MuniWireless

Several of you have asked for the link to the segment on CNBC Power Lunch last Friday (Feb 9) where I was a guest. Here it is: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17071295. The segment was too short for a real debate.Several of you have asked for the link to the segment on CNBC Power Lunch last Friday (Feb 9) where I was a guest. Here it is: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17071295.

The segment was too short for a real debate. What I said was that today most cities hire a private provider such as EarthLink or MetroFi to deploy and run their municipal wireless networks. I never said that this is the appropriate model for everyone. I was just giving a state of the market report.

Even those that spend public funds (such as St. Cloud, Florida) outsource the operation of the network to a private company. In St. Cloud’s case, it’s HP.

That does not mean privately financed and run networks are appropriate for every city or county. Each one has to decide for itself. In some cases, publicly financed networks are better, in others they’re not.

What I wish we had gotten into was how expensive bandwidth is in the United States. Leasing fiber backhaul (for a city wireless network) from one of the incumbents is very expensive and this is where municipally financed public broadband infrastructure can make a big difference. Wireless ISPs can provide more bandwidth for less money if the price of bandwidth in the US (e.g. fiber, copper) were a lot lower.