Cities Unleash Free Wi-Fi

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: October 20, 2005 12:52:36 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Cities Unleash Free Wi-Fi
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com


[Note:  This item comes from friend Esme Vos.  DLH]

Cities Unleash Free Wi-Fi
By Michael Grebb
Story location: <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/ 
wireless_special/0,2914,68999,00.html>

02:00 AM Oct. 19, 2005 PT

In November, Dianah Neff will go to Africa for the first time in her  
life.

She’s not going for a safari or to buy souvenirs. Instead, she’ll be  
meeting with local officials in Douala, Cameroon, to discuss how they  
might set up a municipal Wi-Fi network.

"They have no wired infrastructure," explains Neff. "They’re looking  
to wireless to connect the entire town."

Neff should know. As the chief information officer in Philadelphia  
Mayor John Street's Office of Information Services, she heads a $49- 
million project -- known as Wireless Philadelphia -- to blanket the  
city in a broadband wireless network. The city plans to begin  
construction by year-end, administering the network through a  
nonprofit group that will partner with private vendors and ISPs.

The project has attracted much attention and, in the process, Neff  
has become an evangelist of sorts for municipal broadband wireless  
networks, often dispensing advice to other cities that want to follow  
in Philly’s footsteps.

"We’re not as competitive as you see in the private sector," she  
said. "We tend to share and help each other. I have spoken personally  
with over 75 cities and counties about this, as well as some foreign  
countries."

Municipal governments around the U.S. have complained for years about  
the lack of affordable broadband options for their citizens, and many  
are taking matters into their own hands.

The answer, according to Neff and a growing chorus of other city  
officials, is to build municipal broadband wireless systems based on  
existing Wi-Fi technology, which has already proven itself at  
airports, coffee shops and within many home networks.

Many cities, concerned about their ability to respond to terrorist  
attacks or natural disasters, also hope to beef up their sometimes  
unreliable emergency communications systems using Wi-Fi technology.

Vendors that build and manage wireless networks report unprecedented  
municipal interest over the last couple of years, with requests for  
proposals streaming out of city halls everywhere.

"Overall, I'd say it's very active," said Lee Tsao, director of the  
global solutions group for Pronto Networks, a wireless provisioning  
company in Pleasanton, California. "In the last four months, we've  
signed up about 10 cities." Todd Myers, founder and vice president of  
corporate development for AirPath Wireless, a provisioning firm based  
in Waltham, Massachusetts, put it more simply: "We're swamped. There  
are just so many RFPs out now."

In general, cities aren't simply looking at creating hundreds of Wi- 
Fi "hot spots" to supplement those that already exist. Rather,  
officials want to extend Wi-Fi-based broadband access over large  
areas. To do this, they're deploying "mesh networks" that essentially  
daisy-chain Wi-Fi antennas in succession, with each group leading  
back to an internet router.

The configuration creates a series of "hot zones" that interconnect  
into a sort of wireless peer-to-peer system, which can intelligently  
manage traffic across the network. It also brings down costs because  
cities need not deploy a separate router for each individual hot spot.

Major U.S. cities planning municipal Wi-Fi networks include San  
Francisco, Chicago, Denver and Miami Beach. Portland, Oregon, just  
released plans for an ambitious citywide Wi-Fi network on Sept. 16. A  
number of smaller and mid-sized cities (where wired broadband access  
can be spotty) are also looking into municipal Wi-Fi.

In late September, research firm MuniWireless.com forecast that U.S.  
cities and counties will spend nearly $700 million over the next  
three years to build municipal wireless broadband networks.

Of course, many experts wonder whether these planned municipal Wi-Fi  
networks will fulfill all of their promises.

"I won't say that they're taking a stab in the dark, but that's what  
it seems to be," said Greg Wilburn, a technical sales consultant at  
GTSI, a Washington, D.C., company that supplies technology solutions  
to the government. He said deploying a ubiquitous mesh network across  
a city isn't easy or cheap. "That's hard to do without spending a lot  
of money," he said.

Roland Van der Meek, a senior partner at Palo Alto, California,  
venture-capital firm ComVentures, said he doubts most cities will be  
able to maintain such networks on their own -- especially if they try  
to offer free or artificially cheap access. "Since when is the  
government into running a utility?" he said. "The economics are  
crazy. You've got to market it. You've got to make people aware of  
it. What government is in that business? It doesn't make sense to me."

Even some of the vendors helping cities make their municipal networks  
a reality have cautioned cities against overextending themselves.

"It's the financial burden that it brings, the infrastructure  
management," said Greg Phillips, CEO of AirTegrity Wireless, which is  
helping to build municipal wireless networks in Lake Tahoe and Reno,  
Nevada, as well as a public-safety network in Austin, Texas. "You've  
got to have a ton of people out in the field."

As a result, many cities are partnering with private companies. "Just  
because a city wants it in their town doesn't mean they want to own  
it and operate it," said Phil Belanger, vice president of marketing  
for BelAir Networks, which helps build large urban Wi-Fi networks.  
"There's no cookie-cutter approach in every city."

AirPath's Myers said many cities may retain network ownership but  
eventually contract out its management. "Some cities will try to  
manage it and just say, 'This is a pain in the neck,'" he said.

That may be true, but many cities also see municipal Wi-Fi as a  
larger social program. For them, it's a chance to bridge the elusive  
"digital divide" -- the gulf between those with access to broadband  
services and those who either can't afford it or simply can't access  
it from their impoverished part of town.

[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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