[Rooftops] Re: [msgs] City of Boston WI-FI "summit" Thurs @ Museum of Science (9am - 1pm) (fwd)

[Stephen Ronan]

On Mon, 16 May 2005, Jim Youll wrote:

> I have hard time getting behind initiatives like this because with rare 
> exception:

I'm not sure I know just what you mean by "initiatives like 
this". Thus far about all we we have to show for the Boston 
initiative is a draft analysis (not a plan for the future) to be 
released this week and an opportunity on May 19th to discuss it.

Perhaps next there'll subsequently be a Mayoral task force to 
develop a plan. But that's not clear at this point.

But maybe you mean initiatives like putting up streetlights and 
keeping them lit, putting in water mains and delivering fresh H2O 
to the citizens (including free fountains in the park), paving 
streets and keeping them more or less clear of snow, attaching a 
couple dozen WiFi mesh nodes per sq mile to lamposts and 
connecting a few of them as gateways to the Internet, maintaining 
a sewer system, or establishing libraries.

> 	- they aren't designed to be self-sustaining and tend to operate with 
> an infinite subsidy

Take streetlights and libraries... how would you prefer they be 
funded?

> 	- they're deployed with too little forethought and too much excitement

Well, I'm guessing you weren't up late last night reading "Fast & 
Easy: The Future of WiFi & Beyond In the City of Los Angeles" 
just recently issued by the Mayor's WiFi & Beyond Executive 
Advisory Panel. That panel, which included representatives of 
SBC, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner, managed to attain a 
majority consensus (with some dissenting by the cablecos) for 
such excitement as this:

"Personalized Broadband Services: Even though the provision of 
access to broadband services at municipal facilities is a 
necessary first step in the achievement of our proposed mission, 
within the space of five years we believe most people would not 
want to travel to a central lcation to gain access to broadband 
networks. Fortunately, the inherently lower cost structure of 
[WiFi and Beyond] WAB technologies makes it possible for the City 
to begin to address this issue in ways that were outside its 
capacity in the past. <i>While some aspects of the Digital Divide 
such as devices, service performance, and education are beyond 
the scope of this panel's work, in the time span of five years, 
we believe the City should also have a plan that will address 
this issue of convenienet access to the Net for all its 
residents, businesses and visitors that takes into account both 
public and private activities.</i> It can help address these 
other factors by empowering community based non-profit 
stakeholders and leveraging grant opportunities to undertake such 
a role."

Well, if that's not more than enough excitement for one day, one 
can read the first paragraph under Financing, which makes a bold 
call for development of a "Decision-Making Calculus".

Or, if you prefer, there's the citywide vaporware WAN being 
discussed once in a while since way back when in Cleveland.


> 	- they seem to forget that people don't use laptops in 
> parks, and won't, and maybe oughtn't, for a number of reasons


I'm somewhat sympathetic to that perspective. But perhaps the 
folks pictured here have better backlit screens or eyesight than 
I do: http://www.bryantpark.org/amenities/wireless.php
I have little interest in combining laptops and direct sunlight. 
But when I get off the bus in NYC in the dark of the evening, 
Bryant Park seems to me like it could be a pretty good place to 
catch up on email now that the EasyInternet joint around 42nd 
street has closed.

> 	- there's nothing magical about wireless connections that "bridges the 
> digital divide"

My first home was a housing development that the last page of 
this week's NY Times Magazine reminds me consisted, together with 
its neighbor development, of "110 apartment buildings, from 13 to 
15 stories each, housing more than 25,000 people on the 
equivalent of 27 Manhattan blocks." If there's another way to 
bring ubiquitous broadband accessibility to folks living there as 
inexpensively as WiFi could do it, that other system also to my 
mind has some magical qualities to it. But it sure would take 
quite a while to run MS Windows Antispyware (Beta) and then 
AntiVir consecutively on all the machines there after upgrading a 
bunch of them from Win 98 to Win 98 service pack whatever and 
then from IE 5 to IE 6 so that the Linksys adapters could install 
since they need at least IE 5.5 and the newer Cisco ones wouldn't 
install at all with earlier Windows than 2K. Which may be the 
kind of issue you're quite correctly alluding to.

> 	- they're pushed by self-interested vendors chasing a permanent 
> money-stream
> 
> I would sure like to know what BTS Partners stands to gain from this event, 
> considering that their business is the design and deployment of networks.

Not to mention that they list Verizon as a prime partner and 
Verizon has not been neutral to municipal WiFi efforts. FWIW my 
initial brief impression is that the chap who seems to be leading 
their effort on the study has a genuine enthusiasm for serving 
the public well with an independent study and that Verizon wasn't 
providing intimate early counsel on its development. And BTS is
not charged with developing a plan, but rather with describing 
current capacities and delineating some potential models (such as 
those that have been consistently outlined already elsewhere).

> Another of the sponsors is Boston WIreless Advocacy Group (BostonWAG) whose 
> founder is Michael Oh, who can himself be often heard promoting the Newbury 
> Open Net as a means of advertising his computer services business, Tech 
> Superpowers.

Michael is one of three founders, the others don't have any 
related business connection that I know of. I've attended a bunch 
of the group's meetings; it seems thus far to operate by 
consensus among those of us who show up, and it's clear that 
Michael's interest in the potential of WiFi stretches way beyond 
his business interests. I suspect you and he would agree a lot 
with each other, probably more than with me about the need for a 
deliberate carefully planned approach.

>Confusingly, BostonWAG seems to be advocating simple open access 
> points [10] like the access point in my living room, something that's very 
> different from the promise to paint an entire 3D city with high-speed data to 
> solve decades of division between poor and rich people. BostonWAG also has 
> stake a claim to a bigger mission of collecting wireless best and worst 
> practices, but so far the website only shows about 10 reviews of coffee shops 
> offering wireless Internet access... that's not quite the same thing, and a 
> real understanding of best and worst practices may require empirical data 
> that simply do not exist at this early point.

It's a small new organization with a budget of something in the 
order of zero dollars and as many cents. And it has done quite a 
bit already all things considered, including holding a very 
lively preliminary forum at the Boston Public Library a few weeks 
back. I'd encourage you to come to its next Meetup. And drop by 
and say hello at my office if you're ever near Broadway and Lee. 
Or perhaps I'll see you at the Summit bright and early Thursday 
morning at the Museum of Science (they'll have free WiFi, 
fortunately, which'll make it easier for some of us to attend).

G'night,

[...]

   - Steve