And in the end you wind up dyin’ all alone on some dusty street. For what? For a tin star. It’s all for nothin’, Will. It’s all for nothin’. — High Noon

Are municipally-run broadband wireless networks a good idea? Yes and no. Many communities are building city-wide clouds. Meanwhile, state legislators, backed by vested telecom interests, are writing laws to ban them. Whether municipally-run broadband is a good idea or not depends on who you talk to.

Opinions are sometimes based on politics rather than objective analysis. That’s understandable. There’s very little track record to base judgements — so assumptions may be formed by one’s own political persuasion.

Currently, more than 100 cities in the U.S. are considering or deploying wireless networks. A variety of business models have been proposed. Many, like Philadelphia, will use no taxpayer dollars. Often cities will contract with private vendors who charge for the service.

Yes, municipal Wi-Fi demands research, but more than that, it needs input from the local voters who will pay for it not legislators or lobbyists at the state level. Carol Ellison, E-Week

“City-Run Wi-Fi Plans May Be Flawed”, say articles in Business Week and PC World. But something smells around The Heartland Institute study used as a source for these stories. Muni Wireless says a new report by the Heartland Institute and the New Millennium Research Council entitled “Why Muni Wi-Fi is a False Hope” is inaccurate and misleading.

Glenn Fleishman at WiFiNetNews adds that NMRC is composed of “sock puppets of the industry” and highlights questionable analysis in the Heartland Report. Karl Bode at BroadbandBlog thinks it’s Swiftboat hackery while Broadband Reports suggests checking out Heartland’s role in crushing the Illinois tri-cities fiber effort and SlashDot readers are having a bash at phoney “astroturf” organizations. Mike Masnick summarizes how the story unfolded.

E-Week learned that the New Millennium Research Council is actually owned and sponsored by Washington lobbying firm, Issue Dynamics Inc., whose clients include most of the major telecommunications companies in the United States.

The NMRC issued a report called Not In The Public Interest – The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks (pdf) Why Municipal Schemes to Provide Wi-Fi Broadband Services With Public Funds Are Ill-Advised .

The most important concerns about municipal Wi-Fi cited by the authors include:

• Wi-Fi networks will likely cost more than the cities anticipate, thus straining already tight budgets and negatively impact taxpayers.
• Public funds used for a Wi-Fi network are diverted away from other important areas, such as education, police and fire services, and public works, that are already being cut in many cities today.
• Wi-Fi technology could quickly become outdated, leaving the city and its residents with a less-than-optimal network that offers no opportunity to recover the city s investment.
• There is no market failure in broadband, and entry by municipal Wi-Fi providers will not create greater competition in fact, the Wi-Fi market is already very competitive, with service offerings from large and small providers alike.
• City-managed networks operate under different rules than private providers, offering the city regulatory and economic advantages.
• Municipal entry into the broadband market will likely reduce investment by current providers and threaten the business of small, local ISPs.
• There is no evidence that economic development will directly result from publicly funded citywide Wi-Fi deployment.

WiFiNetNews and saschameinrath.com disagree with those findings. Sascha Meinrath says:

Generally speaking here’s what tends to happen when a municipality offers broadband services:

1. The plan is announced
2. Telecom encumbants resist the plan
3. (Assuming the plan is implemented) The muni network is built
4. Telecom encumbants slash prices
5. Muni & telecom company compete for customers

In the BHI paper (which the Heartland institute and other anti-muni, telecom industry-backed organization often cite), “failure” is defined as the municipal company not breaking even; however, the net cost savings to the community is an externality to this equation.

For example, if you had a community where 10,000 people were each paying $50/month for DSL service before the muni system was built, but only paying $30/month after the muni system was built (and the telecom provider slashed prices); as long as the muni system lost less than $200,000/month, there’s actually a net savings to the community as a whole.

Mobile Pipeline Editor David Haskin contends municipal wireless networks are not all bad.

WirelessHoustonCounty (above), plans a county-wide WiMax service. They estimate the cost of a county-wide wireless broadband deployment would require only two towers and a modest $360,000 capital investment. How long will it take your city or county to break even? Cellular fees, at $30/month and up, leave town forever. Broadband public services may be a better, cheaper alternative.

Do the math. Some business plans figure $1 million invested on infrastructure will generate 5K fixed subs, 3K mobile VoIP subs and 100 business subs. Figure $25, $50 and $100/month, respectively. That totals $285K a month. Over $3.4M/year. Flarion claims to support hundreds of mobile users per base station, each consuming 1Gbyte of data per month, at a cost to the operator of just $10 per month. One megapixel cameras have turned into 7 megapixel cameras, which will turn into 10 megapixel cameras. DV cameras will turn into HDV then HDCams. More bandwidth will be needed.

“The WiMAX standard will create the confidence required to launch the wireless WAN mass-market, in the way that Wi-Fi launched the wireless LAN mass-market,” exclaims Graham Barnes, CEO of NextWeb, the nation’s largest wireless ISP.

Could you plug a $100 WiMax USB client or PC card into a $100-$200 access point and run it up a flag pole next year? It looks like proprietary solutions from Navini and Flarion could do it today. In two or three years, Mobile WiMax is a good bet. That’s the competition. That’s the new reality.

A municipal network can be contracted out to multiple (competing) ISPs and include a public service component. Everyone wins (except monopolist telecom providers).

Tyler Apgar, who co-founded a leading ISP Speakeasy, is using SputnikNet in his new company, GetLocal. Apgar says, “We had the first hotspot up in four hours, with a captive portal with its own graphics. You just don’t have to be technical to do this, or pay $3,000 to install a server.” SputnikNet Premier is a hosted wireless network management service that can accept online payments for wireless Internet service through credit card billing and PayPal.

According to Broadcasting and Cable:

One Intel priority is to push the FCC, over broadcasters’ objections, to make TV stations share their channel space with high-speed wireless networks that city government or other operators could set up without bothering to get a license. The company is also trying to persuade Congress and the FCC to set a quick deadline for making stations go all-digital and return their old analog channels to the government.

The FCC has allocated 24 MHz of spectrum for public safety services at 764-776 MHz and 794-806 MHz (the 700 MHz band). Spectrum Coalition members want an additional 10 MHz spectrum for broadband wireless. The current spectrum use and rules are available on this table. Additional spectrum is available at 4.9 GHz but it doesn’t travel as far or penetrate buildings.

Former FCC Chairman, Reed Hundt told the Senate Commerce Committee that wireless broadband should share the spectrum used by analog UHF stations. “Wireless broadband is being designed where the radio frequencies are very, very high and, as a result, the radio waves can not penetrate buildings,” Hundt told lawmakers last summer.

VeriLAN, a commercial wireless ISP in Portland, provides 64Kbps, free, to everyone. Maybe community centers could supply a $200 Linux PC for $50 down and $10/month or a $500 laptop for $100 down and $25/month. Contractors could handle the commercial wireless business. Open Source Development Labs and local schools could develop “city cloud” applications for education and entertainment. Heed the Call of the Wild and create a Walking Tour (listen).

Tropos Networks, BelAir Networks, FireTide and MeshNetworks are beginning to establish mesh as a real alternative. Belair’s BA200 nodes can achieve a 15 Mbps backhaul between two nodes about two miles apart and 25 Mbps when a quarter-mile apart.

Airespace, Cisco Systems and Colubris Networks offer proprietary wireless QoS. They link traffic prioritization to users and groups by assigning priority to either the user’s authenticated identity or the 802.11 ESSID (Extended Service Set Identifier). A different priority assignment results in higher performance for prioritized users.

Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street will announce their wireless business plan Feb. 9th at the city’s Independence Center. The plan will call for construction of the citywide network to begin midyear 2005, according to the city’s CIO, Diane Neff. When completed, by the end of summer 2006, the network will cover about 135 square miles. The city’s business plan and subsequent RFP are based on an interim four square mile network in downtown Philadelphia that used equipment from Tropos Networks. But HB 30 effectively gives veto power to Verizon over any other municipal efforts in the state of Pennsylvania — markets that Verizon has neglected.

Last month, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels created the Office of Technology. The new Office of Technology will coordinate all information technology in the state. Meanwhile, Indiana bill (HB 1148) would kill all municipal broadband deployments in the state. This bill goes much further than Pennsylvania’s House Bill 30 and prohibits municipalities from entering into public-private partnerships. Other anti-municipal laws are being passed by state legislatures. It’s a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

Civitium has created a list of links to statutes that exist in in 15 states where some form of restriction exists.

MuniWireless also mentions legislation in my own state of Oregon.

House Bill 2445, sponsored by Representatives Schaufler and Butler, a true bipartisan effort. To view the bill, click here. What I really want to know is: which big telco is behind this one?

Representative Tom Butler (R-Ontario) responded to my inquiry without much illumination:

Representative Michael Schaufler (D-Happy Valley) adds:

Does your police department have to go to voters when they drop millions on Motorola radios? I don’t think so. Lobbyists play a key role, rounding up votes to pass legislation exempting cell companies from taxes.

Unless I’m missing something, representatives Butler and Schaufler don’t seem to care that Intel, the biggest employer in Oregon, thinks “city clouds” are a good idea or that the very health and welfare of rural Oregonians are on the line. THEY make the laws. Guess who helps them.

Fred Ziari’s 700 Mile WiFi Cloud covers a big chunk of eastern Oregon to warn of possible hazardous materials release. RAINS enables governments, schools and other organizations to share sensitive information over pagers, cellphones or PDAs. The National Emergency Messaging Solutions (NEMS) effort is a component of the government sector team. AirMagnet says it’s the “only infrastructure-agnostic wireless security solution” that has received FIPS 140-2 compliance, making it valid for use by many high-security government agencies in the U.S.

GovTech Magazine says the European public sector, has strongly embraced open source, embracing collaborative projects and support them with public money rather than let the marketplace decide which products will survive and prosper. Europe’s strong support for open source means that innovation is often taking place overseas, not here in America.

Beaverton’s Open Source Development Lab, Government Open Code Collaborative and the Center for Digital Government would like to change that. Fortune Magazine believes companies that figure out how to create hardware, software, and Internet products for poorer citizens will be the dominant companies of the future.

Geocoding Web Pages is easy. Location-tagged content might encourage neighborhood blogging.

The incredibly wonderful DC Metro Blog Map a case in point. It’s easy to use. Just roll your mouse over the transit map. Every community center should have a blog. Make them available on mobile phones though WinkSite. A-9′s Amazing Yellow Pages has created a virtual walk-though of many cities. Every storyfront, every building, in one continuous strip.

Broadband wireless puts it in hand.

Ashland Fiber, Tacoma’s Click Network, Lafayette Fiber and iProvo are some examples of public fiber projects. UTOPIA, a consortium of 14 Utah cities, is deploying and operating fiber to every business and household within its footprint. Some legislators would rather lock ‘em out.

A new white paper (pdf) by the Center for Digital Government (CDG) on the RFP for CALNET II, seeks a single contractor for the California public sector telecommunications system. The CALNET I involves two telecommunications providers, SBC and MCI.

Political agendas may drive the left-leaning Sascha Meinrath.com (okay, and DailyWireless) and the right-leaning Heartland Institute. That’s okay. Agnostic studies will cost you the big bucks.

Decisions to implement city “clouds” COULD be based on objective cost/analysis. Like everything else. What’s wrong with considering local needs? WiMAX, using glorified access points, should propel it into the vanguard of broadband delivery says one Frost & Sullivan analyst. Why not deploy it? Coffee shops will.

Why force taxpayers to pay millions to cellular operators if police and fire can run their own broadband network? Privatizing police, fire and emergency communications though Sprint/Nextel may be viable – sometimes.

Let the municipalities decide. Sometimes it pencils out. Sometimes it doesn’t. Technology will get faster, cheaper, better. Get used to it.

Telecommunications is going through a wrenching re-invention with broadband wireless. Old assumptions and economic models are out the window.

Your representatives are being faced with a virtually unlimited pot of cash from telcos, dedicated to preserving their stockholder value at any cost. Academics will be pulled in too. As technology marches forward, time will likely show these “politicians” for what they are. Weak.

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), by the way, has announced that its free open source mesh networking software is now available for download. The purpose is to make community-wide wireless networking as cheap and easy as possible.

Judge Percy Mettrick, Justice of the Peace: This is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that happens here is really important. — High Noon

E-Week reviews some of the anti-muni wireless legislation while the DailyWireless City Cloud Report reviews some “city clouds”.

Related DailyWireless stories include Proxim’s 700 Mile Cloud, NYC’s Next Big Thing, Metcalf’s Law, Small Town Get’s Navini Broadband, Korea Gets WiBro, Political Clouds & the Write Spot, D.C. Hotspots, Treasure of Rio Rancho, Philadelphia’s City Cloud, Daytona Gets WiMax, Intel Inside Clearwire, ClearWire launches PreWimax in Jacksonville, NextNet Promotes Mobilized Backbone, WiMax Switcharoo, Datona Beach – Live, Intel Talks Up Wireless Media, Alvarion Promotes Mobile WiMax, Intel WiMax in China & South Africa, WiMax for Redline & Cambridge, Sprint + Nextel = Cable?, Will 802.20 Challenge WiMax?, WiFi Vrs WiMax, Highway Patrol, Spectrum Cowboys, Regional Roaming Roundup, Unlicensed Spectrum: The Sum of All Fears, FCC Opens 3.5 GHz Band, National Wireless ISPsCity Cloud Updates, BelAir & Nomadix Team, WiMax Backlash, CapWIN Becomes Self-Aware, SBC Unwires State Parks, Bellair + Lucent for City Clouds, City Clouds Sell Out?, Anti-Municipal Broadband Kit, West Hollywood WiFi, Florida Unwires 250 Schools, Broadband Manifesto, Philly Fallout, Philly Negotiates a Cloud, Verizon Blocking Philly Cloud?, Low Income Housing Connection, Digital Divide Solutions, SBC Fiber Plans, Taipei Unwired, Unwired Countries, WiFi Vrs WiMax.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005 at 4:11 am.