Year-end Review: Economic Recovery Through Municipal Wireless Networks
The year 2009 started with municipal wireless left for dead by mainstream media, and it ended with billions in stimulus grant monies supporting the expansion of broadband throughout the world. From rural broadband expansion to making utilities smart, there is a brighter future for municipal wireless broadband networks and the applications support them. We have learned from failed municipal wireless models and can now move forward. There is a new direction: combined public-private wireless networks that offer sustainable financial models and create jobs, reduce energy use and health care costs, promote affordable education and improve national security. There are three reasons why these new models will be successful.
1. Financial Sustainability
What has changed and why did past municipal wireless business models fail? Looking back we needed to recognize that single public or private sector models had limited success even in densely populated areas. Neither pure public or pure private networks have sustainable long-term financial success. There have been some modestly successful models but even these were supported by a private sector anchor tenants or were subsidized in some way to make the broadband networks viable.
If you want to learn how to make these networks financially work, try to build a sustainable broadband business model for unserved and underserved urban areas through broadband stimulus funding (see the section below on Sustainable Broadband Tyrrell County). The key to creating sustainable financial models, whether they are for small towns or big cities, is to start by minimally combining public/private networks to cover the network costs. There are still billions being spent on expensive and inferior fragmented private network technologies in the area of public safety, transportation and utilities. We can no longer afford to maintain these private networks and should be directing the operational funds to shared wireless broadband infrastructures.
A recent FCC workshop offered insights learned from the experiences of state and local governments that have proactively addressed broadband deployment and adoption issues in their communities. With local, county and state budgets stretched thinly, shared broadband public/private networks could offer financial efficiencies and superior broadband wireless technologies. By learning from past successes and failures we now at least calculate area-specific sustainable business models verified by some empirical financial data from both sectors.
2. Technical Model
With 802.11n wireless capabilities at the network edge, we now have plenty of wireless bandwidth capability for Internet access at the wireless network edge. With all this bandwidth capability all we need to do is to separately prioritize, authenticate and secure network sectors, groups and applications. In fact both the broadband stimulus and the smart grid stimulus are mandating these security solutions as part of the grant requirements. Interestingly, it is the local wireless network edge that now has the greatest security and simplicity of offering multiple wireless services through Mobile Intelligent Network Edge Encryption (MINE Encryption).
To simplify how MINE Encryption works, we need to think in reverse about how wireless networks work today. Rather than the network telling you what you can have, your device tells the wireless network what can be securely authorized for network use. These services are predetermined and can be used for casual, on demand and always-on local wireless Internet services. The importance of this technology is that the local wireless network edge is now the traffic cop and can now securely offer services to any sector, venue and individual. The local wireless Internet edge is now smart and the wireless network backbone is just a dumb wireless Internet pipe waiting for instructions. This technology model offers an open platform for applications that will sustain municipal wireless networks now and into the future.
3. Societal Implications
Being able to securely offer local wireless broadband services can be financially rewarding. The transportation example below demonstrates how the local wireless Internet can save billions in medical costs, energy savings and wasted production hours just by adding a wireless intelligent traffic signal. The local wireless Internet will dwarf all current global Internet applications. In fact, the UK is betting their entire economic stimulus on deployments of these local wireless services.
The US federal broadband, transportation and smart grid stimulus programs also understand the tremendous benefits that could be gained by these intelligent local wireless services. Billions of dollars in public and private funding have already been released, and more grant monies are set to be awarded in the next few months. There is no venue that these new smart wireless capabilities will not affect.
In summary let’s put these opportunities in perspective and make a few New Year predictions. First and most importantly, the public-only and private-only municipal network models have failed in the past and should not be repeated. Neither sector can afford to run separate networks in a world where broadband wireless applications demand multiple sector use. In fact by combining public and private sector networks into one network, we actually increase the number of network applications available through geo network sharing.
The second capability that drastically changes the use of municipal wireless networks is putting security and intelligence at the network edge. This new capability now makes the wireless network edge the most secure point of the network while allowing network access and application use to any predefined group, venue or individual user. This security capability takes away the need for public- and private-only networks, thereby allowing these network assets to be shared. This open use capability offers the economies of a shared network while adding secured access to multiple revenue streams and generating savings.
The New Year we are entering offers a perfect combination of funding, technology and new models. These place municipal wireless not only back on the map, but also at the forefront of jump-starting our local economies. I stress the point “local economies”. Municipal wireless networks focus on the use of locally built, used and purchased network services. This means that the jobs, societal benefits and network revenues stay within the local wireless network community. Municipal wireless networks are here to stay and may be the single most important stimulus strategy to jump start the economic recovery.
Example: Sustainable Broadband Tyrrell County North Carolina
If you want to know how to make a successful countywide wireless business model try to build a sustainable business model for unserved and underserved broadband in rural areas. I did this by recently spending some time in the town of Columbia, North Carolina (not the larger city of Columbia South Carolina). The surrounding Tyrrell County is a beautiful rural and tourist area with historic homes and pristine natural settings with farming and tourism being its main economic base. There is a real need for wireless broadband capability with DSL Internet access only in a few select areas. Among the critical needs are providing a communications infrastructure for public safety and forestry officials and wireless sensors monitoring area farm soil conditions. If rural areas like this are to be economically viable even with federal stimulus for capital equipment, the model can only be achieved by sharing all available public and private sector communications infrastructure.
Columbia Mayor Mike Griffin is reviewing such a proposal. He recently stated, “Small communities like the one I grew up in have survived through the years by efficiently sharing all available county, town and private assets. That’s just how rural America works. Even then, from time to time we require federal assistance. I see no difference in our wireless decision making process. We can effectively support a sustainable wireless broadband network with the same decision-making principles we have made to support other regional needs in the past. The community must come together and share what we have available and to make this work.”
And they did. The community offered water towers and grain elevators for the placement of wireless base stations. A local network computer service firm offered technical support. Local chamber of commerce members and community organizations backed the plan and the largest county employer committed matching funds to support the grant. With more organizations coming, it looks like Tyrrell County will be able to present a sustainable broadband proposal for the second round of broadband stimulus funding. To make a rural broadband model work, it must have support from the entire community.
Example: Wireless Smart Traffic Signal
A single traffic intersection wireless radio access point is a good example of the need for multiple sectors, venues, agencies and individual access in emergency responses. Let’s fast-forward to a technically available application so we can understand the importance of shared wireless public/private networks. The day-to-day task of a wireless traffic signal access point is to capture infrared video signals for counting and monitoring traffic flow while receiving and sending information from other traffic signals. This allows real time traffic sensing capabilities that would drastically reduce traffic congestion, lower fuel costs and can even save lives.
This same infrared application could also give vehicles waiting at the intersection advance warning of a vehicle that is about to run a red light. Intersection collisions are the main cause of serious injures and death in vehicle accidents. They account for billions in disability costs.
To complete the traffic signal example, the demonstration continues with the response to a collision. The wireless infrared sensor senses a sudden stop in traffic, activates a video camera and geo senses the closest emergency response unit. The “see ahead” video from the collision alarms the command center and the nearest first responder vehicle point offering important staging video information (example: fender bender or need for jaws of life). The emergency response vehicles send an encrypted wireless signal controlling traffic lights for improved response time while sending a wireless emergency audio message to vehicles clearing upcoming traffic. This information is then reported to traffic report content suppliers while other intelligent wireless traffic lights adjust for the traffic flow changes in real time.
The responding emergency vehicles have interoperable in-vehicle wireless meshed communications that also double as access point signal boosters to the network backhaul connection. The traffic signal access point opens a communication link to the command center and hospital (e.g. transmitting incident information including vitals and monitoring to the hospital). Traffic is cleared and sensors send information for normal traffic routing. This example demonstrates the role of public-private wireless edge network sharing.
About the author
Larry Karisny is the Director of Project Safety.org and a consultant for the RUS Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER Discretionary Grants) and the R–Recovery Act – Smart Grid Investment Grant Program.
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Dear Larry,
Thanks for this exciting overview. This has been quite a year. The press can say what it wants. Moore’s Law holds sway here. iPhones now have the computing power of PCs circa 2004, and hundreds of millions of smartphones are now sold each year. 802.11n is now changing the game. We are entering into a world of pervasive wireless, and the localization of the internet.
As I recently blogged, Muniwireless is inevitable http://www.wiredtowns.com/2009/12/the-inevitable-future-of-muniw.html. A platform for community intranets is emerging that will support a suite of applications, services and experiences that will change how we interact socially and economically.
Now with intelligent devices hitting the market, local wireless networks can become as dumb as the internet itself, and as innovative a space. The internet has enabled the iPhone, Facebook, Amazon, because anyone with a new device, application, or service, has those dumb pipes to connect to.
What kinds of innovation can we expect in muniwireless, with all the intelligence now pushed to the edge? That’s up to municipalities to discover and develop.
We are currently speaking with a major U.S. city about deploying a large scale wireless network. We want to leverage the fact that this platform will be able to serve a multitude of purposes, public and private. The same network can have any number of SSIDs, provide connectivity for a number of verticals. Moore’s Law got us networking gear that worked well enough and devices that were powerful enough, Metcalf’s Law will make these networks ever more powerful as they grow node by node, application by application.
All said, from where I sit, the most difficult piece now is to establish these public-private partnerships. Getting the goals, timelines, and economic interests aligned, creating a common effort will be a greater challenge than the tech itself. The good news is, we now at last can have a common — and working — platform.
Sorry, but muni wireless is not a basis for economic recovery. That silly growth chart looks like the same “jobs preserved or created” fiction created by Obama’s minions. Don’t believe the hype.
The silly growth chart came from the UK not the US.
Marshall,
I can appreciate the difficulty in developing public-private partnerships but as shown in the traffic signal example it is now a necessity or we will be stopping life saving applications. Some applications deal in milliseconds and you can’t be running them on two separate networks.
Look at the some of the stimulus grants that have been awarded. You will find major private sector communication, utility and power companies at times exceeding the federal grant support. In addition to these private sector trends, you are seeing public sector security mandates coming from the federal government in area such as public safety, transportation and utility grids. I see that both sides at this point have to work together.
Dear Larry,
Only today I was asked to submit a proposal for a major WiFi network for public transportation. The first question I was asked was ‘are you familiar with working with city government?’ I have been working for eight years in fact with city government over various WiFi projects, mostly in NYC. The basic challenge I have faced is that businesses have to make money while municipalities are responsible first to their constituencies, to the public. There will always be two sets of agendas. Businesses, tech businesses, need to move quickly to capitalize on opportunities. Municipalities will have their own schedule depending on public pressure, criticism, availability of funding, political considerations.
All told though, we need WiFi, if only because the cell networks from the carriers are buckling under the demand for mobile data.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34634571/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Perhaps we should look at such partnerships from this lens. We’ll create WiFi Hot Zones in NYC, SF, and other for example, for muni purposes, in part by striking roaming agreements with AT+T and others. Building such networks is something my company, in partnership with Lemcon, my wireless network integrator, could absolutely do, if we had the necessary permissions for antenna locations (another major obstacle).
I did btw send your article along to the CTO of another city we are speaking to, so as to underline your case for shared open networks and smart edge devices.
If this is the year of wireless congestion, as the MSNBC article states, it needs to be the year we also collectively try to address that, and put some public services on that in the process.
Marshall,
I appreciate your real world insight to the need and difficulty of getting multiple public agencies and private sector partners to sit at one table. There are only three groups that need sit at one table and share infrastructure. You are working with probably the largest public sector owner of available fiber municipal assets in the US, the Department of Transportation.
In my experience with large municipals, I have found fiber being run at times to every traffic signal in a city. Put a wireless radio on that and you have a lot of available bandwidth. The other infrastructure players are utilities and public safety. Put these three together and you many find more available local network infrastructure than any local carrier has.
Your right, one side often doesn’t talk to the other side but in these economic times they are starting to look at alternatives. There is plenty of local fiber infrastructure in place and already paid for by taxpayers. It is shameful that these assets are not properly shared especially when it comes to supporting public safety. You are on the right track. Let me know how I can help.
Having worked for a number of years with state and local entities who have built successful networks, wireless or fiber, it is clear that the learning curve is smoothing out – as you noted in your article.
I am seeing smarter approaches that foster leaner governmental budgets, citizen service focus, and less dependency on carriers who are not about to trade profit for public service productivity.
This trend can not only positively impact changes in cost of government and government service, but we have the opportunity to drive creativity and growth via both legacy and start-up organizations developing solutions for an emerging market.