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.

Comments

Long story short:

[Opportunist]

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?

Re:Long story short:

[Bios_Hakr]

I live in a gated community that opted for wireless over DSL/FiOS. I think it's been a failure because it downright sucks.

For starters, you need WAPs everywhere. At least one every 100' if you are using the smaller (12" omni) antennas. Even then, trees and rain cause severe signal loss.

Second, you need to arrange your house based on where you can get a signal. My WAP is invisible from downstairs. I have to put the PC in an upstairs bedroom. And it's not the master bedroom. Once the kids go to bed, no more PC time for adults.

I work in networking, so I was able to get a Linksys with DD-WRT and route that through the house. Less technical neighbors are SOL.

Finally, once the city starts doing the networking, competition will leave. Soon, committees will suggest getting filtering software. After all, public money can't subsidize smut. Or religion. Or hate speech. Pretty soon, the only unblocked sites will be Disney.com. What will the power users to then?

Overall, our solution works okay. I make a lot of money on the side installing boosters and antennas and routers. I also get calls constantly when the signals drop. During heavy rain, I just turn my phone off. Try explaining propagation fade to Sally Soccermom...

Re:Long story short:

[teh kurisu]

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.

Was home electricity really a 'part of everyday life' before electricity generation and distribution received any substantial government investment?

Re:Long story short:

[maxume]

Private internet providers *have* received significant amounts of government funding.

Re:Long story short:

[teh kurisu]

I know that. Even not counting any expenditure on the backbone, the vast majority of broadband connections in the UK are ADSL, which uses the phone network installed by the nationalised Post Office Telecommunications.

The point I was trying to make was that, given the GPP's criteria - that a utility has to become 'everyday' before it should receive government funding - we would have no electricity in our houses.

Re:Long story short:

[teh kurisu]

Erm, what uglyduckling said. I'm not against the provision of utilities by private entities (although I think it should always go through a nationalised wholesaler), but the government has a role in the setting up of the infrastructure which would otherwise be uneconomical, as a catalyst to further development.

Re:Long story short:

[vtcodger]

***Why is that? Electricity distribution works very well without government.***

Actually, no. Until the government got involved -- over the LOUD protests of the private utilities -- electrical service in rural areas was virtually non-existent. Pretty much like exactly like broadband and Wi-Fi today in fact. Read this Wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Utilities_Service

Re:Long story short:

[osu-neko]

Indeed. Much of the US would still be without power and telephone service today if it hadn't been for actions taken by the federal government. There was simply no economically viable way for private sector companies to provide such service to any place other than dense, urban areas. But as such services became more and more necessary to our way of life, those areas that didn't get it would become less and less viable as places for further development. For a government with an interest in seeing a flourishing of the country and economy, it made sense to get everyone wired in, so we subsidized heavily the process of deploying these networks. And viewed in terms of what we put in vs. the eventual tax revenue on a more robust economy, it more than paid for itself. But it required a massive public investment and a multi-decade long view to realize this. It's much like the interstate highway system. The amount of economic activity that it enables and encourages benefits everyone and almost certainly more than pays for itself, but it's really hard to quantify.

I'm skeptical about whether the Internet falls into this same category, but I do have to object to the GP's historically naive assertion an entirely private-sector approach "works" for electricity. It didn't, and it's an excellent example of how government can be a catalyst for further development that ultimately benefits us all, if it does it right. TFA is an example of how it can do it wrong...

Re:Long story short:

[Luscious868]

Sucks to live in a backwater country. The rest of us are happy to download stupid Hollywood movies from Pirate Bay at 100 MBit/s using the municipal fiber network for 15$/month. :)

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.

$15 dollars is a small percent of the actual cost you pay. You're just too stupid to understand that. You actually believe that when the goverment forcefully takes money from you and spends it to pay 80% of the cost of something and then charges you an additional 20% on top of that if you want to actually use what you've already partially paid for, that you're getting some kind of deal.

Re:Long story short:

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Second, you need to arrange your house based on where you can get a signal. My WAP is invisible from downstairs. I have to put the PC in an upstairs bedroom. And it's not the master bedroom. Once the kids go to bed, no more PC time for adults.

>>I work in networking, so I was able to get a Linksys with DD-WRT and route that through the house. Less technical neighbors are SOL.

Why the contradictory statements? Either you got it to work or you didn't. And since when was DD-WRT a requirement to run a Linksys box as an AP? If you really do work in networking then I wouldn't go round bragging that you can't run WIFI in your own home, if I were you. Apologies if you live in a lead-lined mansion...

Re:Long story short:

[DavidShor]

"There are certain services that may not be profitable to provide, but are nevertheless overwhelmingly in the public interest to provide."

Yes, there are(education for example). But I believe these services are very rare, and electricity is not one of them.

"Sure, and people on the poor side of town should just move into the rich neighborhoods, since private industry certainly isn't going to waste money wiring areas where the demand and ability to pay isn't high enough."

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.

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.

Re:Long story short:

[Homr Zodyssey]

By your logic all of humanity should live in one giant megalopolis.

The problem is that economies of scale don't always apply...there is also the law of diminishing returns. As a city gets larger, it needs more raw materials. Growing food usually requires land. Requiring more food means requiring more land. So, the food must come from further and further away. If everyone lives in the city, the food producers must travel a long ways to get to work. Same for the coal-miners whoa re integral to our power grid. And the tree-farmers who produce wood for our homes, furniture and paper. And the Cotton-farmers who produce the materials our clothes are made of.

So, you think all of these people should quit their "inefficient" jobs and move to the city -- where everyone will be cold, naked, hungry and living in caves.

No, these jobs are necessary for our civilization. For efficiency, these people need to be near their work. And they need to be near enough to population centers to provide their products to the rest of us. So, our population centers must be more numerous and spread out.

Re:Long story short:

[Watts Martin]

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's availability is a matter of demographics, but that isn't the same as affluence -- it's all about rate of return. Upgrading a central office to support DSL is a very expensive proposition for a phone company, and they need to get a certain number of subscriptions to justify it (obviously). A densely-populated urban area is a better investment than a subdivision where all the homes are on quarter-acre lots; even if the subdivision's per-household income is much higher than the urban area's and the percentage of overall subscribers in the population will be substantially greater there, there are just so many damn more people in the urban area that the rate of return is going to be much higher. This was an issue a few years ago back in Celebration, Florida, a planned "new urban" community owned by Disney: as it turned out, all of Celebration was served by one CO, and Sprint didn't have any interest in upgrading it to DSL. As rich as the average Celebration resident was, there just weren't enough of them to justify the cost.

This is what previous posters have been trying to get across when they were mentioning the Rural Electrification Projects of the early 20th century. Private power and telephone companies saw no profit in running utility lines out to farm country, where you might have a home every acre (or every five or ten!); the upshot is that rural customers who had any service at all would be paying three or four times as much as urban dwellers for it. This was addressed by private-public partnerships and utility co-ops, some of which still exist to this day.

No offense, but your argument seems to exhibit a particular kind of libertarian naivete which refuses to admit the existence of indirect benefits. You, personally, may be poorer by the amount of the surcharge on your power bill still funding such projects, and indeed you are probably being denied a full meal at Chili's annually (if the taxes are particularly onerous in your area, you may even be denied a margarita with that meal), but you, personally, have almost certainly reaped much more indirect benefit from farmers who have utility service. Like other private-public partnerships where government has intervened to do things like build the railroads and the interstate system, the point is that if you stop thinking of societal infrastructure as a profit center in and of itself and instead as something that is, broadly speaking, part of the general welfare, the indirect return on that investment in terms of efficiency, opening markets, and creating whole new ones vastly exceeds the capital spent on the infrastructure.

Back on the actual topic of the Slashdot post (gasp), I think a previous poster hit the nail on the head -- municipal wi-fi networks tend not to work because they really aren't societal infrastructure in the way electricity, sewer, and roads are. They're not even necessary if you grant that internet access is becoming critical infrastructure (just plug into the damn ethernet jack, son). And suddenly, you're not arguing for a subsidized basic service or even a subsidized forward-thinking visionary plan with room for debate, you're arguing for a government-provided luxury. That's gonna raise hackles across the political spectrum.

No money = no wifi

[gihan_ripper]

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.

Re:No money = no wifi

[Krisbee]

If you meant using the X11 protocol over the public internet, you lose in most cases because of the X11 protocol design.

X11 requires good bandwidth and low latency.
If you were in Germany and assuming your university is in the U.S., the sheer latency kills X11 protocol regardless of the bandwidth.

Sun Ray, VNC, ICA(Citrix) and Remote Desktop protocols works over these links. Try one out.

one word - cost..

[eniac42]

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..

Re:one word - cost..

[ChetOS.net]

I live in St. Cloud, FL. City managers tell us that our taxes are essentially $300/year lower because they provide Internet access (estimated that we would normally pay $25/month to an ISP).

However, I only know of one person who can actually get the service in his home. The WAPs are too spread out to get coverage unless you are outside. Or unless your are downtown, they have them concentrated there.

I cannot get the WiFi from my home, so I still have to pay for my own Internet access.

So, not only am I not saving those $300, I am actually spending an additional $300.

If a city is going to charge everyone in the city for a service, they better provide it to everyone in that city. Kinda like garbage service... I don't see anyone in the city not getting their garbage picked up.

I was cool with it when they only provided it downtown (the pilot program). It was sort of an economic boost for the businesses there, but it was a waste of money to deploy it for the entire city.

Oulu, Finland, panoulu network

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oulu, Finland, panoulu network

[Warod]

Yes, PanOULU is awesome part of the public services of the city. There are over 850 PanOULU hotspots out there and counting. That's one hotspot for each ~150 people living here. Oulu is and always have been very technology oriented city. Internet access is generally better than most of the country, symmetric 10/10 mbit access for only ~50 /mo (for students even less). 100/10 mbit is about the same if you have fibre to the house and CAT5 cabling inside the house.

There is no real competition between PanOULU network and home internet access. People prefer fast internet access from home and public WLAN network comes in when you go mobile for studies, work or other activities. As a active PanOULU user I've had very positive experience of the network and it plays important part on my studies as I don't need to use time finding internet access anywhere on school, libraries or other public locations. Just open my laptop and I'm online.

They've gone so far with it, providing PanOULU hotspots in couple of bus lines as well. It's build on soon-to-be country wide Flash-OFDM network and provides constant transfer speeds around 60 kB/s (kilobytes not bits).

Whatever they say about municipal Wi-Fi failing, I tell you otherwise based on my own experience on one of the world's most advanced city networks.

The Minneapolis Rollout

[Melllvar]

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.

Re:The Minneapolis Rollout

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people around here seem to think that city-wide wireless is going to be free. In Minneapolis, there is a fee--$19.95/mo residential, $29.95/mo for business.
 
The wi-fi has already had unforseen benefits as the new wi-fi was used during the rescue effort after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse.

Re:The Minneapolis Rollout

[cwgmpls]

I agree the Minneapolis roll out seems to be going very well. I live in Minneapolis and here is why I think it is working:

- They chose a smaller company (USInternet) to do the build. This means the company is committed to customer service and building their reputation, rather than just extending their monopoly like the big telecos would have tried to do.
- The City of Minneapolis set itself up as the biggest customer of the network, to provide network access for public services throughout the city. That way, USInternet has a guarenteed customer base that is large enough to make the network work, even if few other people sign on. At the same time, Minneapolis gets a wireless network that is cheaper to lease from USInternet than it would be for Minneapolis to build it themselves internally.
- The service is not free, but still half of what existing ISPs are charging. This gives USInternet a growing source of revenue as the network grows.
- US Internet is building a network in a modular fashion, which makes it easy for them to move things around and upgrade parts, even mix in WiMax in the future, as the needs change.

So good technology, sound financial planning, and finding the right company seem to be what is making the Minneapolis network happen.

Re:The Minneapolis Rollout

[Mister Whirly]

That is because Minneapolis is smart, and are NOT trying to be an ISP. They took bids from outside companies to provide the hardware and tech support, and provided them with the places to put all the hardware. And at $29.95 /month for 6MB download speed, they are going to give Comcast and Qwest a run for their money. Will be interesting to see if cable and DSL will drop their prices to try and compete. I just wish Verizon would bring FIOS here...

Get a bloody repeater, mate

[evilandi]

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.

Re:Get a bloody repeater, mate

[Bios_Hakr]

Well, we already pay $50 per month for wireless access. I just happened to have a WRT-54g laying around. For me, it isn't a problem.

But to tell most people that they need to purchase additional equipment; they balk at that.

Also, the provider advised that too many repeaters would just degrade the already-weak signal. I have no idea if that's true or not.

Wrong Approach

[Televiper2000]

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.

its all rather simple

[rucs_hack]

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.

It's obvious...

[Mysticalfruit]

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.

Re:It's obvious...

[PopeRatzo]

Mysticalfruit, it's a great idea.

The only problem is, then how are the municipal politicians going to get those fat campaign contributions from the telecoms?

That's the real problem with Muni WiFi: the companies don't like it, and we all work for the companies.

geneva switzerland is a success story

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Does not need discussion

[gweihir]

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.

WiFi security

[YrWrstNtmr]

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?

Re:WiFi security

[wurp]

First, banking & paying bills are done over SSL, which is built *expecting* there to be man in the middle attacks, and it is not vulnerable to such. In other words, that's secure, whether going over wifi or whatever.

For other stuff, VPNs/ssl tunnels/whatever are fairly easy to put together, and I agree someone should do that so your browsing isn't transparent to anyone within 100 meters of you.

What about lawsuits

[jav1231]

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

[porkThreeWays]

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.

Re:I work for a municipality

[mini me]

If you had municipal wifi in place you could use the network to enable the kids to learn without the need for expensive classrooms. The desire to maintain the status quo instead of looking forward to where we could be in the future is what is holding back municipal wifi.

Why muni WiFi *should* fail

[BillEGoat]

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?

I'm happy to see it flop!

[superdude72]

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!

Wrong technology for this application.

[zerofoo]

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

As a user on the St. Cloud system

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

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.

wisp coops are the way to go

[gordona]

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.

Re:wisp coops are the way to go

[RendonWI]

I have had experience with the motorola canopy gear. And IMHO all I can say is "stay away." The boxes require frequent resets, the radios fail far too often, and they are quite temperature sensitive. They do fine once it is cold, or warm or hot.. but when the temp is changing they go haywire. Wish I could offer you a different product, but we have not found a replacement for these units yet.