Brough Turner, chief technology officer at NMS Communications, recently drilled into the working paper from the New America Foundation, Wireless Pittsburgh: Sustainability of Possible Models for a Wireless Metropolitan-Area Network .
He criticizes the report, saying that in its analysis of sustainability it fails to mention “technology evolution or adoption rates of competing broadband services, i.e. cable and telco (DSL or FiOS).” He notes we’ve see Wi-Fi speeds rising as high as 100 Mbps in some of the products released in advance of the IEEE’s adoption of the new 802.11n standard. At the same time, equipment costs have dropped dramatically, spurring commercial deployments of free hot spots. Brough predicts a future where ”overlapping systems work better (despite their overlap) and the signals from isolated systems reach further” until consumer solutions reach the inner-city. He cites FON as a community-based solution that provides a secure high-speed service.
Clearly, Brough has opened a topic that is ripe for debate. We’ve seen communities such as San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan, embrace FON competitor, Meraki Networks, in the fall-out following the retreat of big commercial providers from the muni market. But their retreat has also shown that consumer solutions are subject to their own foibles.
I’d be curious to know your thoughts. Click here to read Brough’s comments and use the form below to add your own..
I’m the author of the report that Brough Turner “drilled into.” (http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/wireless_pittsburgh)
And if his central point is that “You can’t bet on stability,” I strongly agree.
My report points out that we can (roughly) estimate costs, but that there is large uncertainty over revenues from citywide wireless services. We try to extrapolate current demand forward because it’s the best we can do today, although this estimate could be low or high. Indeed, that is part of the point. It means that at the moment, even if it looks like citywide wifi might produce a modest profit, the rate of return in many cities is small compared to the risk, which may explain the recent actions of many ISPs. That also means the value of citywide wifi may depend in part on things other than pure profit, like whether a city government can make use of the network to improve public safety, or whether wifi is likely to improve tourism in an area where increasing tourism is a high priority.
Mr. Turner also says new technology such as 100 Mb/s wifi must be considered. The report does say that there is technology out there that could change the situation dramatically, although I would not list 100 Mb/s wifi as a leading contender. its an improvement, but it won’t change the signal reliability or the number of devices you need to cover a city, which is a big driver for cost. I see two technology changes that could be especially important, although there are others. One is wireless technologies with much greater range than wifi, which will reduce costs. Perhaps wimax. Perhaps something in the 700 MHz (TV) band, where signals travel further. The other is new approaches to mesh networks, where in effect, the consumer rather than the provider pays for much of the infrastructure. There are serious challenges here, related to network management, security, and quality of service, but people are working on it – including my lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
You can’t count on stability, but if you have to make a guess, its not a bad place to start.
In short, this report is intended as a snapshot of what things look like now. They may look quite different in a few years.
The synergy of FttP and Muni-WiFi can best be realized physically and commercially (higher capability and lower costs to the consumer) by taking the best of AT&T’s U-verse and Verizon’s FiOS then combine it with a wireless service overlay, using Patent 20080014932 Pending (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20080014932.PGNR.&OS=DN/20080014932&RS=DN/20080014932 ) methodology. Think of it as a data pipeline supplying a Wi-Fi soaker hose that runs along side. For background info, read the list of articles at http://del.icio.us/ernieJohnston
CU Ltr, eJ
Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful response, Jon. You make good points regarding non Wi-Fi technologies (WiMAX/700Mhz). I’m not sure we can realistically expect 802.11n to have a significant impact in public settings, although Novarum did report significantly better performance when testing muni networks with pre-n client devices. N’s improvements in range and speed, however, can’t be fully achieved unless there are N devices on both ends(client and access point). Considering the huge pool of legacy b,g, and a devices out there, it’s unlikely we’ll see communications at full N speeds any time soon. Networks communicating with the legacy devices will fall back to their speeds. N’s greatest promise seems to be in the enterprise where simultaneous upgrades on both the client and network sides can be planned and implemented.