The problem with registration screens is that they destroy the mobile user experience. You are on your iPhone and want to look quickly at a map to see where the museum or restaurant is located. You connect to the Wi-Fi network and bam! Registration screen. Most of the time, I give up.

GOWEX has entered into agreements with municipalities and private firms to offer Wi-Fi service in different countries. Some of these networks are both free and paid.

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In November 2012, Ruckus went public at $15 per share. The stock price sank 18 percent on the first day of trading to $12.25 per share, but since then has gone up to a high of $26.50 per share. Needless to say, a volatile stock!

See these articles about Ruckus Wireless (and comparisons with Aruba, Ubiquiti):

Cisco buys Meraki for $1.2B, makes Ruckus and Aruba look undervalued

Ruckus Wireless IPO disappoints

The Risks of Investing in Ruckus Wireless shares

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•  Coral Springs is upgrading its existing wireless network, which currently serves city hall, public buildings and the water plant for around $250,000. For an additional $55,000, they will add Wi-Fi service to public parks.
  
• Delray Beach upgraded its public Wi-Fi network for $90,000 to improve reception.
• Hallandale Beach offers free Wi-Fi at Foster Park and has plans to deploy networks in other parks.
• Broward County has been offering Wi-Fi in a section of Fort Lauderdale, campgrounds and some county buses.

If you represent a municipality and are thinking of deploying a new large-scale Wi-Fi network or upgrading your existing network, before you go ahead with your RFP or place an order with a vendor, please read: The Challenge for Wi-Fi Hotzones – Video on Smartphones.

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I’ve mentioned many times that I believe our current government is simply clueless.  Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that it’s simply far worse than that. If you combine corruption, selfishness, ignorance, arrogance, cronyism, stupidity, and incompetence in one package, that would pretty much describe the bloated, bureaucratic mess that is the US Federal Government. I’m not saying that there aren’t good people in the government; but as a whole, it’s simply pathetic. And this starts at the top and weasels its way down to every penny given to almost every private company, courtesy of politicians and bureaucrats who are either paying off someone for getting elected or through the concept of the welfare state. This didn’t start 5 years ago but has been going on for at least 100 years or more. Most of us never saw it or even paid attention unless they gored our ox. At this point though, the WISP industry’s ox is not only getting gored, its remains are multiplying and being spread across the land.  I believe the other name for this is manure.

The amount of waste and inefficiency in the government is legendary. There isn’t a single program in the government that isn’t mismanaged or in debt for untold reasons. Most of them still leading back to our elected officials who themselves at the Senate and Congressional level can’t even keep their own unethical house in order.  So given the government’s track record, why in the world would anyone even think they can competently manage broadband grants?

The USF (Universal Service Fund) is a perfect example of corruption and incompetence. I can’t figure out what possible reason our representatives have to continue this legal embezzlement of money from consumers and businesses. It simply gets funneled to AT&T, Alltel, Verizon, CenturyTel, and tons of other companies that know how to game the government capitalistic welfare system. Now I find out that Carlos Slim is taking the biggest chunk of Obamaphone plan. It’s as bad as setting up an auction of the most desired frequencies for NLOS operation that only the very biggest companies could possibly pay for. That was simply a stupid idea the first time and since we now know that, it’s even more amazing they are repeating it.

Apparently Verizon and AT&T don’t have enough of a monopoly of the best frequencies in the RF band.  It wasn’t enough to prevent competitors from coming into the market the first time, now they just simply feel the need to finish off their competition at the expense of the American consumer.  How about this idea: Cancel the auction and make those frequencies unlicensed bands, so that small businesses and innovators can actually compete against them. Oh wait, I forgot to schedule my Congressmen a chartered flight to play golf in Puerto Rico to explain that to him. Apparently they can only understand that information on the 8^th hole under a Caribbean sun. I just can’t remember all the rules to influencing my politicians but when I do, I can move to the highest income zip code in the United States that just coincidentally lies in Washington DC area.

The FCC and the Connect America Fund are doing absolutely everything wrong that they possibly can to stop the creation of new businesses in the United States. Communications should be an area where innovation can thrive, not get stifled.  All this because the government thinks it’s smarter than the business community. It picks winners and losers and gives a bunch of money to specific companies to put their competitors out of business.  One problem is that smaller businesses can’t devote enough resources or have the experience to wade through the amount of paperwork needed to get a grant.   They are too busy doing their jobs which should be growing their business, not babysitting bureaucrats and politicians.  These people feel the need to simply justify their existence or spend all the money they were budgeted so that budget doesn’t get reduced next year.  Now toss in the biggest companies that not only have dedicated grant writers, but accountants and lawyers that can shred through a USF or CAF grant like I go through a plate of Raviolis.  I just can’t figure out what group of rocket scientists thinks this is a good idea.  It definitely shows the difference between the mentality of the average government worker or politician and a productive business owner in this country.  The desire to meddle in private industry must be a prerequisite to get a job with the government.

What is also evident is that the FCC didn’t learn from the boondoggle that was the USF and just shuffled the money over to CAF (Connect America Fund).  We don’t eliminate government bureaucrats; we just transfer them to other dysfunctional divisions.  I think the telecom industry threw a black-tie gala event when this happened in 2011 to celebrate the fact that there was a whole new program from which to suck money.  The bonus for CenturyLink and AT&T is that it is run by the same bureaucrats who gave them billions of dollars in the past.  They clearly know that they can manipulate government bureaucrats like mice in maze.  These would also be the same people who gave millions of dollars to companies in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida that were supposed to deploy a wireless backhaul and fiber system that either nobody can find or nobody uses.  Brilliant!

If the Connect America Fund just went away tomorrow, the only people who would miss it are the big telecom providers.  Just think, tens of millions of taxpayers would get an instant reduction in their cell phone and telephone bills, the big telecom companies would actually have to figure out how to run a business without government subsidies, and rural users wouldn’t have to live with outdated DSL service subsidized by the government.  Private investors also wouldn’t have to worry that the millions of dollars they invest in an area gets wiped out by their competitors who just got an ill-researched CAF grant.

I’m also thinking that maybe wireless manufacturers might actually want to invest in next-generation technologies if they know that they may have lots of potential customers, not just a few big telecom providers.  This increases their exposure to varying market forces like Dragon experienced when Clearwire stopped purchasing their equipment.  SkyPilot was also a victim of that when MetroFi went under.  But let’s keep recreating those market environments because the concept of diversification doesn’t have any value to a business.  Maybe we should force every politician and bureaucrats who doles out money to attend some class on the concept of capitalism or the free-market because they seem totally focused on destroying it.

More WISPs or ISPs would also enter the market very quickly if the playing field were fair.  Especially if they don’t have to compete against a government agency that used to think DSL was the future or that everyone needs fiber to their home because it’s so important to watch NetFlix in HD.  So the same people who can’t afford non-subsidized Internet are the same people who can afford 60” TV monitors to watch HD NetFlix.  The logic here is so stupid that if it wasn’t true, I would think it was funny.

This boondoggle of an agency is so bad, Comcast and Cox, two highly competitive cable companies in Arizona that wouldn’t share an Oasis if it was the only water in the desert, drafted a joint letter to the USF telling them to quit giving money to CenturyLink (formerly Qwest before CenturyLink figured out how to feed at the USF trough by buying small, rural companies).  The pointed out that it’s anti-business and makes it hard to compete against them.  They can’t justify investing in Arizona if CenturyLink is getting an unfair advantage.  You would think after this type of letter, the head of the FCC would get a clue; but no, it wouldn’t be the government way.  Hopefully the incoming FCC Chairman wakes up to the fact that they could save the taxpayers a whole bunch of money by doing the right and logical thing and closing down the Connect America Fund.  Of course, then the Chairman would have a smaller budget, less power, and all the things that are against a bureaucrat’s code of conduct.  They also wouldn’t be able to funnel money to companies that elected their boss; but if that ever stops, I’ll probably be shoveling snow out of my driveway in Arizona at that time.

To take this a little further, CenturyLink already has a huge monopoly in Arizona.  They get to write the rules if you want fiber into most areas since they are the only game in town.  For example, we just got a quote from them for a 1Gbps fiber circuit out to a WISP area that they cover which is about 20 miles from Tucson. They already have fiber all over the area and offer 20Mbps DSL on one side of the street and maybe 640K to 7Mbps, assuming it’s not raining in which case it just shuts off.  They charge $40 plus all the insane taxes the government can sneak by the clueless taxpayers for internet (yes I know, $19.95 per month for internet but only if you have the $25 phone service and even more taxes which totals into the $50 plus range).  However, the fiber is there and it’s all brand new.  We asked them for 2 quotes for fiber, 50Mbps and 1Gbps.  The 50Mbps circuit was about $2300 per month plus some taxes.  A little high but not unreasonable based on some other areas I’ve worked in.  Now sit down for this next one.  The 1Gbps circuit was $23,000 per month.  Thank you USF for investing a couple billion dollars in them over the last few years so that they could meet the criteria that, how did you put it in your goals:

“To promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates” or maybe this one, “To increase access to advanced telecommunications services throughout the nation”.

I’m still a little baffled on how $23K per month for a 1Gbps circuit falls under either one of those categories.  I’d almost rather be trying to do this in some third-world countries because at least I know which department officials I need to bribe to get a reasonable connection.  It’s far easier than trying to figure out how our government thinks this advances the needs of its citizens.  I do know CenturyLink is really happy and they aren’t the worst offenders.  AT&T and Verizon get even bigger leaches.

Since the USF was such a brilliant idea, our government in its infinite stupidity and perfectly represented by the FCC, decided to switch the fund from expanding phone service to expanding Internet.  Apparently by 2011, between cell phones, copper, fiber, and satellite, our citizens were now smart enough to get their own phone service.  So now they need help getting Internet service.  Apparently we needed faster Internet access to everyone’s house and dwelling because somehow that was added to the Constitution as a taxpayer-funded right.  I just didn’t get the memo.  Doesn’t matter that every library, school, McDonalds and Starbucks has free Internet access already and low-income taxpayers can get it for $10 a month from most providers.  It also doesn’t matter than anyone in our country can get a free cell phone with text messaging.  That program is so efficient, that some people even have 4 or 5 cell phones, regardless of need or income.  Oh wait, that’s only about $700 million wasted every year which is a pittance by government standards.  I won’t even get into the tens of millions of dollars CAF has already wasted and it’s only 2 years old.  But since CAF is now requiring fiber, we can waste money and grow inefficient companies faster.  That’s a great track record to build upon.

Now, let’s put this in perspective because common sense simply doesn’t exist within the government.  Right now we are losing jobs in this country at a rate of 5-1 over jobs created.  Regardless of what the unemployment figure is at, people are leaving the workforce, are underemployed, or are unemployed at a much higher rate than new jobs are being created.  There is also a couple trillion dollars or more being held back by businesses because of fear of the economy, taxes, and Obamacare costs.  The new “Connect America Fund” collects $4.5 billion dollars per year.  I say again, there are trillions waiting to be invested or spent which last time I checked, was significantly more than $4.5 billion.  I get that not all of that would be invested in telecom, but the current yearly spending level for the cellular and wired infrastructure far exceeds that amount anyway.  The only people who get hurt are the small ISPs that are far more efficient.  If someone in the Connect America Fund needs to see the math on that one, please let me know, I’ll be happy to whiteboard it for you.

Government programs like Solyndra, Fisker, A123, etc. show you that government is already the least efficient and most incompetent money manager on the planet.  So what would happen if the government –

• didn’t collect that $4.5B dollars,
• invest in outdated DSL service with companies such as AT&T and CenturyLink,
• let Comcast, Cox, and other cable companies compete fairly,
• let WISPs not worry about future fiber investments by competing government-funded entities?

More than likely, the telecom industry and Internet access would move forward much faster backed by much more than $4.5 billion.  Many jobs would be created and new companies started, and if fiber were the right answer, then it would get put in by private industry so fast, that moles would be running for cover.

However, fiber everywhere is not the right answer everywhere today and the Connect America Fund is totally the wrong answer.  And as I’ve argued before, the number of people who really need more than 10Mbps today is negligible.  There is simply no application for it.  HD video is less than 8Mbps.  Even if you are the Brady Bunch, it’s easy to push today’s wireless technologies in suburban environments to 20Mbs.  Since we can do that wirelessly now for 1/100 the cost of fiber, what possible reason do we have as a country to keep stealing money from one part of our economy to funnel to back the biggest players in the telecom industry?  Here is the reality, if they really are that good, why don’t they have fiber everywhere already?  Here is the answer, it doesn’t make economic sense.  That’s when the government steps in and says, “We know better than the private sector and pandering to our constituents is what we do best.”

Competing with cable and DSL providers is my favorite topic and $23K per month is a pretty good motivator to find an innovative solution.  If you can get bandwidth costs to about $5 per Mb per month and use some of the methods I’ve described to limit torrents, malware, and other useless bandwidth    applications, your cost of actual bandwidth per customer is about $1 per month.  That’s a profit margin of 95%. What other product can you possibly resell with those kinds of numbers?  Being an Internet provider is one of the most profitable businesses that anyone can have.  That alone should tell the government to get the heck out of the way and let the free enterprise take over.  We haven’t done such a great job as an industry with government intervention and localized monopolies, but new wireless technologies mean that twisted pair, cable, and fiber aren’t the only games in town any longer.  Verizon pretty much told you as much last quarter when they realized that their profitability is in cellular, not copper or fiber.  And if anyone doesn’t think there isn’t already enough fiber in the ground to meet the needs of most WISPs in suburban areas, pick pretty much any main street with a traffic light and start trenching with a pick-axe.  You will start hitting fiber pretty quickly.  You will also probably get arrested but hey, my point will have been made and that’s what’s important here.

Although it takes a little footwork, research, door knocking, hand-shaking, and you must have confidence in the wireless equipment you use, it isn’t very hard to extend backhaul across any city without local loop cable or a tower.  CenturyLink’s insane price quote had me spending a few days knocking on doors to find a way around them.  It paid off even though it may take 5-6 hops.  It also isn’t expensive since after several years, we know a 50Mbps Ubiquiti connection at up to 5-10 miles cost less than $200 and a 100Mbps with a Titanium Rocket is less than $600.  In my case, most of my hops are 1 mile or less which is even easier and cheaper.  I will be providing free Internet access to a couple small businesses, 3 homes, and a bird-feeder, but I got my backhaul to bypass CenturyLink.  In the future, I will upgrade to at least 24GHz which raises my cost to about $20-$25K.  Throw in my data center costs at about $2K-$4K per month and my ROI on avoiding a company that has clearly taken advantage of bureaucratic and political naiveté, and my ROI is less than a month and a half compared my original, government subsidized quote.

The sad part at this point is that CenturyLink isn’t even covert about destroying small businesses with the help of the inept FCC.  Last year they asked for $75 million to wipe out over tens of successful WISP operators under the pretense that the WISPS aren’t serving the community needs.  They even named the WISP companies by name, that’s how little respect they had for the bureaucrats to understand what they were attempting to do (or maybe the bureaucrats knew and just didn’t care).  There are so many things wrong with this proposal, I don’t even know where to start.  I’m just baffled as to why in the heck does a $40 billion dollar company need an extra $75 Million dollars to compete against other companies?  That alone should tell you that CenturyLink knows that their deployment strategy is inefficient and unprofitable so they wouldn’t invest their own money in it.  They want the taxpayer’s money since they know the bureaucrats managing it don’t know a flying donut about business or profitability.  The damage they do to competitors when the federal government intervenes along with the waste of taxpayer’s money is simply criminal.  What nobody ever talks about though, is the amount of money it takes to run an agency that spends this money.  With retirement benefits, lavish Vegas and Hawaii vacations (err, training conferences), and giving these bureaucrats private health care and retirement programs, all funded by taxpayers, it’s at least hundreds of millions of dollars.  Personally, I think the FCC should fire one bureaucrat for every net job that gets destroyed from their incompetence.  Then they might do their homework and see the damage their decisions make.

The other issue involves the complete lack of outrage and backlash to CenturyLink from the FCC when they were specifically told that this request for funding would do damage to or wipe out those companies.  That should have triggered an investigation into the program immediately.  It was obvious that this was just a continuation of CenturyLink’s modus operandi from the beginning.   Where else did it happen and which companies were damaged by it?  Unfortunately that would involve someone in the FCC actually doing the right thing for both businesses and taxpayers.  It was evident by the 700MHz auctions that the FCC doesn’t give a hoot about consumers, innovation, or small business in this country.  Fortunately for everyone, WISPA stepped in to help them do the right thing since CAF administrators are clearly incapable of understanding the damage they could have caused by awarding this grant.

Enough is enough.  Small businesses such as WISPS shouldn’t have to be vigilant on every grant submitted to the USF.  Big companies count on us not catching them sneaking proposals by while lazy or ignorant bureaucrats just rubber-stamp everything they do because it’s good for the country.  I’m going to tell you what I think is good for the country.  Close the Connect America Fund, fire everyone in that department, and quit stealing $2.50 from everyone American who wants to use the phone.  Quit selling the best frequencies to the biggest companies, this further inhibiting and crushing small business that employ the majority of people in this country.  Get out of the way of private industry and let them move forth with technology that can revolutionize internet access in this country.  Empower the wireless industry with bigger low-frequency bandwidth resources than the stinky little 6Mbps scraps the cell phone companies didn’t want, for good reason.  Do that and I guarantee that the private sector will expand and deliver the right services at the right prices for the consumer.  We may yet get a fair business market here in the US if all the WISPs stand up and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”.

See http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/connecting-america

* * * * *

Previous article: Tales from the Towers, Chapter 43: Galactus – Destroyer of Wired Worlds

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Changes in public Wi-Fi usage between 2005 and 2013

If you are in the business of deploying large-scale Wi-Fi networks or if you are a city that is intent on offering Wi-Fi service to residents and visitors, don’t dig up those old RFPs that municipalities and wireless ISPs used in the past (circa 2005). This is a whole new world. Here’s what’s different today.

(1) Massive usage of iPhones, Android phones and iPads

Cellular networks today are struggling to keep up with data traffic generated by mobile devices and Wi-Fi networks are under the same pressure to keep up. You have to assume that if you set up a Wi-Fi hot zone in a public space, for example, a small square in Paris or New York, nearly everyone who has a smartphone in that square, will try to use it.

(2) Video on smartphones and iPads

Latest Samsung Galaxy S4 ad in Singapore promoting full HD screen

And what are people doing on their smartphones? Streaming video. I noticed this year in Singapore that a much larger percentage of the passengers on the underground metro are now on Samsung smartphones with large screens and that they are watching video. Last year in Singapore, nearly everyone still had an iPhone. Bigger screens invite people to watch video. Although the Singapore metro passengers were using the cellular networks, you can bet that if you offer free Wi-Fi in a public space, many will use it too, if only to avoid reaching their cellular data limit.

(3) Higher expectations among users based on their home Wi-Fi experience

Once upon a time, 1 to 3 Mbps download and 500 Kbps upload speeds were acceptable. Indeed, many of the RFPs issued by cities between 2004 and 2006 specified these speeds for the city networks. This is no longer acceptable today simply because most people’s home Wi-Fi speeds are so much higher.

Wi-Fi hot zones and hotspots need an upgrade

In some cases, large-scale Wi-Fi hotspots are well-funded, top-of-the-line engineered centralized systems run by competent network managers. Assuming sufficient back-end bandwidth, these systems are designed to efficiently handle all sorts of traffic, including video traffic. Faster AP processors, better RF radios, and quality firmware mean that the user experience, regardless of the application, is solid within the range of the access points.

However, many Wi-Fi hotspots are still served by a single or multiple stand-alone devices, most of them based on low-cost Atheros chips running firmware based on some form of an open-platform coding. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels that use cheap access points to deliver services where QoS isn’t even considered. In addition, there are no system controls on file-sharers or video streaming bandwidth management. I’ve seen a single file-sharer destroy the user experience for simple web browsing for hundreds of other users, let alone allow video streaming to function.

In addition, most small Wi-Fi hotspots use low-bandwidth DSL or cable feeds as backhaul. These backhauls and the associated modem/router aren’t designed to handle tens of users, let alone provide QoS capabilities. If a user gets decent video in that environment, it simply means that nobody is running torrents through the router and five other people aren’t trying to find out who got voted off the island last night. Hot spot quality is simply the luck of the draw. Everyone thinks that it’s easy to set up a hotspot but they don’t consider the quality of the user experience and that can vary greatly depending on the quality of the deployment and the equipment used.

In a series of articles about the terrible quality of hotel Wi-Fi and conference Wi-Fi, other commentators (notably Andy Abramson, Tim Pozar and Rory Conaway) have suggested ways to improve the quality of Wi-Fi service, starting with sufficient backhaul and number of Wi-Fi access points. Thankfully the prices of both have gone down in the last few years and if Google gets around to deploying even more fiber around the US, we will see even better sources for backhaul.

Now, it’s up to the people deploying large-scale outdoor and indoor Wi-Fi networks to take the same steps to upgrade their networks or in the case of new deployments, to abandon the standards that applied in 2005. The network needs to go beyond people just browsing websites and reading email — people need to be able to stream video on their phones. If you don’t have the budget to allow this, warn people in advance and use system controls to prevent them from streaming video or uploading and downloading large files. An alternative is to charge extra for more bandwidth: those who want to stream video can pay, and those who don’t, can enjoy free access.

Regardless of what you decide to do with your large-scale Wi-Fi network, don’t look to the past. Your users are living in the present.

*Note: Thanks to Rory Conaway for his help in writing this article.

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O2, a telecom company that operates WiFi hotspots across the UK says that more adults are now seeking out free public WiFi when they go shopping. O2 conducted a survey of 2000 adults in February 2013 and came up with these findings:

• Nearly three in five (58%) people admit they connect online when out shopping. Killing time while waiting is a big reason, but just over one in five say they use it to check prices online and make sure they’re getting the best deal.
•  37% of Britons regard retail businesses that offer free wifi as being more “in-touch” with their customers than their competitors. Nearly a quarter (23%) view it as great marketing and 16% believe it positions high street brands as innovative and forward thinking.
• A quarter of Britons (25%) say they are more reliant on high-street wifi now than they were two years ago and 25% anticipate using it more frequently in the future.
• One in seven people (14%) insist WiFi access is crucial for them to consider entering a coffee shop while one in ten have changed venue because of a lack of Internet access.

Five million new O2 WiFi signups in last 12 months

O2 Wifi published its “WiFi Britain” report as it hit its six millionth customer sign-up since its launch in 2011, two years ago. Over five million of those customers signed up in the last 12 months. O2 Wifi has established partnerships with major retailers nationwide as well as public venues such as The O2, Twickenham, Bluewater and the Central London boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea.

Gavin Franks, MD of O2 Wifi commented:

At O2 Wifi, we have created a “free for everyone” user model that isn’t dependent on being a paying customer of either a broadband or mobile network. It is designed for the smartphone generation with simple sign-up and seamless connection which has meant adoption and use has grown rapidly. Going past six million customers is a significant landmark milestone for us as we move into becoming a trusted provider of digital services. We work closely with a number of the best brands on the high street such as McDonald’s, Costa, Debenhams and House of Fraser to provide them with a wifi service that helps them engage with their customers both inside and outside the store. That can only be good news for the high street. Our research also shows that free public wifi is fast becoming a right and no longer a privilege.

O2 WiFi plan for retailers

O2 Wifi offers retailers an opportunity to deliver a more digitally integrated experience for their customers. Looking ahead, shoppers would like to be able to be use their smartphones or tablets to check prices (46%), check stock availability (39%) and also pay for items to avoid queuing (38%). Increasingly retailers are using smart devices such as tablets for their staff to help serve customers in store

Doug Baker, IT Services Manager from McDonald’s said: “For years now, free wifi has been a fundamental part of our strategy to bring digital experiences to our customers. Since rolling out O2 Wifi across our UK restaurants less than a year ago, we’ve seen over two million customers take advantage of free O2 Wifi to connect their smartphone or tablet device. Whether customers are using wifi for business meetings, friends sharing pictures and videos on their social networks, or for checking email over lunch, we’re seeing a definite shift in customer behaviour with people seeing the value in the service we’re providing and spending longer in our restaurants as a result.”

One in five (20%) say they feel frustrated – even angry – towards a business if it doesn’t offer free wifi. Users are also becoming more focused on the quality of the overall wifi experience. Only one in five (20%) thought having to sign-in with a username and password to get online was acceptable. Unlike other wifi providers, O2 Wifi auto-connects all registered users. In addition, all O2 customers who are signed up to O2 Wifi will be automatically registered for free wifi on the London Underground in the summer, taking away the hassle of signing up above ground or remembering a password.

O2 Wifi is free for everyone, regardless of network or broadband provider and once registered, customers are automatically connected each time they enter a coverage area. The state of the art hotspot network is widely available across a number of different venues nationwide including McDonald’s, Debenhams, Costa Coffee, House of Fraser and Fullers and Mitchell & Butlers pubs.

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If you are in Santa Clara, you will find the network SSID as SVPMeterConnectWiFi. Linkpath Communications designed and installed the WiFi part of this network; they are also responsible for customer service and maintenance of the WiFi network.

By making the network available to the public, SVP has enabled residents and visitors to use tablets and smartphones with standard Wi-Fi connections to access the Internet throughout the outdoor areas of Santa Clara. Replacing an outdated and limited system that only served parts of the city, Santa Clara Free Wi-Fi provides access to residents as well as the tens of thousands of workers who commute to the city to work for companies that form the cornerstone of the high-tech industry.

SVP’s smart grid program, SVP Meter Connect uses Tropos Networks wireless access points and software, and other equipment from ABB (the power/automation systems integrator). ABB acquired Tropos Networks last year. Tropos has sold wireless access points over the past few years to many cities and counties that were deploying municipal wireless broadband networks.

The SVP MeterConnect program at Santa Clara includes the Tropos field area communications network and an AMI system. In addition to supporting AMI and public Wi-Fi access, SVP plans to eventually use the network to support additional smart grid applications, including distribution automation and mobile workers. In the future, the City plans to use the same network to provide mobile access for municipal field workers (public safety, building and fire inspectors, parks and recreation, and more), reducing operational costs versus cellular cards and delivering greater bandwidth.

Other articles that might interest you:

Securing the IP of IP Smart Grid Security and Cyber Wars begin: is the Power Grid next?: Don’t forget security! With all the hacking going on, it’s only a matter of time that hackers will attack the smart grid.

Santa Clara muni WiFi network gets a second chance

Kansas power company uses Tropos for smart grid demo program

New Tropos 1410 Delivers Secure Field Area Networks for Smart Grid and Other Industrial Applications

UK issues public tender for smart grid communications network

Burbank Smart Grid upgrade includes citywide WiFi

A Perfect Match: Wi-Fi plus automated meter reading (AMR)

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My newest model which I call, Galactus – Destroyer of Wired Worlds  (say it with a low grumble in your voice for more effect), is designed just for that battle.  The good part is that you can do it today and be ready for tomorrow.  And when tomorrow comes, or really 802.11ac, it will just drop right in and re-arm you for the next few years of wired and fiber battle.  However, the WISP paradigm and deployment mentality are going to have to change to take advantage of tomorrow’s technologies.

Galactus – Destroyer of Wired Worlds – Dun, Dun, Duuunnn (we really need another Fantastic Four movie, it’s been too long), is based on the concept of a short range, low-capex, very high-capacity model.  The kind of model that can laugh in the face of wired competition knowing that nothing they are working on is going to be as competitive from a cost/benefit standpoint, at least not for the real world that most of us have to live in.  Of course, you can thank the Federal Government and its brilliant taxing policies for some of that but hey, in the US, it works to your benefit if you only provide Internet and stay away from phone service.  The reality is that with Ooma, MagicJack, and everyone having a cell phone, the POTS phone industry is on the decline.  Also, to expand into a new area, I suggest that we do what we are best at, which is deliver bandwidth.

Galactus, Galactus, Galactus – takes the idea that we now have very high-capacity, low-cost backhaul options today along with some new frequencies to work with.  What’s great is that we have decent, low-cost 802.11n equipment that can build the basic Galactus model today. Ubiquiti adding DFS frequencies to their core radios, the Rocket M5, the Nanostation M5, and the Nanobridge M5, was a huge stepping stone towards the 802.11ac market and the beginning of the Galactus model (I’m out of text-based sound effects).  It’s kind of a cross between mesh and PTMP.  Mesh needed APs every few hundred feet.  PTMP systems are designed for ranges up to several miles.  Galactus assumes low-height (sub-15 metre) APs every square kilometer or so.  Towers can be used for backhaul to the APs or some other method depending on the deployment.

With a 5.8GHz AP and 36dBm output, then you can get some serious bandwidth to a CPE to at least 1Km or more, even with vegetation. What’s amazing is that with about 50m of tree at a 1Km distance, 5.8GHz has more throughput than 2.4GHz or 3.65GHz.  Pshaw you say?  The fact is that the higher EIRP of 5GHz along with wider channels, more than compensates for the higher frequency differential and the attenuation.

With Ubiquiti 802.11n equipment, you can get somewhere around 50-100Mbps at the AP depending on what 2×2 device you are using and 50-60Mbps at the client. However, when 802.11ac comes out and you upgrade the AP, you could be talking about an AP capable of 1Gbps or more. With that kind of speed, you can also get more users per AP, even without polling protocols. DSL becomes a fading memory and your lower Capex means that Cable and Fiber companies start getting marginalized to clients that think they really need 100Mbps and are willing to pay for it.

Clients want to think they are buying the fastest service for the least amount of money even though they don’t understand it.  The consumer ideal means more is better and too much is just right, especially if it’s the cheapest.  If their video streaming doesn’t buffer and their Internet connection works when some undereducated, over-plasticized celebrity tweets some brilliant words of intellectual wisdom like “I just bought a gorgeous Gucci purse that was so infabuliciuos, I had my poodles fur dyed to match it”, they are thrilled if they can look up the purse in 1.7 seconds.  Do that, save them a few bucks, and the customers will be tripping over themselves to bail on their current provider.  802.11ac lets you advertise numbers that will blow them away, especially in markets that only have DSL providers.

Now add in the execution of 802.11ac with its ability to use wider channels than 802.11n with faster processors.  Mix it with the increased spectral efficiency and 802.11ac can theoretically handle up to 1.7Gbps at the AP with channel widths up to 160MHz.  Yeah, I know some of you are already using your fingers to make the sign of the cross yelling, NO 40MHz CHANNELS, let alone 160MHz channels.  Ha, 40MHz is for little children and weaklings and to maintain 802.11n compatibility.  I’m saying put on your big boy pants.   Anything named after a planet eater isn’t going to use puny 40MHz channels, Galactus means big.  We are talking about 80Mhz channels at least.  80MHz channels means that with 4×4 MIMO, an 802.11ac AP can kick out over 1Gbps.  And an 80MHz channel is really less than 15% of the available bandwidth up in 5GHz.  I say “80MHZ CHANNELS FOR EVERYONE, ITS ON THE HOUSE” (c’mon, you knew antenna double entendre had to be coming J).

Ahh, but what good is it if we can’t get backhaul to the AP.  Seriously, that’s the argument you are going to use?  We are wireless guys.  If there is a vertical asset, we can exploit it.  However, since Galactus was designed to be dropped right behind the enemy lines of wired infrastructure, we also need to look at everything, including the Underground Railroad, such as metro Ethernet or local fiber.  With AirFiber, Radwin, Canopy 450 (the trick here is to use the AP on both sides with one in SM mode since the SM’s aren’t fast enough)  and some really cool equipment coming out from SAF, Trango, and Exalt, there are many ways to get backhaul to local APs for very little Capex.  Even if you start out using 5.8GHz 802.11n right now (which I’m doing), you know that 802.11ac is coming out to supplement it.  For short distances from the tower, 5.4GHz can be used, for longer distance, 5.8GHz.  Both can be set up with PTMP.  Add that to the FCC promising to open up another 195MHz of bandwidth with some of it possibly using UNI-II Upper rules that means even more long range backhaul capacity.  I’m hoping that whoever takes over for Julian continues this process in the FCC.  Personally, I think the first question from the Senate during the nomination hearings should be what phone carrier the nominee uses and are they happy with it so we know who they are steering the next cellular USF subsidy to.

Finding a vertical asset every square Km or so, depending on vegetation, lets you deploy a high-capacity system that puts a WISP head-to-head with wired infrastructure.  Even though you can do it, the next question is whether not it’s financially feasible.  Well, assuming you can keep the monthly cost at about 50 percent of the revenue per AP average, it’s a smart play.  As a WISP, you can always buy your way into a market, meaning being the lowest priced provider, so there is literally no excuse for not generating $1000 per month or more off any AP.  There are a large percentage of people that are very tired of cable and DSL bills going up constantly, plus they probably hate the taxes but they don’t want to go backwards in capacity.  With 802.11ac, you can advertise DOCSIS 3.0 cable speeds and fiber bandwidth numbers at DSL prices.

So what about the 5.8GHz deployments you already have in place with clients further out than 1Km?  802.11ac is going to be better but not that much better.  The fundamental problem is that 256QAM, the highest modulation rate of 802.11ac, needs a better s/n ratio than 64QAM 802.11n. The number jumps from about 22dBm to about 28dBm to get there.  Basically to get the higher speeds of 802.11ac, you are going to get half the distance.  Canopy 450 WISPs found that out quickly when trying to move over Canopy 100 series clients since they went from FSK to OFDM.  Physics are physics.  If you are using DFS frequencies, then your distance is even shorter because of EIRP limitations.  That is both bad and good.  The good part is that it means interference is down and the s/n ratio will be very high, a perfect environment for 802.11ac.

Who knows what will happen in the future?  If the FCC gets an additional 195MHz approved and at least 100MHz of it follows UNI-II Upper rules which gives us 53dBm to play with, then a 40MHz channel still yields over 300Mbps per AP and the distances go up.  You will just be upsizing the client antennas about 6dBi over what you used to use for 802.11N or Canopy 450 deployments.  The worst case that happens is that homeowners associations get a little bit upset when you are sticking 30dBi+ antennas on roofs.

Galactus is all about getting back into the suburban trenches with wireline providers.  It’s also about future proofing to match any future speed increases from wireline.  Although DSL is toast, Intel is pushing its new 1Gb cable upgrade over DOCSIS 3.0.  However, the old adage, “Speed, Distance”, Quality” which definitely applies to 802.11ac over 802.11n, also applies to cable.  Older cable and longer distances are going to mean that a lot of infrastructure has to be replaced to get 1Gbps on cable.  Since most cable companies haven’t even amortized the cost of upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 yet, I suspect it will be a while.  Fiber proponents are still pushing for applications that have no value for at least 10 years and no money to pay for it.  If anyone can name a single application today that can’t run over 50Mbps from a house that will advance the digitial divide or productivity in this country today, I’ll publicly apologize for telling FTTH supporters that they need to find a better cause that doesn’t involve taxpayers money.  I argue that cheaper, faster internet at 20Mbps is far more important than a transport medium that can download a Peterbuilt when the only apps we have are Smart Cars.

In the meantime, 802.11ac puts the WISP operator in the game with cable providers and GALACTUS – DESTROYER OF WIRED WORLDS (TA DA) demonstrates one model of that implementation.  But don’t wait for 802.11ac, get started today with 802.11n and be ready for it when it gets here.  Your accountant will thank you.

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