more on more on San Francisco receives more than 24 Wi-Fi bids

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>
Date: October 4, 2005 3:27:27 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] more on more on San Francisco receives more than 24  
Wi-Fi bids


At 12:23 PM 10/4/2005, Glen Fleishman wrote:


> Kenneth_Mayer () Dell com on 10/4/05 at 2:05 PM wrote:
>
>
> > Dave, something that occurred to  me as we move towards a society of
> > open wi-fi within the cities. What are they going to consider with
> > blocking inappropriate stuff?  Everyone is going to ask? Who will
> > govern
> > this and decide what is good and what is not? Also, what happens when
> > someone starts to down load torrents on their laptop, the speeds they
> > are talking about are a lot faster than dial up? Anyone know of
> > anything?
>
> The big issue is how the contract is written and what entity is
> actually operating and in charge of the network. Before Philadelphia,
> most municipal networks weren't arm's length: as far as I can tell,
> fiber and wireless alike were being built as city/town projects with
> sometimes private vendors doing the initial contracting and sometimes
> ongoing maintenance.

As a wireless ISP ourselves, LARIAT.NET has proposed a model in which
the municipality provides the infrastructure and some localized content
(e.g. city guides, announcements, etc.) but multiple ISPs furnish users
with access to the outside world.

In the model we envision, each provider would be free to use any  
business
model it liked -- advertising-supported, subscription, pay-as-you-go,
etc. They'd pay for maintenance of the system according to the share of
the bandwidth they used, and would be responsible for monitoring for
abuse. The ISP which admitted the unthrottled Bit Torrent user or the
massive repository of illegally copied music or "warez" to the
network would be on the hook for the bandwidth and responsible for
enforcing an acceptable use policy. This would keep such matters out of
government hands as much as possible.

In short, we envision municipal Wi-Fi not as competition for commercial
providers but rather as a way of enabling them via public infrastructure
-- in the same way that public roads make it easier for everyone from 
delivery services to plumbers to reach their customers.

This sort of public/private partnership is healthy. One which favors one
provider to the exclusion of others, or undercuts all of them by giving
away what they sell to make a living, is not.

--Brett Glass



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