Slashdot Mirror
Why Municipal Wi-Fi Networks have Been Such a Flop
Jake Melville from Slate shot us a link to one of their stories that outlines why municipal wi-fi failed but also tells of the too-rare success stories. While cities that left their wi-fi in the hands of the private sector fell prey to the "last-mile" problem, grassroots efforts such as that in St. Cloud, FL, have blossomed.
It's a selling problem.
As a politician, you can't 'sell' citywide internet access as easily as you can public transport, sewer system or power. It's not one of those "must have" things, it's one of those "why should I have to pay for it" things.
It's easy to get other municipal expenses explained. Citywide public transport? Ok, you may have a car so you might not need it, but if everyone did, you'd be in jams longer. Gas? Duh. Power? Duh! Sewer system? DUH!
Internet? Huh? Interhet? Hell what do I need that for, eh? If someone wanna use it, they gotta pay it, 'k, not on my tax money!
Should we reach the point where internet access becomes so much a part of everyday life as tapwater and power in your apartment, we can talk about it. Before that, no politician would survive it, politically, to suggest blowing tax money into internet.
It could work akin to public transport, where you pay a (nominal) monthly fee, but then, in how many cities could that work? I mean, it would certainly work around here, where you still pay 50+ for 1024/256, but how about areas where companies already offer 4mbit+ for less than 30?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a no-brainer to see why municipal wi-fi wouldn't work without significant investment. I'd guess we're talking about millions of dollars even for smallish towns. And yes, the last mile (or even the last few feet) can be a real problem.
I was recently at a conference in Göttingen (Germany). My hotel room had wifi (that I paid for). Still the connection was intermittent and had tiny bandwidth, even though the router was in the hall outside. One morning, I had to start an x-terminal session to a computer at my home university to run Mathematica. The connection was so slow that I just gave up and went to use the local campus machines.
It would be nice to have free wifi, and maybe this could work as a low quality service for those who can't afford anything better, but for the moment, I can only see this happening through increased taxation, and probably only in the richer neighbourhoods.
I'd say the reality for communal wifi is that it could work on a much smaller scale to begin with. Maybe a street could pool together some money to pay for local wifi and lock it in with WPA passphrases. We might eventually see a network of these streets, building Municipal wifi one block at a time.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
No matter how large they are they are not on the same scale as Philly or SanFran. St. Cloud covers only the 15 square miles of the city. It is on a different scale than what the other two cities proposed, let alone the fact that the archietecture of the buildings is significantly different.
College campuses can also easily curtain competition with their wi-fi where as pointed out in the article competition already exists, let alone good service, or existing offerings in major cities.
I would love a wi-fi style connection where I live, but the types of solutions being proposed don't work well outside of contained areas. Get out into the country and we are reliant on phone companies, cable, and worst case scenario we are on satellite. Now the newer wi-fi technologies look really good.
Work with the private companies that own cell towers and the like, the utilities who own the poles, and it might be feasible to use this to "wire" the country with the government's backing. I certainly don't want the government to manage it, but backing it is great idea. Basically the failed attempts did so because they tried on someone else's dime and that dime wasn't sufficient (let alone why Earthlink? They were struggling before this!)
I am still waiting for the day when the only "cable" coming into my house is for electricity, even that I would love to get rid of if zoning would permit solar panels.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Whenever I have seen the costs for these sort of schemes, I wonder whether the town/council are getting value for money. I think the best way is for local government to encourage local places that have net access anyway to provide a free service, in return for support, equipment or some small subsidy, rather than the over ambitious million-dollar schemes some places try for - I doubt they get the subscriptions back to pay for it all. If that works out to be popular, then expand it..
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
I think the size of the cities also has an effect. For example here in Oulu, Finland, the panoulu network works extremely well and covers most of the city center and all of the university. On the other hand there are only around 125000 citizens. But maybe something to take a look at, many of the people behind panoulu are constantly zooming around the world at various conferences.
Is coming along with nary a hitch, as far as I can tell. They started late last year, have a good chunk of the city up and running under it already, and should be done with the whole project by the end of the year. I don't have any real-world experience with it (I live in St. Paul), but I haven't heard anything but good about it, so far.
Seriously, the city is making setting up wifi look about as difficult as slapping together legos; I can't figure out how these other cities have managed to screw it up so badly.
And the St. Paul city government just voted to go with a fiber optic rollout for their municipal broadband. Of course, no word on where the $200+ million is going to come from to pay for it, so it's really just vaporware at the moment.
But God knows there's enough fiber laid down out there up to the curb. It's been almost ten years since they buried those suckers; might as well light plug 'em in and see how well they light up.
Does Wimax work with existing wireless hardware like wireless routers and wireless network cards, etc?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
While done on a much smaller scale than say San Francisco or New York, Fredericton, New Brunswick (pop. approx. 50,000 people) boasts a nearly ubiquitous WiFi network that blankets the city called Fred-eZone (http://www.fred-ezone.com/). The eZone is free for everyone and is maintained through tax dollars. Now I understand a lot of the constraints in the smaller towns and cities in the United States, especially the remote ones, however anyone who has ever been to New Brunswick will tell you it it probably one of the remotest places you can go that still boasts a full city.
Why is it that they can accomplish this (and their economy, while certainly growing in the last few years has been a small one to be sure) and the same smaller-zed cities in both Canada and the United States cannot?
Actually, TFA points out that the biggest issue seems to be that the politicians involved are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to be the leaders of a vast new public works project, but they don't actually want to fund those projects. So instead of putting together a comprehensive plan for creating and maintaining the wireless network, they just offer a particular private company a set fee to do it for them. Without a strong sense of oversight or purpose, the private company's projects never developed to the point of providing the same reliability or usefulness as a public facility. The article implies that if we want to really build a municipal network, then we're going to need to take the initiative to fully fund and operate the network at a public rather than a private level.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
My WAP is invisible from downstairs.
Um... get a WiFi Repeater?
My access point is in an upstairs bedrom. If I want direct line of sight from my shed, no signal, an old brick washhouse is in the way. So I got a thirty-quid repeater (actually just a regular access point switched into "repeater" mode) and installed that on the corner of the washhouse (in view of both the bedroom AND the shed). Now 100% signal in the shed.
There really isn't any magic to installing a WiFi repeater. Plug in to your PC, configure over a web browser with the SSID and encryption key, disconnect from your PC, plonk it somewhere where it can see both you and an original access point. Job done.
If I can figure this out in my 100-year-old farmworkers' cottage in rural England, I'm sure as hell you can figure it out in a modern US city gated community. It really, really isn't hard.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The fact is they are trying to give away for free what most people don't really care to pay for yet. There's still a general perception that wireless is not a robust and reliable system. Aside from that the people who are able to take advantage of a municipal internet system are usually the sane ones that can afford a more reliable wired connection anyway. The private sector will be investing in their own open wireless systems to give access to people working in the downtown areas. It just makes more sense to invest that money into providing better public access at libraries, community centers, schools, and local business associations (who want to provide Wi-Fi at their coffee shops etc) than an city wide wi-fi system. WI-FI isn't quite ready for prime time. Today a city wide WI-FI is noble, but it's not a practical investment.
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
the only reason municipal wifi fails is that there are too many companies desperate to get rich from providing internet access, and not at all keen on the concept of access for all unless the aforementioned 'all' pay many doller.
In the pacific there have been free wireless access rollouts that are problem free. I mean shit, if an Island can manage it, so can a city ffs.
My suspicion is that the march of technology is hampered by the greed of individuals.
At first blush it sounds like a really great idea. Get a couple DSL lines, hook them to AP's, turn off all the security so everybody can access it and your golden.
However, once people realize the current limitations of AP's and how much infrastructure behind the whole thing that needs to be put into place and how much it's going to cost to put that infrastructure in place, they run screaming from the project.
Here's what a town should do...
1. Don't try to put wifi everywhere, instead focus on places like downtown. Realize that your going to have to put *some* infrastructure in, but encourage businesses to install AP's through tax incentives. Come to understand that places that you going to have to put wifi is going to be expensive because the cost of the gear (outdoor AP's are expensive)
2. For everywhere else, subsidize it. Hire someone who knows what their doing and come up with an equipment list that a household would need to become part of the wifi network. (my thinking is that it would be a specific router with a specific config). Then send mail to your local citizens offering a tax credit to anybody who installs an access point. Heck you could even purchase them in some ridiculous quanitity that you could resell to make a profit.
Note, the only thing I haven't addressed in this scenario is technical support and the fact that many telecom companies have issues with them using their service to give service to others. Though I suppose as long as your not making a profit, they really can't say much.
Just my idea.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I tried the Santa Monica one and it sucks too much even for email checking. Its painfully slow and unreliable (at least it was a few months ago, my apologies to Santa Monica if they improved it since). If its worth the trouble and money to put it up, surely its worth a little bit more to make it good?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Is it because corporations lobby against it because it chips away at their obscene profits?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
umm.. no
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch
free wifi in the city up to 512 - also free bicycle rental up to 4 hours - I can't comment for everyone but this is the sort of service that appeals to me.
http://www.freepress.net/news/25957
Infrastructure that works well, cannot be duild by private companies. It requires an investor that has very long-term goals. That would, in this case, be the city. It will still be there in decades and it cannot just vanish into bankrupcy because of faulty planning. So it has a real interest in getting it right. Of course it cost money. Of course it takes time. But this is one arena where the great "private investors will do it" myth of the US fails, and badly.
Why do you think there are no collapsing bridges or ditches in Europe? Not because people there are smarter, but because the idea of planning for decades ahead has been learned by countless desasters in the past. The US settlers could have taken that lesson with them. Instead my impression is that infrastrucure is build on a level that suggests people do not really plan to stay long in one place.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It could be the usual suspect: politicians don't know much about technology so their decisions dealing with muni wi-fi aren't always sound. TFA compares muni wi-fi to trash pick up in a few passing comments. In my fine city the trash is done two private companies who contract with the city. I've often found consumer end Internet connections to be the same way. In my neighborhood we have 1 trash choice (we can get our own or use the other but it will cost us more) we can choose from 2 internet companies, if we use one of those high speed internet look up tools we are told that Verizon serves our area, we can also get ATT. This setup is a remnant of old and crappy city contracts with these companies. I can use other companies but my price about doubles. That being said internet is like trash but not neccesaraly like this guys trash. My taxes don't pay trash I get a trash bill in the mail (dumb I know) I also get an internet bill or internet blackmail as the case may be.
Unfortunately, WiMax is probably only going to be used on licensed
bands. So here comes another corporate chokehold!
Would you give up your current home or work connection completely and use the muni WiFi for all your needs? Banking, paying bills, etc. Knowing the security issues of WIFi? I don't think I would.
So if I'm going to pay for a personal access anyway, tell me why should I be thrilled at paying into the cities 'free' WiFi scheme?
The neighboring city has a public utility that does power, cable TV, and cable modem internet. They have been placing wireless access points all over the place for the last several years, mostly on street lights in the downtown area. If you have a laptop out at a cafe downtown you are almost guaranteed internet service.
It's not city-wide by any means, but it's where it's needed.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks after all they have been through?
All you people care about is GRASS ROOTS! GRASS ROOTS! GRASS ROOTS!
LEAVE IT ALONE! You are lucky even to have Wi-Fi you bastards! LEAVE MUNICIPAL WI-FI ALONE!
Please!
Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publicly bash a networking infrastructure who is going through a hard time?
Leave Municipal Wi-Fi alone, please.
LEAVE MUNICIPAL WI-FI ALONE RIGHT NOW. I MEAN IT.
Anyone that has a problem with them, you deal with me, because it is not well right now.
LEAVE IT ALONE!
This article makes a simplistic argument but leaves out one other key reason: lawsuits. The big communication companies didn't just have an infrastructure in place for providing bandwidth, they had a litany of lawyers that often descended upon the municipality to attempt block them from providing these services.
I work for a municipality and frankly, municipal wifi is #102,448 on our list of priorities. Why? It's SUPER expensive with very little benefit. My city has a population of almost 200,000. To cover a city of our size we'd literally need hundreds of access points @ a cost of millions of dollars. We are a technical staff of only about 10. Can you imagine 10 people being tasked with trying to maintain hundreds of access points? When you've got hundreds of anything electronic out in the field, a certain percentage is always going to be broken. So you've got this project that needs constant maintenance that's extremely expensive and resource intensive. If we're reaaaally lucky we may get 200 people using it on a regular basis. We're talking about a project of millions to benefit 200 people that probably already have internet access anyway.
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather spend those millions to benefit a school and get educational software into Florida's failing schools. Or hell, open an entire new school so kids don't have to wake up an hour earlier to be bussed half way across the city. There are just so many way this money could be used better. That's why municipal wifi doesn't take off.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I would consider using a public wifi system, but how much anonymity will it provide?
The primary attraction for me is that I could download content that would normally
have the police kicking my door down because of public hysteria created by
mouth-breather, soccer-mom types.
I think many, many people feel the same way I do. We live in an age when downloading
a couple images can land you in prison for years and years. Public wifi seems like
a possible solution.
"Was home electricity really a 'part of everyday life' before electricity generation and distribution received any substantial government investment?"
The question concerning universal broadband is rather moot. Especially when economics dictate that one can't eat broadband, be sheltered by broadband, or drink broadband. And I doubt it's ever going to be so cheap to society that I can breath it either.
I spent a lot of time and effort trying to get Internet access through WiFi when I didn't have DSL or cable coverage.WiFi didn't solve the "last mile problem" for the simple reason that it doesn't go a mile under real-world circumstances. Not even half a mile. In the real world, you're lucky if a single AP can be seen from a few potential users up and down the street. And neither the hardware nor the software or band allocations were meant for anything else.
The interesting thing about greed is that it also keeps out those who wish for free services while sending someone else the bill. Sort of the opposite extreme.
Muni WiFi shoud fail for the sake of free speech. It's always boggled my mind to see the amount of support on /. for muni WiFi. With the general (and healthy) distrust of government in this forum, why should we desire to ask a government to own and operate a primary channel of the public's communication? Do you really want mayors and governors loyal to the Bush administration to have significant say in who has access to look inside your internet connection?
As a San Francisco resident and Earthlink subscriber, I'm delighted the Wifi proposal flopped. First, as an Earthlink subscriber I knew they wouldn't deliver. Second, it was just another of these public/private partnerships that have been all the rage for the past 30 years or so, and which almost invariable promise the moon and the stars on a shoestring budget and then vanishes from everyone's consciousness. Building a public wifi network is really not that ambitious an undertaking. The Earthlink proposal was to cost how much? $20 million? That's a pittance for the city of San Francisco, which has an annual budget of more than a billion dollars. And that's to build the network, not for annual maintenance, which presumably would cost much less. It was absolutely pitiful that Gavin Newsom gave away such an important piece of infrastructure to a private company for such a puny sum. And it's because he's the sort of New Democrat that emerged in the '90s, beholden to corporate interests and afraid to be associated with anything that might smack of the Old Democrats--ie, the New Deal and the Great Society Democrats. Well, I wish he'd lose that fear. The New Deal produced the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. At the height of the Great Depression. Not bad, hm? If we'd had New Democrats running things back then, we'd probably all still be paying dearly to commute on private ferry services, because God forbid government try to do anything to make peoples' lives better when there is potential for private companies to make a profit.
Municipal wifi is so cheap that there really is no reason we couldn't do that *and* build a fiber-optic network; I mean, it's an order of magnitude cheaper so why not do both. Fast networks are already crucial infrastructure, and will be even more so, particularly in a city that considers itself a capital of high tech. Private industry isn't going to get it done. So just step up and *lead* already. I can't believe I live in a rich, densely populated, supposed high-tech capital and the best broadband I can get for less than $100 a month is this shitty 1.5Mbps/384Kbps DSL!
I was a pleased (!) Comcast subscriber for quite a few years. Well, around 3 weeks ago there was a storm while I was at work, and when I came back home, the cable was out. I called to get the problem fixed, but when the nice man came out he informed me he could not reconnect the cable because he could not reach something called the "tap," as there was a small forrest growing in front of and over it (my landlord had let the back lawn turn into a jungle over the course of many years of neglect - I never even saw it until the cable guy showed me).
So, while I'm waiting to get that problem fixed, I figure I'd give Philadelphia Wireless a shot.
Put simply, it sucks. I get a moderately strong signal from one of my windows, but the modem seems to just up and lose it semi-frequently, just drops from 3-4 bars to 0, every half hour or so, for as long as 5-10 minutes. Even when the signal is stable, the connection still frequently chokes - all attempts to access websites spit up timeout errors, and may or may not do so again if I reload. Downloading any actual files is IMPOSSIBLE - the connection only semi-works for things like webpages. Downloading any sort of binary will result in a dead connection after about 30k worth of download.
In short, I am returning this garbage as soon as the cable guy reconnects the cable this weekend. I'll have to ship it back on my own dime - even though I was told there would be a prepaid return label with the modem, there wasn't, surprise surprise.
Spend public money so that Junior can download pr0n at high speed? I think not !
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
The troubles will begin once WiFi is actually deployed.
What you'll find then is that the general population is bunch of selfish, bandwidth-hogging pigs. Everybody and his dog will be using it for P2P file copying.
No sig today...
802.11 networks were never designed for large area deployments. Wi-Fi was designed to be used in short range applications - a nice convenience that augments the functionality of a wired LAN.
I've done a few medium-size wireless deployments and the core problem with 802.11 is that you need to drag a wire to each access-point....and in a city, you need a lot of access-points. Management of these huge networks is a solvable problem (Meru and Cisco have done a pretty good job with that).
Sure there are mesh-network technologies like Ricochet (remember them?), and WiMax is around the corner - these technologies are actually designed to cover very large areas to minimize the amount of access-points and cable runs. These technologies might be more promising.
In the end, municipalities need to fork over the cash, and implement the correct technology to make this succeed. Without cash and good decisions, these wi-fi projects are doomed.
-ted
I can say that both technically and politically St. Cloud went about it the right way. The government did not sell it as an access for everyone network. They sold it as a business sector network that would encourage businesses to look at St. Cloud as a home base. For those of you not familiar with Central Florida there are a lot of outlying cities around Orlando like St. Cloud, each of these cities are trying to become the next small business sector in much the way that Winter Park did. St. Cloud positioned its network as a system to reduce the costs of opening a business in the Central Florida area and by doing so planed on the increased revenue from new businesses to offset the cost of the network. In turn this gave access to the citizens without them having to bear the brunt of the cost. The strategy was a political risk but it seems to have paid off. The network had its problems in the beginning but I currently use it daily without outages. So much so that last year I moved my phone off of a traditional line and onto SunRocket (that's another story). My call quality was excellent and I paid $200 a year for phone and nothing for internet access which used to be $70 a month for both. I believe we are now at a 77% adoption rate which I believe speaks to the opinion of the system. In all though I believe that it is all in how you position the implementation and how you sell it to the people. St. Cloud had a good strategy which paid off. It was a gamble for them but it worked out in the end.
Interesting. So they want us to replace all our existing wireless infrastructure? Can't see that happening any time soon.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Wi-fi subsidizes you!
Seriously, it seems like the majority of the basement dwellers here never met a tax-payer funded boondoggle they didn't support. It's hard to tell if that's related to age and income, or just a general inability to understand that every government project has negative unintended consequences all out of proportion to what it as to accomplish...
I'm sure we all want Internet access from an ISP with the efficiency of the DMV, the customer service of the IRS, and the privacy policies of the NSA.
No thanks, Karl
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Some neighbors and I started a wireless coop about 5-6 years ago in the mountains west of Boulder CO (http://www.mric.coop). We have about 500 subscribers at $50/month and cover an area of several hundred square miles. While there are some commercial WISPs in the area, it is difficult to see how they have a viable business plan. We have a very limited number of paid employees and most of the work is done by volunteers. The mountainous terrain with lots of trees makes it impossible to have 100% coverage. Additionally, we are finding out that 802.11b, while a good way to get started, relatively cheaply, has severe limitations, causing poor performance for a number of subscribers. We are considering changing at least part of our infrastructure to Motorola Canopy gear. In order to get coverage, we have several T-1 lines at different locations interconnected to each other and other APs by a wireless backhaul. Of course the problem with 802.11b is that while there are 11 channels (in the US) to use, only 3 are non-overlapping. Even using vertical and horizontal polarities for distribution, interference is still a big problem. So far we have been able to work out cooperation agreements with the commercial wisps so that we don't interfere with each other, since such activity would have nasty consequences for everyone. We were able to pay off our initial investment of $30-40K, in about 3 years and are debt free with a positive cash flow.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Phase 1: Build WiFi
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
There is nothing wrong with the concept of municipal Wifi. It even has the potential to succeed if people with the most basic concept of business sense and municipalities with employees that understand the concept of efficiency and profit and loss would actually work together. The first problem with Municipal Wifi was both the fault of government and Metrofi. Whoever came up with the idea of "free" Wifi or limited "free" Wifi should have been slapped immediately. nothing is free. Revenue needs to come from somewhere. We got out of the market when these financial brainiacs put this concept out. Every city wanted free. Now what they have is a bunch of companies out of business and a bad name. I don't see Qwest, Cox, Comcast, or any one of the other broadband companies being asked to give free service over wires. What I can't believe is that investors actually believed the financial fairy tale models that thought free anything or advertising revenue would pay for all this. PT Barnum was right. We just need to couch it in technical mumbo jumbo. The reality is that there are business models that make this a success. Efficiency improvements, better security options, and more capabilities easily cover a large percentage of the costs from a government side. From a private sector side, the old adage of "If you build it,they will come" stupdity didn't work for the fiber industry 20 years ago. However, I believe that there is a solution that I'm putting to the test. Only time will tell if I'm right.
What my city has done (I live in kitchener waterloo) is instead of making it city wide they put free wi-fi just in our uptown strip. I know its not very much but I can go everywhere from the christian book shop to the LCBO and get free wifi for my laptop or other wireless devices!
1) the FCC rules have designed the WiFi bands for in home use.
To deploy WiFi you need larger power transmitters. The current power is completely useless for metropolitan communications. Let alone rural areas where it is needed the most.
You also need to remove the rules that give telco's to the right to clam interference and deploy demand Cease and desist orders with even requiring valid evidence. Why would some one deploy a system just to have the local telco discover a revenue loss and shut you down. WiFi makes no sense in this environment,
2) WiFi deployment should be a simple matter of us installing root top boxes. There ant no such thing as a free lunch. Local communications should be payed for by you and me. As for connections to the Internet, its a horse and cart thing. You need local communications before the ISP's can compete. So with out Local communications you only have monopoly. One or two cable/phone ISP's that are providing the Local communications. When Local communications are provided by you and me hundreds of ISP'a can compete.
It was presented to the public as if it were any normal internet connection. We expected lots of ads. But what really fried me was that the same company who did the installation piggybacked a for-pay service on the free one subsidized by the city. The city council is a bunch of morons. They may have well just given millions$ to this company.
I tried using the free Metro service. It was hard to connect and attachments could be no more than 1mb. And I live very close an access point.
Ed
Porland, OR
28 square miles of municipal wireless internet access serving 100,000 customers with almost 600 radio mesh nodes. Sure there's a few glitches here and there, but it works well, and is getting more subscribers every day.
College campuses have it much easier for lots of reasons: existing campus LAN, existing campus IT, dense population, probably not 100% coverage (how many campuses have wifi in open spaces like parking lots and sports fields?).
Longer range wireless that need fewer access points will change the economics dramatically.
But I'm a typical lefty Slashdotter with a head full of pig shit. I wants my Internets free! Information wants to be free! Whaaaaaaa! Cater to meeeeeeee!
I'm a real estate industry tech consultant, and about seven years ago, one of my MLS clients heard my company speak about municipal WiFi and took matters for their small city in Michigan into their own hands. They set up a server to manage access points that were installed by their subscribers/members such that the companies that set up many useful access points got the 'splash screen ad' for those access points. WiFi use was limited to web and other standard ports, and knocked the user off after an hour so they would need to go through the splash screen (including Terms of Use) again. Anyway, this private approach to WiFi worked out well for everyone involved!
Here in Portland Oregon, the city spent something like $20 million on a water bureau billing system.
None if it worked and it had to be scrapped.
Like anyone would like these fools to try muni wifi?
Well, YES! Portland has that too, in a back door deal with ONE company, no bids, etc.
America, what a country!!
I would be one of the people to vote against a tax increase for municipal wi-fi. Two reasons: first, the control of such systems would fall to bureaucrats, who are notoriously bad at nearly everything they attempt other than getting elected, spending money, and making the government larger. All the usual afflictions of governments would suddenly be transferred onto your internet life, including an astonishly small step to municipal, state or federal censorship.
Second, everywhere I look I see more restaurants, coffee shops and other businesses advertising "free wi-fi!". This trend seems to be accelerating, and as technology improves, I think it would be very easy to see them, in cooperation with another private entity (such as the Colo. entrepreneur above) to offer a better service with more responsiveness to the marketplace--something the government is infamous for being bad at.
I don't know much about the problem but I do know that a buddy of mine who works as an installer supervisor for Comcast in Minneapolis said that his company is very actively trying to take out the attempted city-wide WiFi in Minneapolis. It's simple dollars for them. (Almost) No one needs landline phone service any more. Lots of people like cable TV (and in Minneapolis there's not much else for choice) but I feel that there's a growing segment of the population that feels they need TV less than they need internet. How many customers (and dollars) would Comcast lose if people could get "free" and easy to access internet from elsewhere?
(Depressing number of posts propound somebody's pet theory about why municipal WiFi isn't working out, written by people who obviously haven't read TFA.)
Leave the government out of it. This is how it should be. We currently have a telecommunication industry based on an outdated government monopoly system. Do you think AT&T has been helpful in innovation? I don't think so... Getting the government involved further would only ruin us for more years to come.
The ONLY viable way, and the BEST way is to sit on it, until technology has caught up to the point where private enterprises can outcompete the telcos. It's natural, but more importantly, it's INEVITABLE!
Having the telcos set the bar is also a good thing, because then and ONLY then will we ensure only something truly superior will take its place, not some inferior/sub-par solution subsidized by the government.
eTrade SUCKS
Municipal wifi should be about access to the internet in public places, not private places. That's not the last mile that's missing... we don't need free wifi in your home, we need free wifi in parks, plazas, malls, airports, bus stops, train stations, bus stations, post offices, restaurants, libraries, waiting areas in municipal offices and hospitals and so on... anywhere that is a public place. The last furlong, if you like.
This is what T-Mobile and Sprint and the rest are cherrypicking, setting up expensive ($10 a day for casual use) wifi hotspots in Starbucks and airports and other high profile public areas. This is what Municipal wifi should be going after, and if they don't then they won't get to do it... the established commercial services will be entrenched.
Does anyone know how much power a Wi-Fi network consumes vs a wired one? I realize that's a difficult comparison to make, but can anyone point me to some data on that topic?
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
one of the pro arguments we got in Philly was to help streamline city services. being a pretty densely populated city there are a decent number of people served per station (in theory).
part of the argument for the city getting behind it was a thinking that more people would have internet access. if more people have internet access they can use that access to get to forms, information bla bla bla. basically things that people either have to go to City Hall for, or call somewhere and then have some clerk mail out the forms.... or just to look up information like if a certain holiday means delayed trash pick-up.
basically the argument was that it could save money on those kids of services, and add a convenience to the residents and visitors. i would assume there were a bunch of city divisions that would otherwise have to use cellular cards or something to be online. this would be a lot cheaper than that, right?
we seem to be the one city that Earthlink is not scrapping the network in. part of the reason is that so much of the city is already up and running. there are a few more towers in a few locations i need running before i give it a try. it's great coverage near my house, but we have cable there.
this is how much of the city is covered right now (some places are open, others subscription).
https://home.feather.net/coverage/wi-phi/coverage_html
The city of Portland asked for proposals for a municipally-backed Wi-Fi network that would cover the whole city. The winning bid was an outfit out of California called MetroFi. The city of Portland paid ZERO money up front. They simply offered up city property (light poles, mostly,) to mount the access points, and said that they would run some coverage tests as the project proceeded. If the project met their standards, then the city government would purchase 'preferred' access on the network, while the company offers free access to anyone.
The service isn't perfect, but they do have decent coverage in the neighborhoods it is installed in so far. The big problem with the grass roots effort is lack of coverage in residential areas. Yeah, you have the occasional maverick (like myself,) who has a home router set up as a true open/public AP, but other than that, it's usually piggybacking off people who unknowingly have open APs. This "private/public" network is at least KNOWN free access. My only two complaints are that as part of their contract with the city, they are allowed to show ads (a top-frame above all pages you view, plus an occasional interstitial, although both are possible to block without much difficulty,) and that the APs are just slightly too far apart for notebook use in a car. With a decent external antenna, it's easy to get a good signal anywhere within the 'coverage cloud', but a stock notebook has problems connecting at the lull areas between APs. (Even more annoying are times when my notebook sees 4 APs, but won't connect to any of them because they are all too weak.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
> Those of us who live in the such a so cold "backwater country" laugh that you actually believe you're only paying $15 dollars a month when you're really paying much more than that to download those stupid Hollywood movies when you factor in the extra tax money collected from you and used to subsidize the infrastructure.
And yet, they're the ones with the awesome fiber connections whereas the best I can get is crappy IDSL, and I'm smack in the middle of Phoenix, AZ, one of the largest damn cities in this country. It may not cost just $15, but our telcos get just as many government subsidies (i.e. billions of dollars) and we have approximately nothing to show for it, while they have 10 and 100 Mbps fiber in more civilized places.
High taxes only suck if you don't get anything for them.
Pittsburgh had a couple of attempts to build-out networks here in Pittsburgh. They failed, but that was pretty early on, and the equipment was kindof expensive. Being a WiFi guy here, I haven't been able to do very much on my own, but doing something like that is a big (financial) undertaking, and requires a bit of equipment. This guy has been installing Meraki devices in a couple of the neighborhoods, all by himself.
Now it seems to me, that a City like Pittsburgh could take the money normally spent on Verizon telecommunications services, and put that towards their own telecommunications infrastructure -- using WiFi, or anything else that is convenient, and actually have higher bandwidth, and less monthly outlay, and a superior service. I don't understand why people get freaked out over a City taking on something like this. Why would you rather pay Verizon hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, rather than spend that in a one-time equipment purchase? These networks can be used for anything, and there doesn't have to be only one.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
well without government.
The electrical grid only works well now because the government granted natural monopolies and pored money into it. Chief amount them in the US was the Rural Electrification Administration, which was part of FDR's New Deal.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If people on the poor side of town think of a good way to utilize this infrastructure, then they can raise some capital and buy some property where there is infrastructure.
If land values are high enough so that capital costs would be prohibitive, they could raise capital to pay a power company to give them service. If the costs are too high, well, then the idea was not productive enough, and society would be poorer overall if it was carried out.
They're poor, how are they supposed be able to afford to pay for infrastructure?
And don't change the argument, within cities, DSL is available in even the poorest areas. The poor in the US are still relatively affluent, and it is still very profitable for infrastructure companies to cover them.
DSL is not available everywhere even in cities. My sister lives within distance to get DSL but the cabling to her house is old and can't handle DSL. Hell she's been thinking of getting a generator because the powerlines fail frequently. She has lost power for most of the day before.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Civilian helicopters today are, pretty much, the same as 50 years ago -- because nobody needs them, since the costs of roads are extracted at gunpoint anyway...
And airports aren't extracted at gunpoint?
The examples of electricity and phone service are not really examples. Government's involvement makes those services worse, than they ought to be
You mean better don't you? Because of the Rural Electrification Administration many people who would otherwise never have been able to get electricity were able to get it. And because it's widely available in the US the country has benefited tremendously from it. Look at all of the things in buildings, as well as the buildings themselves, which use electricity. All of them are made by people. The computers, lights, phones, TVs, and so on.
About the only thing negative I have to say about the REA is that without it more people might be using more solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources. Even then though the REA did help with that some. The REA installed thousands of wind generators.
And another argument for you. The subsidy, that dwellers of large cities pay occupants of small villages to have all these services, encourages "urban sprawl". There is a strong argument, that it really hurts the Earth...
Which is why more people should be encouraged to move out of the cities into rural communities. Somewhere where even if they don't farm they can still have their own garden and grow some of their food. I'm kind of stuck between the city and rural life myself. I love art galleries, going to concerts, museums, and watching plays among other things. However I also love to be able to get up, pick a few things from my garden then go out hiking. Not being wealthy I can't afford both. However if I could live maybe an hour from the city and still get broadband, without any latency, that would be great. Once or twice a week I could go into the city and be able to make a living.
FalconShould there be a Law?
They aren't meant to go on forever, just to keep people farming through the rough times so that they'll be there when we need them. Theoretically they will stop when we no-longer need the reserve capacity.
Ah but farm subsidies will keep on going, and probably get larger. Large agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, the US's largest private equity firm, get billions of dollars in subsidies and they'll never give them up.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I do not think WiFi is the solution for rual access. It seems to me that it costs no more money to run fiber than to run power an phone lines.
You don't need landlines for WiFi any more than you need a really long cord for your cellphone. While it may not be feasible in many locations in some locations towers with repeaters, like for cellphones, can be erected then they can be powered via PVs.
FalocnShould there be a Law?
but I'd much rather spend those millions to benefit a school and get educational software into Florida's failing schools. Or hell, open an entire new school so kids don't have to wake up an hour earlier to be bussed half way across the city. There are just so many way this money could be used better.
Yeap, schools need the funding. The thing is is schools in Florida were promised funding. That's what the lottery was billed as, educational funding. However all the state did was take money that was going to schools away. I was in college when the lottery was being debated, I was in student government then and we were asked to support the lottery. However after reading the bill authorizing it I decided not to support it. One section particularly got my attention, where it said if any part of the law authorizing the lottery was found unconstitutional all of the money would go to general revenue. Reading that I knew the lottery was never about funding education, all it was was another tax, abet voluntary.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you had municipal wifi in place you could use the network to enable the kids to learn without the need for expensive classrooms.
That may work for some, but others need a classroom setting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It would be nice to have free wifi, and maybe this could work as a low quality service for those who can't afford anything better, but for the moment, I can only see this happening through increased taxation, and probably only in the richer neighbourhoods.
While I support municipal I oppose taxes paying for it. Either have users pay or have advertising pay for it. Those who can't otherwise afford it can view ads and get a set speed. Then for those who can afford it they can pay to get faster speeds without ads. A potential problem is will there be enough customers placing ads.
Maybe a street could pool together some money to pay for local wifi
Now this I can go with as long as it's voluntary. Private people can setup their own grid network with neighbors.
FalconShould there be a Law?
We really don't want to make the same mistake Europe did with landline phones. The US left it to the private sector (that is, the Bell system)
No the US didn't leave leave the landline phones to be built by the private sector. Not only did government give the telcos monopolies but they also gave them money to build it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In my neighborhood we have 1 trash choice
I don't know what the choice(s) are where I live but my sister can pick anyone out of six companies to pick up her trash. She pays the government one price then each owner can decide who will pick up their trash.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why should you be thrilled to pay for roads you don't actually use?
You shouldn't pay, road building and maintenance should be paid for by a tax on fuel.
Why should you be thrilled to pay for welfare? Because otherwise you'd have higher crime and you'd have to step over starving people in the streets.
I prefer letting Civil Society help those who need help, let me decide for myself what type of entity I want to donate the money I work to earn to give to. With few exceptions civil society has a better track record than government does, and those groups who aren't effective won't be around long, people won't want to donate to ineffective groups. The Shriners civil society built the Shriner's Hospital not the government. Danny Thomas founded St. Jude Children's Research Hospital If you're concerned about crime, two things can help. One, get rid of all of the victimless crime laws on the books. Prohibition didn't work and neither is the War on Drugs. If people are willing to except the risks they should be able to work as prostitutes. By getting rid of these "crimes" the prison population will be cut in half. Secondly by reducing taxes people will have more money to both spend and invest and both of these will create more jobs.
I get tired of this "everyone for themselves" attitude. It's a fallacy. Nobody who espouses it has ever actually lived in a place where everyone had to do everything for themselves.
Guessing from your statement, I guess you can't survive on your own. Just because you can't doesn't mean others can't. Growing up you could have dropped me in the Everglades and I could have survived there on my own without help. Of course I may of died on my own years later, but I'd prefer to die alone anyway. What do you think people did throughout history without technology?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Earlier this year I spent six weeks in South Africa setting up computers in disadvantaged schools.
Good for you. I support and have done charity work, but don't take my money and hand it out to others. Let me donate the money I get to anyone I want to give it to.
FalconShould there be a Law?
We've had free citywide WiFi in Singapore for over 2 years. It's not difficult, in fact I'd say red tape is far more of a barrier than the technology itself.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
What kind of name is "St. Cloud", anyway? I understand that it's only a few miles north of Pope Tifa, its largest suburb.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You shouldn't pay, road building and maintenance should be paid for by a tax on fuel.
Better yet, I only want to pay for the roads _I_ actually use. Why should my fuel taxes be higher just because other people want to drive interstate?
Privatize roads and create more monopolies? Forget that. If government does it all government will do is pool all the money and road costs will come out of the same pool, which is no different than it is now.
That is true on a case by case basis. But that doesn't mean anything in the big picture. Show me a functioning nation that works entirely by civil society principles. I am unaware of any. I take this as a pretty strong indication of it being impractical as a whole solution.
It's impractical because of greed, however in big government politicians sale their soul to those willing and able to pay, and that usually means big corporations. Small government reduces this. Knowing they'd payoff politicians Thomas Jefferson warned of the Corporate Aristocracy.
sit around in royal comfort and complain about the fact that some percentage of our relatively enormous income goes to keep the societal machinery working.
Yea, I sit down a lot, but not exactly in royal comfort. As for income, I pay little if any income tax seeing as how I'm disabled and don't work. About the only income I get myself is my disability payments.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I highly doubt a government without a paramilitary police force could enforce drug laws so well!
Perhaps you're being ironic but I don't believe in this "War on Drugs". Like Prohibition it isn't working while granting politicians more power. On a per capita basis the US has more people in prison than most any other country, and half of them are there for nonviolent drug offenses. Because of mandatory sentencing guidelines a person convicted of a nonviolent drug offense can spend more tyme in prison that a violent murderer, rapist, or robber. And some of these laws are patently racist, like the one on crack cocaine. Sentencing for it is harsher than sentencing for other forms of cocaine, however because it's cheaper it disproportionately effects Blacks and Latinos.
Okay, now that I've finished reading the post I must say I believe you're being ironic and using rhetoric. Perhaps I need to compleatly read a post before I start replying.
FalconShould there be a Law?
people are not generous enough to fund a healthy modern state
Sure some aren't but many others are. Sometimes it's government and regulations that cause the problems. I don't recall exactly when but sometime back in the late 1980 or early '90s Mother Teresa tried to open a shelter in New York City. She had all the financing set up but the city stopped it by regulation. And by taxing income, you're discouraging people from donating. Sure taxpayers get a tax writeoff but it's not a 1 to 1 writeoff. For someone in a 20% tax bracket, for every dollar donated they only get a 20 cent tax reduction. By reducing or eliminating income tax more people will be willing to donate. A common reason I hear people give for not donating is the government donates for them, with the point of a gun. Look at Bill and Melisa Gates and Warren Buffet, the Gates setup their foundation and Buffet gave billions of dollars to it. Wealthy philanthropists are in The business of giving.
Your disability payments would seem to be exactly the type of social service that forced pooling of money allows.
That's exactly what insurance does, it pools money then pays someone who contributed when they need it. In my specific case I wouldn't have needed insurance if those responsible for my disability had been held accountable. What happened was I was riding my bike when I left campus after class in college when someone who never should of been driving hit me with a moving van, apartment movers type. Witnesses to the accident said the driver was swerving all over the road. He was a diabetic and I was told he had a seizer while driving. However he had caused two accidents before mine from the same thing and and been hospitalized twice. He moved from one state to another because the first state issued a warrant for his arrest. If he had never been driving I wouldn't have been disabled from the accident, there wouldn't have been an accident. There was one though and if his employer had been fully held to account they or their insurance would of been made to pay full costs for my wellbeing 'til death. As it is, medical bills and lawyers fees ate up almost half of the final settlement.
Though I would guess if you're online much you have access to conveniences that many in the world would envy.
Some may envy it, but I don't. First, I don't like being idle. Prior to my accident my friends used to tell me I had to slow down, that I was doing too many things. I disagreed then and I disagree now. I also always believed I'd rather be dead than disabled. When I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. If I could talk to those docs now I'd argue that point. After coming out of the coma my younger sister told me I kept screaming at anyone to let me die, even now more than 10 years later I still wish I had died. As far as I'm concerned my life has been a living hell.
FalconShould there be a Law?