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

[Stephen Ronan]

On Tue, 17 May 2005, Jim Youll wrote:

> If you want to bring WiFi to people, make it legal and safe to share 
> connections, and then give people the ability to make money from running 
> their own tiny neighborhood micro-sized access points... this takes away the 
> profit motives for the noisiest players in these activities, and thus hasn't 
> been considered in any of these citywide corporate-sponsored projects to my 
> knowledge as no über-designer organization is required to build the network, 
> since it's already there.

We discussed that at the community forum hosted by bostonwag at 
the Boston Public Library. I asked the BTS Partners chap whether 
he thought the city might, for example, condition its approval of 
Comcast and Verizon (as it tries to also roll out one-way video 
services) franchise agreements on their revising their terms of 
service to permit users to share Internet bandwidth with their 
neighbors. The former CIO of Somerville interjected that cities 
would not be permitted by the FCC to negotiate that as part of a 
franchise agreement, since the Commission claims relevant 
jurisdiction in regard to telecommunications and information 
services.

Of course Speakeasy.net already makes it legal and safe to share 
connections, and encouraging the kind of market you suggest makes 
sense to me, but given Speakeasy's own very small market share, 
it's not likely to be a large part of any solution any time soon, 
given a laissez faire municipal approach. In Philadelphia, 
they're aiming to rapidly aggregate demand for a service, run by 
a nonprofit corporation, that will enable entry of multiple ISPs, 
such as Speakeasy, that could facilitate the kind of market you 
favor.

> The ridiculous top-down approach they're toying with tries to custom-fit 
> expensive (yes, expensive) wireless signals into every nook and cranny such 
> that the rats in the subways could chatter away all night on tiny little voip 
> phones...  I also don't see the point of the survey. Surely the "enthusiasm" 
> will be used to bolster the cause, but what useful information could come 
> from a small, self-selected audience unfamiliar with what it will take to 
> roll out something of the scope that is being discussed? Of course everyone 
> wants WiFi!

I agree with you that the survey will provide little if any 
useful, new and unexpected information.

> Important question -- why have so many companies - with plenty of money - 
> gone into this space and failed? Don't say "salaries". Even community 
> projects need marketing, support and staffing, especially on the scale of 
> what has just been proposed.

I'm unclear how the space you're referring to is defined. Tropos 
is a company that comes to mind that I'd consider to be in this 
space... putting mesh WiFi nodes throughout residential and 
business districts of cities using city owned infrastructure like 
streetlights... and it seems too early to know how they'll fare. 
And I see Google is subsidizing some neighborhood connections and 
still staying afloat. What companies are you thinking of? 
Metricom? Cometa?

> This looks like another expensive experiment carried out for the benefit of 
> technology lovers and technology companies at the expense of the disadvantage 
> populations it's supposed to serve.

I think it may be useful to differentiate between say the 
Minneapolis approach and the Philadelphia approach, the latter 
being more apparently focused on ensuring relative benefit for 
economically disadvantaged individuals. I think the results of 
one approach of municipally-supported WiFi might well increase, 
and another reduce, relative disadvantage. What may happen in 
Boston remains very much up in the air.

   - Steve