And if they are thinking clearly, the mobile communication companies will help fund that effort.

I’ve blogged his comments at ReasonedResponse.Com, but find it interesting that here the comments both attack his ideas and attempt to defend the failed muni wi-fi fiasco.

Dave McClure

Local broadband infrastructure enables users to attract local telemedicine programs, town hall meetings, even virtual world settings for clubs, churches, organizations, education-related activities, events, all unique to meeting the community’s needs.

If an incumbent wants to gain access to the local broadband infrastructure, they can bid on providing reasonable wholesale pricing for residents. By the way, local broadband infrastructure, once in place, is free for all, and can be monitored and maintained without technical expertise. Open-mesh.com is one resource to consider.

Seems like a sound foundation for communities to build on. Wonder why there are no advocates for this approach?

You will see systems from us and several other companies coming out again. Just be patient.

Its a nice idea: “My point is that while the concept of municipal wi-fi is a noble one, it is wasteful to build a separate wide area network when the mobile operators have already invested in building cellular networks, which incidentally are better suited for wide area networks.”

Except its flat out wrong. Those networks AREN’T better suited for serving as a primary internet conduit for most people in the USA. There are drop outs, there are bandwidth limits, there are usage maximums, there are latency issues, there are significant coverage restrictions (3G is only available in cities), and there are high prices (compared to getting low cost DSL). Wide area “cell data” networks are very different from Wi-Fi mesh networks, and Wi-Fi network hardware goes up in speed by an order of magnitude every 5 years (first 802.11, then .11b, then .11g, then .11n, and so on).

And your other straw man: “Governments are not naturally suited to building or managing communication networks.”…

Correct, but irrelevant. Yes, some muni-wireless initiatives were backed by direct government involvement, but more of them weren’t. Philadelphia was run and operated and even designed by a non-profit and a private company. San Francisco was entirely operated by a private entity (or would have been). Many others have very little direct government involvement except where appropriate. In fact, significant government involvement has gone hand in hand with most of the many successes in municipal networks.

I would suggest you do some research before discussing further, so you can at least get your facts straight. I recommend you start with: http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/philadelphia_story http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/wireless_pittsburgh http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/ http://www.freepress.net/files/mb_telco_lies.pdf

Dana Spiegel Executive Director NYCwireless

A better solution is for government to limit its role to setting policy, and if needed, providing economic incentives for mobile operators to offer voice and data service to people who can’t afford it. This may seem like a tactical solution, and it is. The mobile operators get faster approval for new cell towers, tax credits, etc, and in exchange open their existing networks to support community access. Mobile operators, despite their flaws, are expert at building wide area voice/data networks. This resource is also already built out and available to use now. Basically all the operators need to do is to recognize any unregistered phone as a prepaid device with a limited daily usage quota.

My hunch is that this will also be a good thing for the mobile operators that embrace a program like this. The cost of supporting these users will be minimal if they are not displacing paying customers (an impact that can be limited via voice/data rationing). Many of these people will upgrade when they can afford it, and will probably stay on the same network. The people who never get out of skid row will at least have access to information and social services.

This can be complemented with high speed wireless access in public buildings, or by cajoling local businesses and community centers to offer wifi (or whatever becomes the dominant standard a few years from now).

So yes this is a tactical solution, but I think it’s worth trying in a few communities. If it doesn’t work out, it can be added to the list of failed models for providing community access.

There is the whole One Laptop Per Child movement that is getting cheap laptops distributed but most of those families can’t afford a $50/month mobile broadband access charge. It’s not the cost of a laptop (which can be as cheap as $400), it is monthly charges that rival electricity bills which price people out of internet access.

Freedom of speech and a free press are enshrined in the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution. These need to extend to the Internet. That concept is under attack, and it’s unclear if the courts will make that extension without additional legislation. That’s a decent-sized chunk of what the Net Neutrality advocates are up in arms about.

Municipal Internet access is another avenue towards freedom of speech online, by moving some of the blocks to free speech out of the hands of a corporation and into the hands of a municipal government. While there are plenty of unpleasant municipal governments and plenty of delightful corporations, the citizens only have direct control over the former. It is a lot easier to pack a town meeting or “vote the bums out” than it is to convince a millionaire CEO of a billion-dollar company to change policies. And even if you think governments aren’t transparent enough, they’re practically window glass compared even to publicly-traded firms, let alone privately-held companies.

So, until there are sufficient other safeguards in place to ensure that people can have their soapbox when needed, municipal Internet access will most definitely need a place.

Make it emergency-only (more or less the status quo anyway) or emergency+incoming only, you’re getting close to a genuine lifeline service, as opposed to giving away the average level of service people currently pay for, which is just economic suicide.

I’m really not convinced that the goal of “free” (i.e. paid for through other things) wifi really is that good, either. Widespread, yes; affordable, yes — but not “free”.

I’m very much reminded of the dot-com era here: an assumption that giving stuff away free is somehow intrinsically good, coupled with very shaky economics (both the notion that giving away their core service to everyone is even close to viable for any cellphone company, and the false assumption that the US is presently in a recession) which doom the plan from the outset. You can’t just omit economic reality as a detail to be addressed at some unspecified future date!

Without a champion with political power, how would such an idea even surface? Maybe such conditions can be attached to the reform of the Universal Service Fund, which seems pointed to divert USF fees toward broadband buildouts. But adding “free” lifeline services may not be part of any such deal. Sadly.

While your suggestion regarding a “wireless lifeline” service is a good one, and one that certainly would help a certain part of the population, your statements regarding muni-wireless and the general community wireless initiative are misguided and mis-representative of reality. Your perspective is very narrow and simplistic, and misses many of the more subtle and complex reasons behind muni-wireless and community wireless.

Now, I would say that all muni-wireless is good, nor would I say that it solves all problems. But there are many issues beyond “economics”, as you so crudely put it. What we’ve found, working in this arena for the past 8 years (yes, community wireless is a maturing field) is that there are 3 A’s: Accessibility, Affordability, and Adoption, all of which play a part in helping the dis-advantaged. And that only part of the story, because community wireless and muni-wireless seek to serve all of a city’s residents, not just its lower income ones.

Please keep talking about your idea, because it should be explored and discussed, but please be careful about how you stereotype and simplify the issues and solutions. And please don’t assume that your one idea is a complete solution. There are no complete solutions (as I speak about often in public), no single ways to solve our communities’ issues. The problems are multi-faceted, and the solutions must be as well.