MuniWireless

CNET published an article recently titled Facing the Economic Realities of Wi-Fi that focused on wireless service providers rethinking their municipal wireless strategies to ensure that they turn a profit after deploying a citywide Wi-Fi network. CNET published an article titled Facing the Economic Realities of Wi-Fi that focused on wireless service providers rethinking their municipal wireless strategies to ensure that they turn a profit after deploying a citywide Wi-Fi network.

But imagine the same article about the business models for roads? The idea of building yet another network that must have 100% coverage to work seems is the result of failing to understand the concept of the Internet and treating Wi-Fi as if it were another cellular phone system.

Perhaps what is most striking is that these Wi-Fi efforts seem to be totally unrelated to anything else. How could it possibly be seen a costly effort when the cities are already paying for infrastructure? Why doesn’t the city itself get value by deploying connectivity for itself? It should be the primary consumer. But Wi-Fi bits are magic ‚Äö?Ñ?¨- it’s as if we had separate road systems for macadam and concrete and then trying to drive any distance without being allowed to move from one to another? For that matter can the police and fire department and public works share infrastructure? Even without putting up a single tower the concepts that define the Internet should produce a cost savings with Wi-Fi simply being a cost-effective way of providing coverage compared with special-purpose radios.

As technologists we also have responsibility for protocols that make these independent efforts work together without meshing outside the network rather than just within it. As I point out in (Wireless) Connectivity From The Edge we already have nearly 100% coverage. The cities can have a role in completing the coverage but it is far more important to assure that we can safely share our
coverage in the same way we contribute to public safely by allowing others to benefit from lights on porches.

I don’t want to do a design here except to point out that a software upgrade to provide dual SSIDs without the FON baggage would have a major impact. For legacy protocols a personal VPN can provide encryption and a stable address for applications without any support inside the network ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ you can then move seamlessly from private access points to public and back without the network having to do anything special. We are seeing the same failure to understand that lets us spend big bucks on completely redundant broadband service delivery systems which provide a dollop of “Internet” but not real connectivity. And
then we leave it lying fallow and start to build yet another redundant system because wireless bits are special.

Alas, broadband and Wi-Fi are so cool. Cargo boxes all.

- - - - About the author - - - -

Bob Frankston has been working with computers since 1963. He graduated from MIT (undergrad) in 1970 and continued in graduate school. He worked on the Multics projects and used the predecessor of the Internet beginning in 1969. Commercially he has supported online services since 1966. In 1979 he went from the mainframe world to the PC industry and co-founded Software Arts with Dan Bricklin where he implemented his concept of VisiCalc. He was with Lotus Development from 1986 to 1990 where he created Lotus Express (and started Lotus.com though it was before the Web). At Microsoft from 1993 to 1998 he championed “IP Everywhere” with phone wire networking being one result.

Bob is now on his own pursuing a number of projects among them, trying to explain the larger concepts of IP everywhere. In 2005, he wrote a commentary for Muniwireless entitled Connectivity is a Utility.