Muni Wi-Fi still stymied by business, politics
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Columnist Craig Mathias says eventually all cities will deploy municipal Wi-Fi, but the system remains in its early stages because many business and political hurdles need to be overcome.
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The Internet service provider is hoping to find a buyer for its drastically scaled back--and doomed?--municipal Wi-Fi business, the CEO announces.
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CHICAGO - Plans to blanket cities across the nation with low-cost or free wireless Internet access are being delayed or abandoned because they are proving to be too costly and complicated.
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Meraki Networks&#39; plan to cover San Francisco with free Wi-Fi, with residents&#39; help, could be a way around the political and business barriers some municipal wireless projects have run into.The startup, partly funded by Google, believes it will succeed&#160;where EarthLink and Google did not: Building Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco at no cost to the city. It expects to finish by year&#39;s end, filling the whole city with 1Mbps coverage.The catch is that Meraki is footing the whole bill on this project so that&#160;it can learn how to roll out such networks for profit elsewhere. The good news, if the plan works, is that it could do so for less than $5 million, lower than the cost many other municipal wireless projects have run into. That&#39;s partly because of intelligence in access points and software, making the network more robust with fewer nodes, according to Meraki spokeswoman Erika Shaffer.Meraki will build the backbone of its network with solar-powered rooftop access points and fill out its coverage with smaller repeaters to sit in windows or on balconies. Both will be designed and built by Meraki and provided free to residents and businesses that agree to house the gear on their property in return for better coverage. All the nodes will be meshed, so Meraki won&#39;t have to get wired broadband links everywhere its access points go.The idea has potential in developing countries with little broadband, where Meraki sees its biggest market, but also in highly wired cities such as San Francisco, analysts said.A key advantage is that by asking users instead of the city for mounting rights for its gear, Meraki will bypass the rancorous political fights over contract terms like the one that slowed down EarthLink&#39;s initiative last year. But seeking volunteers also makes sure that however fully Meraki has actually covered the city by the end of the year, it is pretty sure to have coverage where people actually want it.&quot;You know exactly where your coverage needs to be, because someone just asked you for a repeater,&quot; said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua.Meraki believes it won&#39;t have any trouble getting people to host repeaters in their homes, based on its existing test networks in parts of San Francisco, Shaffer said. There are about 500 repeaters today, and about 40,000 people have used the network, she said.Another problem that would seem to solve itself, assuming the network and distribution system run smoothly, is the difficult issue of indoor coverage, said Craig Settles, an independent municipal network analyst at Successful.com. EarthLink&#39;s network was to be built largely on streetlights and electricity poles, which are well suited to mobile outdoor coverage, but not so good for providing home broadband to residents who can&#39;t afford wired alternatives, Settles said. Meraki&#39;s small repeaters are designed for indoor coverage in the home where they&#39;re located as well as to flesh out the whole network.On the San Francisco network, which Meraki will treat as a research and development cost, the company will test advertising as a possible revenue source for future deployments. When it approaches service providers that want to charge for access, it will also offer a billing system. Meraki has trials going on today with carriers in developing countries, Shaffer said.In places where most people don&#39;t yet have broadband, Meraki&#39;s approach could be an attractive low-cost alternative, analysts said. However, WiMax, which requires far fewer base stations than Wi-Fi because it has a longer range, also has relatively low costs and is already a competitor in those markets, Chua said.&quot;I doubt that Wi-Fi would be the dominant access medium in emerging markets,&quot; Chua said.
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these two uses of wireless technology have remained stubbornly irrelevant to many mainstream users, despite the benefits they might offer and the hype they often get in the press.
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Reuters has a story  about Gavin Newsom finally getting wifi and wanting to hookup San Francisco:  "SAN FRANCISCO  - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has set a goal of providing free wireless Internet activity in his city that sees itself as a vanguard of the Internet revolution."  ""We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service," he said in his annual state of the city address on Thursday. "These technologies will connect our residents to the skills and the jobs of the new economy."  The issue I have is that I'm not sure my tax dollars need to pay for this.  I'm also pretty sure that the city will screw it up.  Why not just do this.  Allow ...
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The debate over post-9/11 communications, network neutrality, and high-speed wireless is now centered around a struggle over the 700-MHz band going on in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, a hearing by Senate Commerce Committee over the upcoming 700-MHz auction raised several key issues.
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Business models followed technology too closely A year ago, hardly a week went by without news of a major municipal wireless project in the US, supporting free or subsidized access and a host of shiny business models. Now hardly a week goes by without news of the death of one of these plans.â¦
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Will there ever be a merger of national telecoms such as Telia-Sonera again? Politics makes it difficult.
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Fresno's airport is first to use a web-based wireless radar system to update flight information. Also: Ford announces just how strong a boost it will give Sirius & hellip;. Motorola gears up with a snowboarding jacket that does it all. & hellip;. and more.
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There could be trouble when metro-scale Wi-Fi systems run in the same areas as unrelated WLANs, but there are ways to minimize the effects of this interference, says columnist Craig. J. Mathias.
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New York is on the verge of becoming a wireless city, but not everyone is happy about the prospect.
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Radio interference that harms wireless network performance is a way of life, columnist Craig Mathias says. Fortunately, tools are available to help solve that problem.
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By Larry Sandler, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  Sep. 14--A pair of major national companies are now in the running to build a wireless Internet network in Milwaukee, city officials say.   Milwaukee-based Midwest Fiber Networks also is still seeking to establish Wi-Fi service.
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(InfoWorld) - Backers of a massive wireless network for California's Silicon Valley have yet to build promised test networks or complete a model agreement for local governments, but at least one executive expects those to be finished by year's end. The project has slid past its original scheduleÂ and still faces negotiations with about 40 municipalities spread across a 1,500-square-mile region, even as municipal wireless runs into tough times in neighboring San Francisco and elsewhere around the U.S. But despite gloomy media reports, organizers are promising results soon. A model agreement should be completed in the fourth quarter, said Anne-Marie Fowler, a principal at SeaKay Inc., part of the Silicon Valley Metro Connect vendor consortium that will build the project. That deal will be the template for customized contracts with each city. Proof-of-concept networks in Palo Alto and San Carlos should be completed around the same time, she said. The 1-square-mile test networks will first be open to city governments thinking about participating in the plan and then be available to the public for 60 to 90 days, she said. It's a brave forecast for a project that at one time was expected to start rolling out in January or February of this year and is still on paper. Participants blame ever-changing technology and the complexity of hammering out a deal covering multiple technologies and as many as seven different services. But in a shaky market for municipal wireless, any delay can cause jitters. A report in the San Jose Mercury News earlier this week said the initiative was in danger of collapse. It quoted Russ Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, the nonprofit group organizing the initiative, saying the group was ready to scrap the project. Not so, according to Seth Fearey, vice president and chief operating officer at Joint Venture, though he added that the group is always looking at how it can move the project forward and thinking about alternatives. Hancock was misquoted, he said. The group is still in talks with Metro Connect over the basic agreement they will bring to individual cities, and there are only a few things left to be resolved, he said. "It's up to the Metro Connect team to make this thing happen," Fearey said. "We're pushing them as hard as we can." Once the model agreement is drawn up, Metro Connect will take it to local governments and customize it for their needs. Cities would grant rights to facilities such as light poles for mounting radios, after which Metro Connect will be able to offer residents a subscription service. ButÂ the network is envisioned as more than just Wi-Fi.Â Metro Connect is considering pre-WiMax wide-area wireless, special networks for public safety and transit, and environmental sensor networks. Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM Corp., along with network builder and operator Azulstar Inc., make up the rest of Metro Connect. The Silicon Valley plan is different from failed deals such as San Francisco's, executives said. Metro Connect won't just build a network and count on advertisers or residential subscribers to support it, Fowler said. "We don't ask one revenue source to carry the whole day," she said. Many cities have expressed interest in paying to use the network for communications in the field and specialized functions such as meter reading, she said. The consortium is approaching schools and corporations about buying services, too. There will be a free ad-based service, but if ads don't support it, the service can still survive, she said. Some critics have said the plan, estimated to cost $100 million or more, is too ambitious. Craig Settles, an independent municipal network consultant who has worked with some cities in the area, has said the organizers should have started out with fewer technologies for a few targeted applications to build interest, then expanded later. But Metro Connect's Fowler says the complexity and scale, though they have caused delays, will generate enthusiasm. "We realized we had something bigger than what we thought," she said. "I would, of course, like to have started earlier, but ... I would not have wanted to start with a smaller vision." Â
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Microsoft Corp. has been doing some soul-searching about the future of municipal Wi-Fi for consumers. The company's market studies are finding end user woes, but also market potential.
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(InfoWorld) - EarthLink's current contract to build a municipal Wi-Fi network in San Francisco appears to be dead followingÂ a restructuring of the struggling Internet service provider. The deal, hammered out in months of negotiations last year and completed in January, calls for EarthLink to build a citywide network at no cost to the city and sell high-speed service to residents while Google provides a free, slower service over the same network. But after announcing layoffs of nearly half its workforce and a gloomier financial forecast, EarthLink said Wednesday it won't invest any more money in that business model. "We will not devote any new capital to the old muni Wi-Fi model that has us taking all of the risk by fronting all of the capital, then paying to buy our customers one by one," President and CEO Rolla Huff said on a conference call Wednesday morning. That includes currently planned networks where the company hasn't yet made capital investments, EarthLink spokesman Jerry Grasso confirmed. In San Francisco and other such cities, networks would have to be built under new arrangements. "We will approach them to discuss the needed changes to the business model," Grasso said. He declined to comment on the state of discussions with any particular city. San Francisco's deal with EarthLink has yet to be approved by the city and county's Board of Supervisors, where it faces fierce opponents. The deal is due for a vote in the Board's Budget and Finance Committee next week that could send it on for full board approval. But the changes at EarthLink appear to make the current contract a dead issue. EarthLink's municipal Wi-Fi woes come as the company struggles across most of its businesses and as the overall climate for municipal Wi-Fi changes. The promise of free networks supported by advertising or residential subscriptions has faded, and EarthLink and other network providers are looking to local government as "anchor tenants" that support the projects by buying services. Chicago, which had been talking with EarthLink and others about a citywide Wi-Fi project, dropped the plan this week, citing high cost and low subscriber interest. The company forecast municipal Wi-Fi capital investments of $30 million to $35 million in 2007 as it completes projects already begun in Philadelphia; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Anaheim, California, but is not forecasting any capital spending on municipal networks in 2008, Grasso said. Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, approached EarthLink earlier this year with proposed amendments to the Wi-Fi deal that he hoped would make it more palatable to opponents. However, he rejected the idea of anchor tenancy, saying the city's departments weren't ready to use the Wi-Fi network. Neither Peskin nor San Francisco city officials were immediately available for comment.