Continue from yesterday post : Municipal Wireless Searches For Its Connection
But not everyone agrees with the muni Wi-Fi vision. For example, San Francisco’s PRI (Pacific Research Institute) has been an outspoken opponent of city-subsidized Wi-Fi for years, and it claims in its latest research report that the few projects already active have been “disasters.” Over the years, initial plans for publicly funded muni Wi-Fi evolved into partnerships with private ISPs such as EarthLink and even ad-supported solutions from companies such as MetroFi. Regardless, PRI researchers counter, many cities have floated municipal bonds or non-interest bearing loans to companies in order to underwrite these efforts. In its report of 52 existing networks, PRI argued that despite greater private industry involvement, “muni networks demand constant reinvestment. The ones in our sample have raided more than $840 million from taxpayers over 20 years. Analysis of the total track record of muni systems shows that 77% of the time they don’t pay their way.” When cities get in the ISP business, they undermine private enterprise, PRI says. Worse, politicians, their turf wars, and interest groups only prolong the process of getting access to the people who need it most.
Others counter PRI’s claims with their own case studies of proven success. Tropos Networks, which provides the wireless mesh infrastructure for many muni systems, points to a successful project in Chaska, Minn., where citywide Wi-Fi let 28% of residents to get high-speed access for $16.99 per month and expects to break even by its fifth year of operation. Companies such as EarthLink and MetroFi say they are bearing the cost of building out these networks and financing them with low-cost subscriber fees and, in some cases, advertising. In the Portland, Ore., project, which just achieved 5% coverage of the city, MetroFi offers users two models: For $19.95, users can get speeds of 1Mbps with a 256Kbps upload channel that’s best for mobile access rather than as a replacement for higher-bandwidth cable or DSL access. But users can also get a free version of the service by accepting advertising (two persistent banner promotions on the system’s browser). Network providers argue that the modest speeds of the systems and the focus on outdoor and mobile usage keep muni Wi-Fi from competing directly with the incumbent ISPs. And, as far as cost to the cities, in many cases the city tself is donating only property by letting the networks put hundreds of Wi-Fi nodes and access clusters on streetlights and public buildings.
High Expectation
Access points are what any citywide wireless network needs in abundance. “We have about 25 to 30 per square mile,” says van Haaften about the build in Portland, Ore. What he calls “magicians’ high hats” sit atop streetlights everywhere, but each one only provides coverage of 300 to 500 feet. A muni network requires a lot of hardware: Connecting all of these high hats is 10 gateways or broadband access points. These points use encrypted and secure wireless connections to aggregate the Wi-Fi access points and backhaul all of that traffic to the main fixed wireless hub in the city, which connects to the Internet. There will always be pockets of terrain and blind spots behind buildings that will keep citywide Wi-Fi from achieving 100% coverage, but companies such as MetroFi aim to reach 95% of a city.
With so many potential users in a city accessing an 802.11b/g node at once, one would expect some slowdown, but Haaften says they have not experienced clogged networks. More than 30 simultaneous users might show some hit in service, but generally people are using public Wi-Fi for low-bandwidth activities such as quickly checking their email. Security is also a concern with public Wi-Fi. When you move a notebook from a home or office environment out into the field, generally it retains the same rules for file and drive access. In order to keep others on a public Wi-Fi network from snooping out your system, most users will have to take special care with their “share” settings.
The biggest choke point for municipal wireless now is indoor penetration, however. “We aren’t at the phase where it is truly easy to use indoors,” says van Haaften. “We’re still perceived as an outdoor network for sitting in the park or on the patio.” Oftentimes 802.11x signals degrade quickly when passing through exterior walls, so any reliable indoor reception generally requires a signal booster of some sort. But this is also the weak point in public Wi-Fi that keeps these networks from being viable threats to cable and DSL providers.
Although municipal Wi-Fi has been slow in starting, many predict that user demand will accelerate coverage quickly in the next few years. Many metropolitan areas anticipate tremendous savings in mobile phone service alone, as managers anticipate that mobile VoIP will be one of the most important uses of reliable Wi-Fi coverage. Research firm ON World interviewed hundreds of city managers recently and speculated that there could be up to 26 million paying users for municipal wireless services by 2011.
[tags]Wide Area Wireless Network[/tags]
