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

[Jim Youll]

On May 17, 2005, at 7:12 PM, Stephen Ronan wrote:
> 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.

They can't demand it but the city any organizer of a large-scale 
project is in an excellent position to negotiate proper agreements to 
make the process work however they want it to. Even if Speakeasy 
weren't in the market, for maybe $100 to $200 a month anyone can buy a 
circuit that allows some sort of small grade sharing or resale. This 
project doesn't need to change laws if it can simply negotiate what it 
will be buying in bulk. But cities are lousy negotiators. They oughn't 
be in business territory.

Approaches are available that don't need anything more than a willing 
counterparty. Speakeasy's already set the bar. Others could be brought 
around.

> 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 financial justification for a massive Philly-style build-out should 
look something like this:
[100% == 100% of whatever area the project wants to cover. For 
Philadelphia, this is 100% of the city core]
1) the userbase is diffuse, requiring 100% build-out to reach it all
2a) if 100% build-out can be achieved, then and ONLY then can the 
system be self-sustaining because the distance between users prevents 
success of anything smaller than 100%
2b) OR some users are so isolated that a government grant is the only 
way to reach them. Commercial vendors don't go there
3) commercial startups failed because they could not build-out 100% at 
day 1; no sustaining level exists below the 100% level

I've not seen any evidence that this is the case. The above was in fact 
similar to the case for the nonprofit ISP I helped create in the 1990s, 
but things were different at that time and in that place. That pattern 
is not found here.

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

But I will not be surprised to see it used as a favorite prop to 
demonstrate the public's "need" for this project.

>> 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?

If this is so do-able, why don't we have it already? If it's too early 
to know how they'll fare, why in the world is a municipality about to 
take on risk? Google doesn't count unless they're going to do the same 
nationwide or unless you're saying that corporate philanthropy will 
carry this project. Metricom? deadish, no? The company Simson was 
involved with here in Boston, many others... there's a lot of litter 
out there. The for-profit wireless resellers using cheap AP's and DSL 
are having trouble finding the right price point BECAUSE there's 
already so much free wireless floating around in the air. Why another 
wireless ISP now?

>> 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.

Well it's all in the air, no? that's the concern :) Pardoning the pun 
but there seems to be something proceeding, and the agenda for the 
first meeting sounds more like a mid-course meeting than a starting 
point.

I read into the Boston materials that a driving motivation (judging 
from the invitees who will "respond" to the presentations on thursday) 
is to somehow rebalance some "advantage/disadvantage" by providing 
high-speed streaming bits to people who don't have them now. But that's 
not very substantive. This thing seems to be happening right now 
because the whiny press and "embarrassed" pols are trying to keep up 
with the neighbors and then back-filling with ready-made reasons like 
"the disadvantaged" without concrete meaning.