Wireless Cities. Next Step?

[stephendare]

Ten years ago, Council President Alberta Hipps and I worked on a plan to make Jacksonville the first Wireless City.

We sat down with Michael Molen from a company called Sanswire and Walt Bussells who was the head of the JEA at the time and had serious talks about keeping Jacksonville current with the upcoming technology.

It was my posit then, as it still is, that development tends to follow the transportation routes that carry profitable products.

Cities developed at the intersections of trade routes.   Rivers, Trains, and in the 20th century, Highways.

I argued in 99 that the new money was being expedited over high speed internet lines and that Downtown was doomed if we didnt have internet capabilities there.

For the record, we didnt.  In 99 only the city buildings were equipped with high speed internet or even cable television.   In order to get my loft fitted with a cable modem, the stupid company wanted to charge us 20 thousand dollars in order to hook up our block.

Wireless Internet seemed to be the best option, and I was so excited with it that we proposed an idea to provide wireless internet as a municipal utility.

Bussells thought that we could use the electrical lines and poles to piggy back signals for high speed access, and we studied a proposal by Sanswire to provide a system for the downtown and surrounding areas.

James Higbee was working on a low tech proposal that he had installed at the beaches and the outcome was the WIZ areas (wireless internet zones)

After Superbowl and the election of Peyton, a lot of the progressive ideas seem to have simply disappeared from the dialogue, not the least of which is the idea of internet as a municipal utility.

Other cities took up the idea however, borrowing straight from the excitement garnered by Jacksonville.

But it appears that the projects are foundering.

What ideas does anyone have to solve the problems listed in the article?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/22wireless.html?_r=1&ex=1363924800&en=573f6f85da176b70&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out

By IAN URBINA
Published: March 22, 2008

PHILADELPHIA â€" It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor.

Greg Goldman is chief executive of Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization set up to help administer the program. He said that about $4 million was needed to cover the rest of the city.

Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match Philadelphia’s plans.

But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be profitable led to sudden withdrawals by service providers like EarthLink, the Internet company that had effectively cornered the market on the efforts by the larger cities.

Now, community organizations worry about their prospects for helping poor neighborhoods get online.

In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity.

“All these cities had this hype hangover late last year when EarthLink announced its intentions to pull out,” said Craig Settles, an independent wireless consultant and author of “Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless” (Hudson Publishing, 2006). “Now that they’re all sobered up, they’re trying to figure out if it’s still possible to capture the dream of providing affordable and high-speed access to all residents.”

EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that “the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company’s strategic direction.” Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed.

For Cesar DeLaRosa, 15, however, the concern is more specific. He said he was worried about his science project on global warming.

“If we don’t have Internet, that means I’ve got to take the bus to the public library after dark, and around here, that’s not always real safe,” Cesar said, seated in front of his family’s new computer in a gritty section of Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. His family is among the 1,000 or so low-income households that now have free or discounted Wi-Fi access through the city’s project, and many of them worry about losing access that they cannot otherwise afford.

Philadelphia officials say service will not be disconnected.

“We expect EarthLink to live up to its contract,” said Terry Phillis, the city’s chief information officer.

But when City Council leaders here held a hearing in December to question EarthLink about how it intended to keep service running and complete the planned network, the company failed to show up.

Officials in Chicago, Houston, Miami and San Francisco find themselves in a similar predicament with EarthLink and other service providers, and have all temporarily tabled their projects.

Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said.

In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.

But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in the numbers that providers initially hoped, Mr. Phillis said.

Prices for Internet service on the broader market also began dropping to a level that, while above what many poor people could afford, was below what municipal Wi-Fi providers were offering, so the companies had to lower their rates even further, making investment in infrastructure even more risky, he said.

[Lunican]

The JAX WIZ signs are still up at the Landing, but I'm pretty sure it does not exist anymore.

[Lunican]

Wilson, NC has created a publicly owned utility called Greenlight that provides fast and cheap internet to its citizens. Apparently now Time Warner and Embarq are lobbying the state government to ban community owned broadband services.

If it has their attention it is probably pretty successful.

[Lunican]

Greenlight is actually not wifi, but fiber optic cable to the home.

[reednavy]

Why isn't Atlanta on there? They unveiled it this year with Comcast the provider.

[reednavy]

Maybe you can find a link reed!

http://apps.atlantaga.gov/wirelessatlanta/
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19900953/detail.html

[Steve]

I think Stephen was looking for free.  Atlanta's is not free.