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ISPs Losing Interest In Citywide Wireless Coverage
The New York Times is running a story about how hope is fading for the implementation of municipal wireless access in cities across the US. Major cities and small towns alike are finding that ISPs are withdrawing from such plans due to the low profitability of ventures that are similar to Philadelphia's incomplete network. We've previously discussed Chicago's and San Francisco's wireless status, and also some of the stumbling blocks other cities have faced. From the Times:
"In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity. EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that 'the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company's strategic direction.' Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed."
I realize the irony in posting a link to this, but the sentiment holds.
They're facing competition at both ends. They can't sell the service as 'Internet access in that place where you really want it' because often 'that place' already has free WiFi. They can't sell it as 'Internet access everywhere' because they don't have the coverage and their competitors, the mobile phone companies, do. Always-available Internet via my mobile phone costs about the same, per month, as via my cable modem (albeit with slower speeds and much smaller caps). For people who are willing to pay for Internet to be available all the time, that's a much better option than WiFi.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They wont be able to screw the consumer hard enough with what is basically free and open. ISP's want that pay per byte contract and are drooling for when they can bring it back.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If they think there isn't money to be made (and can't figure out the potential of giving cable/DSL subscribers free WLAN access on the road as an extra, much like Fon does), well, then, as has been proposed years ago, just let someone else do the job, such as the Baptists.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Municipal-supplied Internet makes sense only where
1) there would be a demand at a particular price, and private enterprise is not capable or willing to offer it at that price, or
2) where a government-sanctioned monopoly is necessary to generate such a demand.
The first generally requires a taxpayer subsidy. The second would mean outlawing wireless or both wireless and wired Internet access citywide except through the government-granted monopoly. This is the case with many utilities and was the case for telecommunications and cable TV for a long time, but it's too late to do that with WiFi. WiMax may get monopoly treatment but it won't be municipalities handing out the franchises.
City-supported free or discount WiFi makes the most sense in publicly owned buildings and park and recreation areas, schools, libraries, tourist attractions, and possibly in poor neighborhoods where the city deems it "in the public interest" to provide discount or free Internet service. In the latter it may make more sense to simply subsidize DSL service on a per-customer basis. It might also make sense in some commercial districts and shopping centers. For other places, technologies like G3 cell phones are eliminating the need at the high end and there isn't enough of a demand a the low end to support the expense.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If there were just a couple more Linksys users in every neighborhood, we'd have city-wide access in every city in America! From my house right now, I "see" eight wireless signals. The three that are unsecured are all labeled "Linksys".
I still believe that city-wide WiFi is an achievable and useful thing, but only if it is provided by the people for the people. The amount of work and the cost for any individual who allows the public to connect to the internet through an already existing wireless access point is very low and the benefit of being able to use other people's access points for free is high. Politicians should not seek to fund commercial WiFi deployments. They should provide legal protection to people who share their network connection with the public.
We'll always have hotspots.
Coffeeshops rejoice, justified at pricing their coffee at more than $3 per cup.
EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that 'the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company's strategic direction.'
Wow, EarthLink is still in business??
They've been on the verge of citywide wireless here in Miami Beach for that past two years, but I'm starting to suspect it will never happen. It's too bad, I was looking forward to just canceling my own internet and living off the public dime...
When even Google pulls back, it's a bad business model even with advertising-driven models.
Face it, 802.11 is a LAN technology, not a MAN technology. Lipstick on that pig, even with cool mesh network attempts, isn't going to make it better. It was designed for local radial-cellular access by its channelization, and it's not good for covering wide areas. My sentiments go out to Strix and Firetide; both have decent models to make it wider. Cities have to figure out that broadband access is a utility, not an option.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The ISPs made their own bed but we all have to sleep in it now.
The ISPs fought tooth and nail against even modest municipal wifi limited to public areas like libraries and shopping districts, because they wanted to make money from it. So rather than municipally funded projects they promoted these ad-hoc "partnerships" that didn't, in the end, make money.
That's why the United States is behind many other major industrialized countries in Internet speeds. Because companies in the United States care about the $$$, not about innovation or advancing technology.
I guess the ISPs decided trying to wiretap MANs would be too hard because they have no way of proving that a certain data packet came from a certain person, and because then everyone wouldn't have to pay outrageous ripoff prices for a watered down, censored Internet...
I just signed on with NTT DoCoMo for about $8 a month to get Mopera/Mzone which is basically 11Mbps 802.11 access points at places like KFC around town (Tokyo). There definitely aren't enough but maybe one near most major stations. However they require a lousy browser-based login (works automatically with their utility though) so I can't use my Skype phone.
It is very cool, and still only about $15/mo. even if you aren't already a customer of their FOMA phones.
Free is good but also maybe a very low monthly fee ($5/mo.?) to a general fund that would be divided among routers/isps doing this? Whatever, the question is find a way to get it done. I never thought ISPs would make much money out of this myself but once you get onto 11Mbps you get addicted. I use the windows app they give you to look at a detailed map of the city and find where the nearest point is. So far Tully's and Kentucky are my faves!
For some time now I've been taking part in WIMAX trials here in Hamilton Ontario. This too was trumpeted as a glorious thing that would change the face of our city, bring us into the high tech 21st century etc.
In practice although WIMAX seems to work OK (aside from a real lag much of the time, which may just be bad server configuration by Primus Communications), My sense is that the company isn't really committed to it. I doubt that there will be a serious public roll out.
The idea seems great - a wireless Internet connection that works wherever you are. The reality seems a bit less rosy, and my guess is that a city wide wireless network will need a good level of customer support - not Primus' strong point by a long shot.
Three Squirrels
There was a perfect opportunity to provide wireless access for everyone... the Fed just auctioned off the very spectrum needed to make it a reality. What happened?
Did anyone consider this? I know Google had mentioned it and it was a meme floating around that they might buy up the spectrum and offer *free* wifi everywhere, supported by ads of course... if the States or a collective of cities had gotten together and purchased the bandwidth, it really could have been free.
Maybe I'm missing something? Was it not a great opportunity from a technical POV? or did all our local governments just drop the ball?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Cellular data networks will take over instead. Having both is not needed.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
The cellular data networks already have the coverage, the wifi will only be redundant. Pretty soon all phones will be HSPA compatible. Laptops already have it with (even if you don't count the crappy edge network).
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Why do people think that hotspots will die because of increased cell phone coverage? Does anyone really think that the winners of the most expensive spectrum fraud ever want to do more than charge you every nickel and dime they can per byte? I don't and as long as the same players are not allowed to dominate the wired network, hotspots will be a cheaper and more convenient way to get on line when you travel.
The FCC is no longer needed, only open spectrum will give you the service you want.
No calls now, I'm
Trying to create a network by installing hotspots every 150 feet or even every 1000 feet or so if you extend the transmission range over public spectrum where any Joe may interefere with it with their own cordless phone, microwave and/or home WiFi router was a silly endeavour.
Now doing the same thing with public spectrum WiMax or UltraWideBand could work for 2-4 years until the next wireless technology improves upon it. It might work because it can cover much greater distances, so less antennas, and better ones (MiMo) and most importantly, tower equipment is expensive enough (though not very), that the average home user isn't going to be able to afford a transmitter to compete with it.
There is one gotcha, and that is that sharing some 50 Mbits over 3-20 KM would never work because most Metro cities are too densely populated. Unless you use deep packet inspection at endpoints and allow only SMTP and true HTTP/s traffic and deny all else. South Korea has standardized on WiMax for wireless, not WIFi, and their network is mostly complete.
Ultimately, there is a reason why Telco's pay Billions for private spectrum, because there will be (in theory) zero interference, and zero competition - although Google changed the latter slightly, lately.
PS. If you want to learn way more on WiMax read the wikipedia page, it is very informative.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
About 20 years ago, the first mobile phone service in Britain was something called Hutchison Rabbit, which only worked from hotspots. That dissapeared rapidly when the cell phone companies started offering city-wide coverage on 1st generation analogue networks.
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2007/04/protecting_bees_from_mobile_phone_radiation.html
Well bittorrent or internet access might be problematic but voip uses almost nothing...
16-19kbps which when you think about it you're paying $40 a month for with your teleco...
56kbps each doesn't sound like much, but it's enough for IM, e-mail and phone... Costing a cell company about $45 a month per person.
Everyone has a cell phone, yet no one has a voip phone... the providers are milking it because you need to conect to the pots system...
I never understood the notion of "low profitability" completely. Isn't profitability good, whether it's 5 percent or 100 percent? I understand that a company or individual can do something more efficiently and make larger profit margins, but a profit is a profit. If a company operates with all its liabilities and expenses including land, labor, and capital, and manages to turn a profit, then that company functions correctly.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
As someone who recently moved back to Mountain View (Google-ville) and used Google WiFi initially, my experience is that it is not ready to replace wired ISPs.
Indoor access via laptop is problematic, for all the normal coverage reasons. The Google router is right across the street on a lightpost, but it is tough to get a strong enough signal indoors. A wireless bridge place in the window facing their router solved the signal strength issues.
With a strong signal, it worked well much of the day. Not blazingly fast, but fast enough to be useful (~1Mbps). But, during high usage times, 7PM-10PM, it became unusable. Packet loss was terrible, so performance was too, and many sessions timed out completely.
And this is with a very mixed environment, most people I have talked to used Cable or DSL internet access. So, Google WiFi wasn't supporting the whole street. But, even with the subset of users, it was too much for their service to handle. I quickly decided to go for cable internet, and this is definitely the right choice for anyone needing Internet for business / critical usage.
Maybe it could work with other improvements, I don't know enough about their infrastructure to say for sure. Some thoughts:
- Uplink issues: I think Google routers hub back into their network via wireless links. Maybe that is the piece that is not holding up at peak times. If so, a better network back to the ISP may help.
- 802.11N may help: More bandwidth, longer range. Operating on the 5GHz band may also be less crowded with other networks, at least for now.
... as long as the city isn't run by idiots and/or politicians who have been bought out by he local ISP conglomerates.
In my city, which had the foresight to not only build a municipal WiFi network but also run it themselves without profit-mongering corporate overlords, the municipal network not only breaks even, it makes a net profit. This is because the same infrastructure that powers the municipal WiFi (the city-wide fibre-optic ring), has oodles of extra capacity, which the city leases to local companies, which funds the maintenance and expansion of the wireless network for the public.
As such, the city is it's own ISP, and actually competes with the local telco for broadband ISP access with local companies.
I seem to recall a spate of threatened lawsuits and opposition to municipalities rolling their own coverage because it was "anti-competitive" and would cut into the profits of large telcos. Now those same telcos are abandoning their plans as "unprofitable" leaving many municipalities with nothing. If I were a libertarian I'd feel some sense of confusion, even doubt about the power of "the market" that was much hyped when people were attacking municipal wi-fi as "big government intrusion.
Instead I'll just say this: Ironic.
WiFi just isn't a good technology for ubiquitous Internet, which is what they want to be providing.
Agreed, why aren't they concentrating on WiMax instead?
The poster (Soulskill)indicates that citywide wifi experiences "low profitability" and the article states that the providers have had to "cut their losses" indicating no profitability.
Which is it? Was this a bad idea (not sustainable under current funding), or are these telecomms just out to make a buck? Everyone knows these companies are out to screw the consumer at every chance (specifically Earthlink), but was that what caused the abandonment of municipal wifi?
Whenever some piece of legislation is going to cut a little into profits, the corporations and their lackeys cry out "Free market! Free market!"
These same people are more than happy to accept government contracts that turn their corporation into a monopoly in certain regions. How many people here use an ISP like Comcast and have no alternative for high speed internet?
I've seen people insist that there are no monopolized regions, that they literally do not exist anywhere, yet I have never lived in a house or apartment that offered more than one high speed internet provider (and I've lived throughout the Southwest, from LA to Newport to Phoenix/Tucson in various locations). I'm the kind of guy who shops around and tries to get the best deal for everything. I checked the DSL choices (often they would claim I was "too far" from an access point even though they claimed to provide service to an apartment complex across the street).
I don't think it's right to let these companies have essentially a monopoly in regions across America. What happened to trust busting? Isn't our government supposed to be FOR THE PEOPLE? All I see are aristocrats helping aristocrats (and playing lip service to everyone else).
which (i assume) was paid vs. paid. this is going to be paid vs. free. question being : will "available everywhere*, but pay for" win over "available in many places, but free"?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I live in Lawrence, Kansas, and just about anywhere I go within the 28.7 square miles of city, I can get a wireless signal from our local wireless ISP, Lawrence Freenet. The service is dramatically cheaper than the local cable company, and speeds are equivalent to DSL. There are routers on lightposts that you can communicate with either directly from your computer (if the signal is strong enough) or you can use a wireless bridge (which they rent and sell) to ensure a good connection. To top it off, you aren't fixed to one location with their service, you can take a laptop with you anywhere in the city, and if you see an access point, you can sign on. How much money did the city spend on this service? Zero. Nothing. This was completely financed by people who believed in it, and that is why it has been successful. With over 1300 current customers after only two years of existence, they are certainly doing things right.
Oh, and I'm posting this from a laptop connected to a Lawrence Freenet access point.
Good old capitalism, always serving the best interests of the people!
4) Street/traffic lights can be connected that way
5) Speeding/traffic light violation cameras etc
6) Public transport informations (bus arrivals/delays reporting at every stop)
7) Traffic/parking information boards updating
tons of other stuff that's done right now by running a cable to each and every destination. I'll give you 3 and read-only versions of the rest, but wireless "write" for traffic-control, signs, etc. is just asking for a denial of service attack or worse.
Sure, you could do it wirelessly and do it right, but there are security issues that must be addressed that are much less of a problem if these devices are controlled through a closed-circuit wire. Encryption helps but it's just a start.
Even read-only introduces privacy issues for #3, particularly if the meter is on private property and not visible from public property.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Take Cary NC for example, Time Warner kicks back 15% of their revenue to the city as some kind of licensing fee or whatever dubious name they give it. It's a kick back. They are not going to give up a portion of their internet revenue without cutting back on the kickback to the city so the city for all it's noise and NPR friendly agitprop about 'WiFi for the People! For Free!" isn't interested in getting that off the ground. I'm sure every other city with a similar arrangement is the same. And that's w/o considering the substantial influence phone companies can exert on local governments about who gets which coverage and cell phone towers where and how those rights are licensed and kickedback.
Power of market and Free market capitalism are both wrongly used nowadays.
During the days of Second BUS Bank of US) Free Banking was meant to mean that government does NOT intervene to help any ailing bank and that it treated all banks as equal businesses.
i.e., If a bank failed to meet its outstanding obligations in FULL (in Specie in those days), it was to be immediately wound up, its assets sold and money to be distributed to creditors.
No central bank assistance of any kind, No "forced mergers" with JP Morgans, no lender of last resort crap.
And No Fractional Reserve Banking as we have today.
No hiding behind government skirts, no campaign funds donations.
Today comcast, Verizon file costly lawsuits to prevent municipalities from providing free WiFi to its citizens. Next step, the corporates stop providing those services to citizens unless the municipality pays them enough money to make it profitable enough.
How come the saying "Never fight City Hall" apply to corporates?
Atleast one moneyed city hall should sic RICO on the corporate and win the case.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
~Dan
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
No offense but why would they want to do what will become the free network of the people. Sooner or later a p2p public operated wireless network will be the only way to get big brother resistant network. Instead of relying on corporations we should be relying on ourselves and sharing a portion of our wireless bandwidth for the public network. I wonder if there is a way to segment a portion of a wireless network securely for public use and still have our machines for private use. I think that would be a great feature to implement in hardware maybe.
Morality, filters both ways.
This is just one more example of how private companies are hostile to the provision of public infrastructure. Previous examples have been electricity companies who artificially create shortages to drive up prices, privatized airports who steadily increase fees for airline and passenger use, water companies that increase prices to pay for the purchase of previously public assets....and so on. If you ant something done that is essentially a service for the sake of service, not profit, then you really should vest ownership in a public body and invest out of public funds, charging a fee consistent with cost recovery and planned expansion. Private businesses can't compete with this as it can be incredibly efficient if well managed with clear goals. Municipal wifi should be run like public transport: by the city concerned on the basis described above. Avoiding capricious and unreliable private providers will ensure service goals and objectives are met. It's a myth that private companies are always better than public ones. One of the most profitable and efficient postal systems on Earth is owned and run by the government of New Zealand. It's about clear goals and good management.
Only boring people are ever bored.