-away expenditures - when I don't even have children in the school? If it's so damn good and important, then I say charge the people who are using that service - not me. Otherwise, give me the opportunity to 'rent' school rooms during the evening so I can conduct workshops for profit - and help offset these oppressive taxes.
Current government services that don't offer any real or tangible value to the majority of its tax-paying citizens, the ones who have a politically appointed "director" with a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars per year, will not be able to survive because it won't be able to generate the revenue stream to sustain itself. And that's a good thing because it gets the CONFISCATORY and EVER-INCREASING TAX VULTURE off our backs!!
We already pay way too much in taxes (both visible and stealth/invisible) - look at your phone bill, your gas bill, your electric bill, your "whatever" bill. Yep, there's that pesky leeching government taking money from you -- even though they didn't add any value to the product/service you purchased. In each and every instance, the government's cut is about 30 PERCENT of your total bill. Even the gas taxes (in Michigan, it's about 58 cents out of every dollar) are outrageous. JEEZUS, that's a 58 PERCENT SALES TAX. The government (and tree-huggers) have a lot of gall calling the oil companies greedy. It's the GREEDY GOVERNMENTS that are responsible for making us all poor.
But I digress...
Since government has this "itching" need to provide 'free' stuff, how about providing us all with FREE WATER, FREE PHONE SERVICE, FREE CABLE SERVICE, FREE EDUCATION, TAX-FREE residential zones, etc.
I'm already taxed way too much (my estimate is that it's about 57 PERCENT of my income - counting both the visible and stealth taxes). I don't need any more taxes to provide "services" (wi-fi or otherwise) to the "poor". If these people are so "poor", how come they mostly all have cable tv (many even have large plasma tvs), brand new cars, electric dishwashers, go out to eat several evenings per week, and are way-too fat (something you never see in truly poor people), etc.?
These "poor" are really unproductive, unmotivated, lazy people who want to get a free ride (courtesy of the DEMONcRAT party) and AT MY EXPENSE - and yours too.
From now on, I will just SAY NO! No to taxes, No to supporting non-productive parasites, No to pork-barrel, No to increased school taxes (for the 'children' - which in reality ALWAYS gets sucked up by administrator/teacher salary increases). What I AM for is, responsible and conservative government. The way that happens is to put all levels of government on a budget (just like the rest of us poor saps). You jerks need to start being responsible and living within your means. Fiscal Irresponsibility is NO LONGER AN OPTION that the
I live in Chicago and don't use Comcast. I use Speakeasy myself - not the cheapest, but I've been very satisfied with them. Two others that come to mind off the bat are AT&T and DSLExtreme, both of which offer really pretty low pricing in comparison to Comcast.
Just the fact that you are chatting happily on Slashdot indicates that you have Internet access, and you will likely not be a customer of any government-subsidized WiFi. The people who are NOT speaking here are the potential beneficiaries. Think more altruistically. Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean that other people don't.
That is like saying, "Why donate food and clothing to the homeless? I have all I need."
Deleted
WiMAX is the way to go. WiFi isn't truley designed for long-range mobile access. Yes, I have seen plenty of WiFi mobile solutions, but in reality they just aren't reliable. WiMAX mini-PCI cards in notebooks is definately where we'll be at in a couple of years. Metropolitan area broadband deployment over WiFi is simply not the best solution, and is backwards thinking in my opinion. WiFi should stay at home and the work place for private networks and small hotspots. There is no reason why license free WiMAX can't be implemented. A licensed approach (although it involves the -evil- telco's typically) would be of higher quality of service (presumably) - but the cost of broadband is really not very high if it is implemented by responsible companies that haven't gone too greedy.
I live in a city with municipal high speed cable and wifi. It was one of the first cities to do it in the late 90's. Business is great, people love it. Charter tries to compete every once in a while, but can't seem to offer more for less. Quasi-socialism is horrible in theory, but great in practice. Too bad capitalism couldn't be as effective.
We're trying to offer WIFI at two motels, a campus, and a 3 mile run to a farm using wireless bridging on non 802 technology.
My god, support's a pain. Wifi router drops. Some moron opens up bit torrent and kills the pipe. Some idiot decides to run his own Wireless bridge and run on the same channels we use, but he's packet capturing the data.
The utilities decide to unplug our fiber. The AP quits handing out DHCP. The ISP goes down. Why can't I get Wifi in this one room? The news crew bounces microwave into our wifi bringing it down. The WIFI gets hit by lightening. The UPS battery needs replaced. The WIFI gets hit by construction workers, causing the directional Yagi to be aimed just wrong enough.
I can't imagine trying to support the entire Chicago area with Wifi.
Also, city wide wifi has been coming along in philadelphia, pa. Plans are to have the entire city blanketed in cheap wifi. Initial tests went well, in an area several square miles large. Speeds were even found to be faster than initially expected. They are going ahead with plans to cover the rest of the city. The price is to be in the $10 range from earthlink and download speeds have been measured to be on average 1 mb/sec. So far this is the largest municipal wifi project and one that is going quite well
This is actually good. Cities have no business using tax money on "free" wi-fi.
In an age where roads go un-repaired, crime fighting is underfunded, schools are in disrepair, cities are always clamoring for more tax money...the basics should be taken care of first.
Free wi-fi doesn't reduce crime, doesn't help build schools, doesn't pay tewacher or police or firefighter salaries.
When cities have solved all the basic fundamental problems that they are *responsible* for, then and only then should even one dime of public money for for "free wi-fi".
It's in Shadyside.