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Municipal Wi-Fi - A Promise Unfulfilled?
An anonymous reader writes "Jeff Merron at InformationWeek writes about the problems with municipal Wi-Fi, and how despite the high hopes of cities across the country there hasn't been much success deploying it in reality. He also examines the few successful applications of the technology, and tries to explore why more projects don't make it out of their infancy. 'Thus far, there have been a few true municipal Wi-Fi success stories and several spectacular failures. But more than half of municipal Wi-Fi networks remain only in the planning stages. The broad consensus among analysts and providers is that the only viable business models will be centered around municipal government applications, which appear to be able to provide cities with the ability to provide both better and more cost-efficient services for residents and increase city revenue. This will ensure that providers like EarthLink can recoup their capital costs within a few years.'"
"Oh shit, this costs a lot of money and we really don't get anything out of it. PROJECT CANCELED."
802.11 was designed for indoor use. Read the spec. It talks about indoor propagation and describes a coordination function that works well with that model.
802.11 doesn't scale well to large footprint cells or high density deployments with lots of APs and clients. It excels indoors allowing a small number of people to attached wirelessly to a wired network.
The backhaul services are not standardized in 802.11 and so are generally neither interoperable not secure (E.G. UAM at airports).
Compare with 802.16. It is designed for outdoor base stations, large footprints, indoor, outdoor or mobile clients and has a backhaul architecture and protocol set defined by the WiMAX forum.
802.11 Municipal WiFi is a round technology crowbarred into a square application.
Evil people are out to get you.
http://www.fred-ezone.com/
Fredericton has had Wi-Fi rolled out for a couple years now. The status is degraded because we just got hit by tropical storm Noel.
Until towns/cities can do this at a reasonable cost, and until providers can actually make a buck off it, I wouldn't expect to see widespread success at public Wi-Fi projects.
What's going to happen to all the well-digging companies? After all, just like with a wireless base station, one pipe can be shared by at least a dozen users.
I don't know about any other cities, but in Portland Oregon the municipal wifi was billed as ,wonderful system that would provide everyone with free broadband. Well if you can log in to the system, you find all sorts or limitations- and something else- that there is a parallel pay Wifi system run by the same company. Gee, wonder how that happened? I never heard any public discussion on the matter. And I wonder how much Portland paid for this sweet deal?
My fair city recently fell for this kind of scam. 802.11x is basically the absolute worst wireless spec to try and deploy over any area larger than a medium-sized house. Massive interference; everything from cordless phones to microwave ovens. Leaves destroy 90% of the signal. Leaves with fresh rain on them completely destroy even multipath.
Our city tried so that it could attract high-tech workers. They were gunning for a "revolutionary" wireless deployment using IP6 so they could do multicast groups with video. Over WiFi backhaul. F'ing brilliant. Even though Harrisonburg has some truly epic fails, in *this* case they did okay. They gave permission for a private company to do it, but refused to actually *pay* for them to do it. Naturally, the company failed.
The system was originally pitched as an offshoot of the electric company's fiber ring. The municipal wireless wasn't supposed to be about ubiquitous laptop and PDA internet. They were going to use Better Stuff (Motorola Canopy, or Navini, maybe) to create a city utility network. ISPs could sign up to provide internet and pay the city a fee per customer that signs up. In that way, fixed broadband last-mile backhauls *actually make sense*, though perhaps not financially.
Somehow, though, it turned into a "WiFi Cloud".
This is mostly due to one technology "adviser" from the local university that is a *complete* moron. I'm not sure how much money he makes off of recommending worthless technology ideas, but we'll just say that "Harrisonburg IP6 Wireless Network" was not his dumbest idea by a long shot.
As my sainted grandmother would say, "Bad cess to them!"
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The question we need to ask is if broadband access is required utility that is needed by everyone for economic development but isn't cost effective for private business. Should it be supplemented like roads, buses, trains and run by the government? Should it be a regulated monopoly like gas, water and electric? Non-profit co-op like some other utilities? Heavily regulated private business like airlines and railroads? Or remain what it is now.. unregulated and private?
Municipal Water isn't free.
Municipal Energy isn't free.
Municipal Waste Disposal isn't free.
Municipal Newtwork Service... where did anyone get the idea it should be free?
Putting your faith in big corporations is crazy. They will screw you over every time, and not because of any particular person but a "good" corporation is built to screw its partners, suppliers, and customers out of every penny possible.
I actually don't condone putting your faith in the government or the private sector. In any case you have to get involved and keep a watchful eye. People tend to be inefficient, lazy, ineffective, and generally bad at getting things done. It really doesn't matter which type of organization they "work for", public or private, they're not going to do a good job unless someone keeps them on their toes.
Although we'll agree that politicians are in the bag of telcos, there are real and factual difficulties with muni-WiFi
1) bad cellular support grid (3 non-interfering channels, making coverage very difficult)
2) competition with other wireless, paid services (UMTS, EVDO, etc)
3) competition from commercial 'hotspot' providers (hotels, paid-hotspots, etc.)
4) poor business models that caved Google, Earthlink, and others
5) the silliness of using a LAN technology (look at the specs as mentioned up-thread) for a MAN/WAN purpose, as the CSMA/CA technology plainly sucks for services that require mulitple concurrent low-latency streams from a single AP)
6) non-existent subnet handoff (all solutions are proprietary, so far), and lack of VLAN wizardry
7) super-dumb security-- as in NONE as there are no encryption schemes, poor to no authentication (too expensive) and no session controls
Plainly, muni-Wifi is a great idea, if WiFi itself worked, and if there were business models to sustain its deployment. It's a misapplication of the technology, politicians aside. We're just not there yet in terms of building meshes that provide excellent or in many cases, just minimally usable coverage.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It's unfortunate that the author didn't mention the municipal wifi network that is being built in Minneapolis. So far service seems to be pretty good, and it helped rescue efforts when the 35w bridge collapsed here:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/wireless-mobility/wifi-network-helped-minneapolis-deal-with-bridge-collapse.asp
Close... but Ile Sans Fil (Wireless Island) is apparently a non-profit group trying to bring free wireless to Montreal. Check out http://www.ilesansfil.org/
Wireless Minneapolis is rolling out nicely. It is succeeding because
- It is not free -- but half the price of other ISP providers in the area so it is a great bargain.
- It is a based on a Municipal Services model, where the city will be the biggest customer of the network. So even if no one signs up, the network provider will still make a profit.
I expect future muni wifis will use a Municipal Services-based model as well.
Why bother making a comment if you don't know the language? Ile sans fil = literally island without wires, ie wireless island.
You are mighty good at typing but I still don't see how a pipe with bits in it is any different than a pipe with water in it.
So you are saying that because Internet usage is not metered, therefore it should be run privately? What if they metered your Internet usage, like, say, Comcast does? One could very well meter Internet usage and charge for it. Poof goes your argument.
You've put yourself on a slippery slope and even provided your own grease. Your argument about wasteful government is unsubstantiated drivel. The government can run things very efficiently if it wants to; take a look at many small towns these days. They are running their water, fire, and school departments on ahoestring budgets, without fatcat CEO's skimming off the top.
Ile sans fil refers to Montreal (QC, Canada)'s free wireless initiative.
http://www.ilesansfil.org/
It isn't government managed. Instead, its an NPO that offers to manage the AP, if a sponsoring store is willing to purchase the AP (~100$), pay for the DSL connection (~65$/month) and an administrative fee (50$/year).
The problem is that a lot of big companies get to a certain size and power when they can afford to abuse their own customers because they are able to ensure that their customers have no choice. They form little cartels and engage in anti-competitive practices. They use their immense resources to brainwash the public and destroy any competing company, especially if that competing company offers a better product.
When you hit that point, these companies are worse than the government. They have just as little need to be efficient as "the government", and they really don't have to please their customers anymore. The big difference between themselves and the government at that point is that the government has at least the pretense of "the public good" as a goal, whereas corporations only have "maximizing shareholder investment".
Yes, you can choose another corporation, and you can choose another government too. But in neither case to revolutions come easy.