Update on Michigan muni Wi-Fi projects: wireless Oakland county and others delayed
The Detroit Free Press posted a good summary of city and county wireless projects in Michigan: Wireless Oakland county, one of the most publicized countywide wireless projects, has a running pilot program, but the county has delayed the expansion of the network throughout its jurisdiction. Similarly, Washtenaw county with its 28 square mile network, has run into difficulty convincing investors to expand its network. Click here to read about what’s happening in Wayne, Macomb and Livingston counties.
In none of the projects do we find an exhaustive plan to use the networks for county or municipal applications such as public safety, automated meter reading, traffic management and so on. Sure, some of the RFPs talk about it, but not in great detail, which leads me to believe that there is NO plan at all.
All of them rely on private funding, a polite term for getting infrastructure and services for free. Do contractors build public infrastructure — roads, bridges and tunnels — for free? Does IBM provide services such as outsourced technical expertise for free? Do enterprise software companies such as Oracle and SAP give away their software and implementation services for free? Sometimes they do but only if there is a definite payoff in the near future, usually in the form of an agreement already signed by the customer to order more software and services.
What lies at the heart of the municipal broadband debacle is this: people confuse telecom infrastructure with telecom services. It’s clear to me that government should not deliver telecom services, unless there’s no one else that can do it (rural areas where there are no ISPs). But shouldn’t they fund, wholly or partly, telecom infrastructure such a fiber optic and wireless networks and allow private companies to deliver services on those networks, while also relieving those companies of the burden of funding infrastructure which is very expensive and requires a longer period for getting a return on the investment?
I will address this in a separate commentary.
In the meantime, read this:
Swedish firm makes a business out of net neutrality
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