Comments on: How SF and other cities could have created citywide Wi-Fi access: the easy way

By: Brad Templeton

Brad Templeton — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:21:05 +0000

Esme, unless the coffee shops work hard to put antennas outside this doesn’t work too well. At the house we were using recently in SF’s sunset, there were several coffee shops with wireless, one only 100 feet away, but the wireless node was inside the coffee shop and I could sometimes see a glimpse of it but never get a connection. So I bought DSL.

You would need the coffee shops to do high-quality, high antenna installations to get much out of this.

By: WLAN: FON als Alternative zu gescheiterten US Projekten?

WLAN: FON als Alternative zu gescheiterten US Projekten? — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:28:05 +0000

[...] broadband) in cities like SF. Just give it a push like this and you have citywide Wi-Fi.” http://www.muniwireless.com/2008/05/17. Es bleibt spannend und am Ende stellt sich immer die Frage: “Wer zahlt die Zeche?”. [...]

By: WLAN: FON als Alternative zu gescheiterten US Projekten?

WLAN: FON als Alternative zu gescheiterten US Projekten? — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:28:05 +0000

By: David

David — Wed, 21 May 2008 07:03:41 +0000

Agreed. But, doesn’t any kind of requirement by the gov. mean that the gov. therefore is somewhat responsible? After all, it wasn’t the venue making a free choice. Sure, users access networks at their own risk. Are they told this? Are they told of the dangers? Isn’t it also the role of the gov. to protect it’s citizens? To me, it is like the gov. making unsafe roads and saying “drive at your own risk, we do not patrol this road”.

By: Esme Vos

Esme Vos — Wed, 21 May 2008 06:35:40 +0000

Even today, one uses a cafe’s Wi-Fi service, whether free or paid, at one’s own risk. It’s your responsibility to figure out how to protect yourself. The venue owner is not responsible for the activities of the users on the Wi-Fi network. The users are responsible for that.

By: David

David — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:31:32 +0000

With any kind of requirement for WiFi, would it require any kind of security? What about lawful interception?

Are we telling people that all open access points are good, safe, and legal to use?

What happens when a Cafe gets put on spam blacklists because of a visitor sending spam (or worse)? Would the venue owner be responsible for the activities of the users?

By: Glenn Fleishman

Glenn Fleishman — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:29:06 +0000

I thought of one other relevant point: In St. Cloud, Florida, developers are required to pay an assessment for new construction that adds free Wi-Fi access to that development. That, to me, seems totally in alignment with your goals, Esme. St. Cloud opted for free Wi-Fi, it’s a government program, and developers have to eat or pass along the cost of something that’s directly connected to the ultimate residents of the homes being built.

By: wifispecialist

wifispecialist — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:00:57 +0000

FON is also struggling in these days. this startup decapitated their employees 50 % total, shut down their offices in sweden, in benelux and in korea also, remarkable! reduced france and us. fired most so called, “top managers” who obviously had no visions but only burn VC. they dont make profits, dont get any ISPs in month, they are loosers also! so FON isnt any alternate wifi pathway. their CEO only produces constantly hot air, together with his blogging “friends”, who aren´t friends at all. thats all. forget FON!

By: Michael Weinberg

Michael Weinberg — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:20:04 +0000

Hi Esme, this is an interesting thread. Though I agree that there’s been a lot of pointless flames in the comments, there have been some reasonable points as well.

To address your actual post, there are a number of reasons that this makes very little sense to those of us in the US who have been working on these issues on the ground for many years.

1. One of the main reasons that municipalities have been interested in wireless is because there are areas that have no broadband service, or only T1, IDSL or ISDN, which are far too costly per bit for what you propose. Furthermore, most large providers explicitly do not allow connection sharing, even businesses sharing with their customers ala coffee shop.

2. As some other commenters have mentioned, most coffee shops here already Internet service, if it’s available, and offer it freely. In many instances, it probably serves neighbors reasonably well, but this topology is entirely inadequate to cover a city in wireless. It’s a good start, but by no means would result in the sort of coverage that you have been advocating on muniwireless.com. Also, based on the FON technical specs, there is no reason that it would be any better than the routers that most coffee shops are currently using. In short, what you’re proposing is basically what already exists in the United States. Your suggestion does not appear to bring anything novel to the table.

3. ISPs already compete fairly aggressively on pricing, to the extent they are able. The big issues in the US are the cable monopolies, and the ILEC near-monopolies. Unless there were an enormous regulatory effort to address those issues, you won’t see significant price drops just to serve coffee shops.

4. The suggestion that a certain business (coffee shops) should be responsible for providing an entirely unrelated service (internet access) is absurd, at least to those of us from the US (and I’m a raging liberal). It really makes no sense and would never, ever, succeed politically. Furthermore, the comparison to the French fiber requirement doesn’t fit. Paris is essentially requiring a new, more advanced infrastructure for new construction. This is akin to building requirements for earthquake or fire safety, where as your suggestion is like demanding that grocery stores hand out free gas.

As the President of an eight year old Community Networking non-profit, I certainly see value in encouraging every resident and business owner who can afford an internet connection to help out others by offering open wireless access. However, what you’re suggesting, is the same top-down foolishness that resulted in the failing municipal wireless projects across the country.

Any new communications infrastructure will either need to be fully funded and constructed by private parties–with the attendant costs for end users–or built by the community (either in a grass roots fashion or by the government), which requires community support that you won’t get from vendors and industry advocates lobbying governments with unrealistic promises and hype.

Michael Weinberg
President
Personal Telco Project, Inc.

By: Rory Conaway

Rory Conaway — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:15:02 +0000

Esme, I will address your comments directly. The first thing is that restaurants don’t have to offer restrooms at all. There is no law that says that. The law states that if there is a restroom, it has to be handicap accessible.

The second issue is the density of these Cafe’s. I will tell you they are few and far between. This idea would literally be technically useless in Phoenix for example.

In addition, Starbucks already has a paid service option. Are you saying you want to governmnet to break that contract and they have to give it away for free? That seriously smacks of socialism and wouldn’t fly in any court in the land. I can imagine that state Consitutions would get in the way in addition to the Federal Trade Commission. If that wasn’t enough, the ACLU would be all over this. Who polices the quality of service or even if it’s working? As you can see, you are crossing the line in a capitalistic society.

As I’ve said before, I believe many companies have been eyeing this market that either didn’t have the resources of MetroFi or Eathlink. However ,they have realistic business plans and technical staff capable of bringing this technology to fruition in a profitable and productive manner. I believe it will now flourish.