WiFi Salon - Public Networks Is Our Business

Cablevision: Does Newsday And Wi-Fi = A Vision?

2008-05-13T14:48:16Z

A lot of people are now scratching their heads trying to figure out why Cablevision would in the space of two days announce that they were going to invest $350 million to build out Wi-Fi on their current footprint, then buy up Newsday for $650 million.    Having recently been thwarted in their effort to take the company private, the Dolans aren't offering to clarify the rationales behind their moves.

As a long time Knick fan, I have questioned a lot of moves they have made.   Hiring D'Antoni and Donnie Walsh at least indicates that like another autocratic team owner in NYC, the Dolans are capable of making good decisions after bad ones.

Looking first at the Wi-Fi announcement, you could say it was a countermeasure/response to the much larger announcement May 7th of the formation of a $12 billion consortium consisting of Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Clearwire that would build a nationwide wireless network. But that will use licensed spectrum. But Cablevision proposes a Wi-Fi network. Every large scale Wi-Fi deployment has so far ended in tears, mostly given the limitations of the spectrum and how it is regulated. More ominously, their CTO claims they will use a mesh topology and support VOIP. That hasn't happened yet either -- too much latency given all the hops. Never say never, though. They could be the first, and they could have in their sights a solution that will be able to address the technical limitations we have all encountered so far.

The Newsday deal also has people guessing and second guessing.   Why pay so much for a newspaper?   Certainly you can leverage the ad sales force that Newsday has to sell online ads. Cablevision is a Long Island based business, and Newsday is a Long Island paper. That has to offer some synergies.   Newsday's 300,000 subscribers are now customers Cablevision can reach, which is important if Cablevision is going to get more subscribers and sell new services to existing ones.

But what if the Wi-Fi plan and the Newsday purchase became part of the same undertaking?   Every newspaper these days wants to get very local.   Every megaportal wants to capture the local ad market.   Wi-Fi on Cablevision's footprint means a delivery system for hyperlocal content and ads.

Watch the Knicks play run and gun now.   Maybe, watch Cablevision run away with a nice little coup, but if and only if they don't get tripped up like so many have, by expecting too much of Wi-Fi.   It, like Zach Randolph, can only do so much.

Washington Square Park Gets a Major Wi-Fi Upgrade From Altai

2007-11-28T11:33:43Z

For Immediate Release:

Altai Technologies' WiFi Base Station

and Smart Antenna Deployed by WiFi Salon in World Famous Park

Hong Kong, Nov 28, 2007 -WiFi Salon, which runs the parkwifi network via a concession from The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, has chosen Altai Technologies' A8 WiFi base station to upgrade Washington Square Park.

"We've been using the Altai A8 for special events in Columbus Circle, Union Square, and Washington Square over the last year, and the performance has been outstanding," said WiFi Salon's CTO Marcos Lara. "For congested RF environments there is no better solution in the market" commented WiFi Salon CEO Marshall Brown, "We were eager to deploy the Altai on the parkwifi network because it is best-of-breed. Our goal is to have Washington Square Park become the showcase for how public WiFi can be in New York."

]]> Washington Square Park, located in the heart of Greenwich Village, and surrounded by New York University, is known for its stone arch and central fountain, is a historical gathering place for artists, musicians and students "We put in a high speed ADSL2+ line from Covad, built a local community portal to deliver localized content on the park and neighborhood, and then put in the Altai," said Marshall Brown. "We wanted to build the best free public Wi-Fi Hot Spot in New York, and we wanted to do it cost-effectively." "Given the increasing traffic levels and the need to support multimedia and VOIP, in the end the Altai A8 base station was the solution of choice. We wanted coverage, reliability and the ability to support a large number of simultaneous users and the Altai delivered in spades, a very impressive product." added Mr. Lara.

The Altai A8 base station supports free public Wi-Fi access 24X7 in Washington Square Park, and brings the latest in Wi-Fi technology innovation to New York City. "Upgrading Washington Square Park with the A8 gives park goers a superior Wi-Fi experience" said Chi-hung Lin, President & CEO of Altai Technologies. "Our smart antenna-based Wi-Fi solution is being deployed now throughout the world. We are pleased that WiFi Salon chose Altai for Washington Square Park and for New York."

Altai A8 is the world's first WiFi cellular base station optimized for micro-cellular networks. Altai's higher reach technology requires significantly fewer units per square mile of coverage, this enables WiFi service providers to quickly build a city-wide wireless broadband network with wider coverage at much lower CAPEX and OPEX, offering end-users a range of rich, real-time broadband services, including VoIP, video streaming and interactive gaming.

###

About WiFi Salon

WiFi Salon is dedicated to bringing leading edge Wi-Fi applications, services and experiences to public spaces, business districts and neighborhoods in New York City and beyond. Its parkwifi network provides free Wi-Fi in ten of New York City's most prominent parks.

For more information visit www.wifisalon.com.

About Altai Technologies

Altai Technologies is a high technology company focused on the design, development and marketing of innovative outdoor wireless broadband solutions. Its flagship product, the A8 WiFi cellular base station, is being deployed throughout the world in outdoor environments. Altai's award-winning base station improves dramatically Wi-Fi signal coverage while minimizing interference from other signals broadcasting within the 2.4GHz unlicensed frequency spectrum.

The A8 WiFi cellular base station has been proven in both urban and remote application in various regions and countries, including cities in the US, China, Europe, Middle East and Asian-Pacific countries.

For more information: www.altaitechnologies.com

For media enquiries, please contact:

WiFi Salon

Marshall Brown

Tel: 646-827-0733

Fax: 646-349-5647

Email: marshall@wifisalon.com

Altai Technologies Limited

Annie Loi

Tel : +852 2116 8285

Fax : +852 2607 4021

Email : annieloi@altaitechnologies.com

Craig Mattias in Computerworld: Why Reports of Muni Wi-Fi's death are greatly exaggerated

2007-09-20T21:48:27Z

Nice to have an interesting contrarian position. Craig Mattias looks at the current bad news on muniwireless — read Earthlink — and takes the long view. WiFi will come because there is no other alternative. WiFi will come to complement the cellular network because WiFi is just better at delivering local wireless broadband, and is a global standard.

What could well happen, especially in an urban environment, is that public WiFi will become the victim of WiFi’s over all success. At Union Square, NYC for instance, where we have one of our parkwifi locations, WiFi Salon has detected 215 other nearby networks. They interfere with our coverage, and affect our QoS, and of course interfere with each other. This is open spectrum, so that’s the way it goes.

Advances in technology will increase performance/QoS, but there are real limitations when it comes to RF interference.

"Covad Next Generation Broadband Powers Nation's Leading WiFi Hotspots" -- WiFi Salon's Included

2007-08-23T21:55:57Z

Covad has been great. New York City is a challenge, the parks are an even greater challenge, but we got it done. We got working DSL into 17 park locations and ADSL2+ into Columbus Circle, The Sheep Meadow, Washington Square Park, Summerstage, with Union Square pending and other locations also upgradable.

What does that mean for the user? Free high speed WiFi, with the capacity to support multimedia and a good number of simultaneous users. ADSL2+ tripled our capacity. Visit any of our free WiFi Hot Spots here.

Here is the rest of the press release, also available as a google search here.

, Wayport Among Providers That Rely on Covad's T1 and DSL to Connect Hotspots in Airports, Parks, and Other Public Areas

]]> Nationwide SAN JOSE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--Covad Communications Group Inc., (AMEX: DVW), a leading national provider of integrated voice and data communications, is rapidly becoming the broadband partner of choice for providers of WiFi hotspots throughout the US. The company supplies back-end broadband connectivity through its national, facilities-based, next-generation broadband network to several prominent hotspot providers, including Wayport, Courtroom Connect, and WiFi Salon.

New York City-based WiFi Salon, which provides free WiFi connectivity in ten prominent New York City Parks, recently began upgrading its network with Covad ADSL 2+, which offers downstream data speeds of up to 15.0 Mbps. "By upgrading to Covad's next-generation ADSL 2+ service, WiFi Salon has significantly enhanced its ability to provide New Yorkers with free high speed WiFi on our parkwifi network. People want video, they want fast downloads. We can now scale to meet the growing demand for high bandwidth and multimedia in public spaces such as parks and commercial districts," said WiFi Salon CEO Marshall Brown.

Other examples of WiFi hotspot providers using Covad broadband for back-end connectivity include:

-- Wayport, which manages the nation's largest single hotspot

footprint, relies on Covad ADSL and T1 to power a portion of

its nearly 12,000 WiFi hotspot locations, including US

airports, restaurants, and hotels.

-- Courtroom Connect, a leading provider of advanced

communication services to the legal industry utilizes Covad's

broadband connectivity to bring internet, video conferencing

and streaming products to law firms, court reporters, bar

associations, litigation support firms, and courtrooms.

-- WiFi Harbor, a wireless internet provider that offers WiFi

hotspots to boaters in California harbors. Covad fixed

broadband wireless powers these hotspots, providing last-mile,

high speed WiFi connection to customers living and working

from these locations.

"We are very pleased that these industry-leading companies have chosen Covad broadband to power their WiFi hotspot networks," said Eric Weiss, Covad senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "Our next-generation broadband services, including T1 and bonded T1, ADSL and ADSL 2+, and fixed broadband wireless, are uniquely capable of providing the bandwidth to support the multimedia experiences that technology-savvy hotspot providers and end users demand."

Covad next-generation broadband services provide faster data speeds to power bandwidth-intensive applications such as file-sharing and video conferencing, streaming audio and video, and online gaming. WiFi hotspot providers choose Covad to link hotspots to the public Internet with high rates of data speed, lowering or eliminating congestion, enabling more end users to access high-traffic hotspots, and improving the customer experience.

"As service providers and venue owners, such as retailers and restaurants, increasingly partner to deploy WiFi hotspots, it is a smart strategy for network providers to focus on providing back-end broadband connectivity," said Ian Keene, research vice president with Gartner. "A hotspot is only as good as the pipe connecting it to the Internet, so broadband capability and data speeds are essential."

Covad brings its partners a decade-plus history of being easy to do business with.

The company has invested in systems and products that make it easy for partners to order and provision reliable and secure services with the level of support and customer experience that they need. Covad's broad portfolio of broadband and fixed wireless offerings, national wireline footprint, and flexible price/data speed combinations make it possible for partners of all sizes and capabilities to easily link up WiFi hotspot networks of varying sizes.

For more information on these Covad services, please call (201) 395-5755 or visit www.covad.com.

About Covad

Covad is a leading nationwide provider of integrated voice and data communications. The company offers DSL, Voice Over IP, T1, broadband wireless, Web hosting, managed security, IP and dial-up, and bundled voice and data services directly through Covad's network and through Internet Service Providers, value-added resellers, telecommunications carriers and affinity groups to small and medium-sized businesses and home users. Covad broadband services are currently available across the nation in 44 states and 235 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and can be purchased by more than 57 million homes and businesses, which represent over 50 percent of all US homes and businesses. Corporate headquarters is located at 110 Rio Robles San Jose, CA 95134. Telephone: 1-888-GO-COVAD. Web Site: www.covad.com.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

The foregoing contains "forward-looking statements" which are based on management's current information and beliefs as well as on a number of assumptions concerning future events made by management. Examples of forward-looking statements include expectations regarding Covad's ability to successfully sell its services to providers of WiFi hotspots. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Covad's control that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risk factors include our ability to rapidly expand and deploy these services and changes in technologies, among other risks. For a more detailed description of the risk factors that could cause such a difference, please see Covad's 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Covad disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This information is presented solely to provide additional information to further understand the results of Covad. Covad Communications Group Inc. Michael Doherty, 408-952-7431 (Media) mdoherty@covad.com Michael Doherty, 408-434-2130 (Investor Relations) investorrelations@covad.com or Pinkston Group Christian Pinkston, 703-574-2137 (Media) pinkston@pinkstongroup.com Copyright Business Wire 2007

New York Times 8-19-2007: Wi-Fi for L.I.

2007-08-19T18:14:12Z

Here's something from the NYT opinion page on the announcement that ePath has been selected to provide Wi-Fi to L.I.

The editorial makes no mention of the fact that first ePath has to raise $150 million in capital. One wonders what the market is for venture capital for muniWiFi deployments given Earthlink's travails. Keyspan Energy, their backhaul partner (they will provide fiber) could well back them. The other partner, Cisco, has at least the gear. Perhaps with the $150 million, once they get it, they will be able to cover a projected 750 square miles, which would come out to 200K a square mile.

]]> Let's start with the fact that L.I. -- Nassau and Suffolk -- has 2.75 million people. That is over 1200 square miles. ePath is planning on covering the 750 square miles where there is enough population density to justify a build out. For the sake of argument, let's assume that all the 2.75 million live within these 750 square miles. That would come out to an average of 3500 people, or potential customers, per square mile.

Let's assume a 10% conversion rate, or 350 people signing up per square mile. Assume that these subscribers sign up for $20/month, or $120 a year. Here, you are getting $42,000 a year in revenues per square mile for 200K per square mile. But over what time frame do they hope to achieve a 10% conversion? The incumbents -- the cable and phone company -- won't just let ePath skim off 275K customers without a price war.
What does the 200K actually buy in terms of coverage? Lets assume every penny of the 200K goes to create the network infrastructure. A square mile has 640 acres. Your average vanilla WiFi Hot Spot has a radius of 300 feet, and would cover around 6.5 acres. A hundred access points would then be required to cover a square mile. Can you buy and install a 100 access points for 200K, or 2K per AP? We can assume the architecture would be mesh, which lowers costs some, but presumably this is a Cisco platform, since they are named as a partner. Even heavily discounted, their gear is not inexpensive.

From what is admittedly a cocktail napkin analysis, it seems $200K per square mile is not enough even for the infrastructure. Then you still have to fund ongoing expenses in maintenance, recurring bandwidth costs, customer service, marketing. That $42K per year in revenues per square mile assuming 10% conversion of an estimated 3500 residents per square mile at $20/mo has to cover all that overhead. When will they be able to meet these conversion rates? Will they be able to charge more for premium services or get corporations with mobile sales or service forces or municipalities as customers? We'd all love to know the business model. Right now, the prevailing wisdom is that muniWiFi itself is in need of a business model. Could be E-Path finds one here.

The New York Times editorial offers this:

"Long Island is not especially early in adopting municipal Wi-Fi, which has been embraced in cities from San Francisco to New York, but it is good to be on the bandwagon."

Well, not necessarily. First of all, San Francisco is on hold for now with Earthlink and the city rethinking things. There is an interesting company called Meraki that offered to step in on a grassroots basis, which we applaud, but this is not what the author meant. As for New York embracing municipal WiFi, that is just not the case. We do have grassroots efforts from NYC Wireless, WiFi Salon, Harlem Wireless, and The Flushing Community Access Network, and from some others, but the city itself is not backing any municipal WiFi effort. Since the large scale efforts such as Philly and San Francisco have fallen flat because of low conversions, unexpected costs, and poor the QoS that is endemic to WiFi when deployed to provide blanket coverage, that is probably for the best.

What will be most telling is whether in fact the investors line up behind E-Path. If they can convince people that they will make money, then they just may. For now, we will remain skeptical.

Newsweek: Why Wi-Fi Networks Are Floundering

2007-08-17T11:59:17Z

Here we go again, this time from Newsweek. We have been hit with the collective realization that for-pay citywide WiFi networks are not getting nearly enough subscribers to support the costs, and that QoS issues when covering large geographic areas and going in doors are driving up costs and undermining the value proposition.

]]> As Rolla Hoff, the new CEO of Earthlink puts it, "The Wi-Fi business as currently constructed will not provide a return." Those planning citywide deployments are asking cities to make upfront commitments on purchasing the services that the network would offer. That's a big change from three years ago, when WISPs were offering municipalities concession fees and revenue shares for the opportunity to build.

What those who planned the large scale deployments in San Francisco, Philly, etc failed to understand about WiFi is this -- it is a local technology, by FCC regulation and given where 2.4 GHz operates. It broadcasts at low power, so the range from any one access point will be quite limited (300 ft). 2.4 GHz doesn't penetrate walls too well, or foliage. Creating broad coverage through a mesh of access points was touted as cost-effective, but throughput, especially around video, is a big issue. If you have to have a connection back to the internet every two hops, as opposed to every four, your costs just went way up.

As the article points out, the local duopoly -- the cable company, the phone company - have the infrastructure and the deep pockets to combat an upstart Muni-WISP. But as we argued here before, if you propose to set up a third provider citywide to go toe-to-toe with the incumbents, you will lose because WiFi can only do so much as low power, open spectrum, and because setting up all the marketing, tech support and customer service functions associated with being a muni-WISP requires enormous amounts of capital.

WiFi is a local technology. Stay local. Light up Main St. Create a wireless environment that supports local businesses and mobile users. From there, something bolder may come. It will still take a while to get to the right device density, for pervasive or ubiquitous computing to truly take hold. Get it right with the user first. The networks will come in response to that.

NY Times 08-16-07 Newcomer Chosen for Wi-Fi in 2 Counties

2007-08-16T19:43:53Z

In what seems to fly in the face of the new conventional wisdom post Earthlink's travails that large scale muni wireless deployments are dead, a franchise to build a muni-WiFi network over Nassau and Suffolk Counties was awarded to "newcomer" ePath to provide WiFi service.

You can read the Times article here.

ePath has an infrastructure partner in Cisco, and a fiber backhaul provider in Keyspan Energy, so they come to the table with something. All they need to do now is to raise $150 million dollars to build the network. Nassau / Suffolk will not be providing any funds or committing to purchase any services from ePath. It is all upon them to find the backers willing to take the risk.

]]> Here are a list of challenges we see before them:

Quality of Service.
WiFi, given where it is on the spectrum - 2.4 GHz - can't penetrate walls or foliage very well.
Given the power levels for WiFi set by the FCC, it's range is limited.
Given that it is open spectrum, there will be a lot of interference -- from microwave ovens, cordless phones, baby monitors, and other WiFi networks.
Generally speaking, if you are more than 300 feet from a WiFi Hot Spot, you will start to experience performance issues. Even if the radio is state of the art, the devices themselves will have trouble communicating back to the access point at that kind of range. This will drive up infrastructure and customer service costs.
Customers.
How many people have Wi-Fi enabled devices now? 5%? 10%? How much is that likely to increase in the next several years?
ePath seeks to derive revenues from premium high speed subscription services for home and business, and from advertising. I am sure they have run their numbers, it would take a lot of subscribers to pay for $150 million in infrastructure, even with 1.35 million people in Nassau County and 1.5 million in Suffolk.
How much advertising revenue could the network realize in the early going when subscription rates will be low?
Competition.
Why would someone switch from Verizon or from Cablevision when they can both lower prices and if necessary create their own Hot Spot networks, leveraging their own infrastructure?
Is the venture would be partially dependent on incumbent infrastructure? Keyspan is only providing fiber where available. You don't want to be using the competition's network.
Cost.

-- If the proposal is to create a third player to bring competition to a phone/cable duopoly, then that third player better have a customer service and sales and marketing team, and be ready to install and maintain cables in-building. In other words, there is real overhead in establishing a telecom, even if doing things wirelessly lowers costs.

In the end, Nassau and Suffolk County was able to announce a concession winner and risked nothing. ePath, since it will rely on outside investment, is risking nothing. Is this invest-able? You need devices and a reason for people to use them.

If you could put some WiFi VOIP phone in people's hands with a model that could do video conferencing as well -- Cisco makes some high end VOIP handsets, of course, maybe. A lot of people need a compelling reason to spend $10-$20 a month. If 10% of the 2.75 million on Long Island pay $10 a month, that's 33 million a year in revenues. The proposition may yet find its backers (via a business model) after all.

As a lover of muni WiFi and a Long Islander, I hope they succeed.

In the meantime, Levey and Suozzi could get behind The Nature Conservancy's effort to restore the Great South Bay by re-introducing clams to filter the bay water. Mayor Bloomberg, as part of his Greener New York program, is planning to clean New York City's waterways by seeding shell fish. I guess you can say that like public WiFi, the cost is low to restore the bay relative to the social and economic benefits. The difference, though, is that you can start seeding those beds tomorrow, whereas $150 million is a lot more than seed capital, and no one has harvested a profit from muniWiFi yet.

Wall Street Journal 8-08-07: Cities' Wi-Fi Push Hits Snags

2007-08-08T14:17:13Z

The Wall Street Journal story is here.

As a purveyor of a WiFi Hot Spot network in 17 locations in ten NYC parks in 4 boroughs, WiFi Salon can well attest to the problem that leaves present in terms of providing reliable coverage.

In winter time coverage in Central Park at our eight locations was better than it is now. The two wireless bridges we installed in the Fall between two of our Central Park locations were shut down by the leaf heavy branches of spring and had to be repositioned.

We do very well in open fields, like Sheep Meadow and the Southern part of The Great Lawn, but have a significantly smaller coverage area around The Dairy Visitor’s Center, which is very much among the trees.

The reason leaves are a problem is because there is water in them. Likewise, heavy rains will have an effect on the signal. Of course if you are in a park in the heavy rain, you may not be opening up your laptop, or any WiFi enabled device.

So as the article details, partly because of the leaf problem, USI Wireless has had a tough go of it deploying a muniWiFi network. The Minneapolis network did, as the article omits, help to communicate details of the bridge collapse to the outside world through webcams during the time especially when the cell network was overburdened.

Tom Evslin, an expert on wireless and internet technologies, has a wonderful post on his blog Fractals of Change on what the two month old WiFi network was able to deliver as a communications system after the disaster. It says much about the value of a public WiFi network, how it can be quickly and effectively repurposed in case of disaster because it is open and not centrally managed.

Still, if you want an emergency communications system, you can’t let leaves intervene. You also don’t want spotty coverage, another problem that dogs citywide deployment plans, and which again is very much a function of the real spectrum and power limitations with WiFi.

For those contemplating or in the midst of a citywide deployment — Google, Earthlink — these performance issues undermine whatever business model may be contemplated by increasing costs in network infrastructure, by limiting service offerings, and by not meeting user expectations.

You can try every engineering trick in the book to improve coverage, quality, within the bounds set by the FCC on the 2.4GHz open spectrum, and it is amazing what can be done.

At the end of the day, though, expectations need to be reset around what WiFi does best. It is so tempting for a city to announce a MuniWiFi plan, put out an RFP. WiFi, though, should not be deployed as though it were the cell network, as though it would provide universal and mobile coverage indoors and out. If you pick your spots — where people gather, in business districts, in key municipal locations, you can put together a network of local portals that people will gravitate to when seeking to connect with their community, local government, and with localized rich media content.

Build community wells full of location specific info and services instead of trying to provide indoor plumbing to everyone. All WiFi is local.

Eric Jackson, the new CIO of Hartford cited in the WSJ article, has it right in our view:

Mr. Jackson sees the creation of a city Web portal for services and content that can be used to generate a return on their investment. ….”That’s where I think the real money is in terms of value,” he said. “It’s content, not transport.”

So yes, new models are needed, but we know what is not working now at least, and so that is causing us to function on what can be delivered, and where, and what. Keep it local, in short. As with the Internet — another open platform that fosters innovation — new uses for public WiFi will spring up spontaneously, in surprising and even lucrative ways. WiFi should be the Internet localized, a wireless intranet for a community. What will happen when the main social and economic spaces in our towns and cities are awash in wireless broadband? How will people use this ‘creative commons?’ As people begin to own and depend on their WiFi enabled devices more, the need for public WiFi will continue to grow and new revenue streams will emerge as more attention is paid to content and services, and the platform begins to be understood for what it is.

Art and Technology: The Broadband Wireless Venue

2007-08-02T23:19:31Z

New York City is the Media Capital of the World. Its destiny is to become the wireless digital media capital of the world.

What this town needs right now is a public space that is awash in broadband WiFi. Lincoln Center Plaza now has WiFi. Imagine what the world’s largest performing arts center will now do with WiFi in their plaza.

Our parkwifi Hot Spots are being all outfitted with ADSL2+ to handle the demands of public wireless multimedia.

With such capacity, our locations will be venues where leading edge wireless digital arts and cultural content can be broadcast, and new immersive wireless experiences can be staged.

WiFi Salon believes there should be venues i.e. Salons where NYC’s arts and cultural community can present to the public and where technology and media companies can offer what a wireless world will look like.

Bob Frankston on MuniWireless: (Wireless) Connectivity from the Edge

2007-08-02T14:57:24Z

Bob Frankston is someone I have gotten to know a bit via The Cook Report as an expert on information technology policy. Here, he argues that:

Muni Wireless should not be about trying to create yet another network.
There is enough infrastructure out there to provide communities with broadband as a shared resource.
Creating such shared environments is a software fix — think FON where your wireless router is opened up securely for the use of others while your traffic is secured.
It should not look to become the cure all for everything — in some cases, wired solutions will be superior.
We should not overburden MuniWiFi with grand expectations and requirements. Let’s be modest, and keep the commitments low. Grand projects are both expensive and unrealistic in terms of expectations on performance, service delivery.

Now I am very sympathetic to this argument. MuniWiFi should be thought of as local, grass roots, as an aggregation and sharing of available resources.

You have your Boingos and your FONs — companies that seek to aggregate routers. Anyone who has ever opened a laptop in a city will see many WiFi networks in the vicinity, some open, some secure. Here is a map of available WiFi networks in NYC created by my CTO Marcos Lara via The Public Internet Project in 2002:

As you can see, even in 2002 there were a lot of networks, but how to get people to share?

How do you incent people to share their bandwidth, and do it securely — of course without running afoul of the local telecoms?

Our vote is to work with BIDs, (Business Improvement Districts), Chambers of Commerce and community groups so that they understand the virtue of creating a common resource in key areas in the community. The collection of access points could be fashioned into a single platform via common interfaces (local portals), router firmware, and backend management, with the need to augment the existing patchwork with new access points.

The solution is not just wireless, as Bob states, but would involve a mix of wired connectivity options as well. Having ADSL2+ lines from Covad, for instance, as strategic backhaul for local WiFi Hot Zones, would for WiFi Salon be a part of the solution —so long as they are amenable to shared connections.

Information Week: Dark Linings In Those Municipal Wi-Fi Clouds

2007-08-01T22:36:03Z

The article is here. This is one of a spate of articles on how, having observed Earthlink’s frustrations, we need to find a new model for muniWiFi.

The poster, Alice LaPlante, notes that as a small business person she was disappointed to hear about all the delays.

Here, she hits on how muniWiFi should work — as an amenity for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Create Hot Zones for them. They congregate, dine, shop, build their businesses, hire. A great demographic to pursue.

The consumer play is one thing. The business improvement district play is another.

Network World: EarthLink's Caution Reflects Shift in Muni Wi-Fi

2007-08-01T21:13:53Z

Saw an interesting article on how not to go about building muni networks — like the way we have been trying to do it here in the U.S. the past five years — by Stephen Lawson of IDG News Services.

You can find the Network World Article here.

Earthlink’s new CEO Rolla Hoff said on their Q2 Earnings Report conference call ( a $16.2 million loss) that they won’t be pursuing more muniWiFi business until they can figure out how to make money at it, and would going forward seek deals where the municipality would come in as an anchor tenant to help bootstrap the network.

Perhaps he is now looking for the kind of deals AT+T for instance has with Riverside California, where they will provide city services — police, fire, ambulance, security — in the 4.9 GHz spectrum — and them piggyback muni WiFi at 2.4GHz on top of that. Esme Voss is a big proponent of that model, and it makes sense.

In sum, for muniWiFi to work, the WISP has to have a suite of muni solutions that the local municipality is willing to implement. From that foundation, from that platform, you can layer on a public WiFi network.

The big mistake so far in muniWiFi has been that WISPs have tried to duplicate the cell network and provide universal coverage. WiFi is a different animal. We need to focus on creating WiFi Hot Zones at key locations throughout a community, and not try to cover the whole community indoors and out. Otherwise, we will run into a wall — no, many of them. The deployments and the customer service will be a magnitude more expensive, while user satisfaction will plummet.

Promise people a good strong signal within a limited area, and deliver it, say, in twenty locations in a small city and you have something people will want, especially as more start to actually own a WiFi enabled device.

Hong Kong Going WiFi -- and Seemingly Going About it Correctly

2007-08-01T16:38:23Z

From

CCTV.com

08-01-2007 15:48

“Hong Kong has taken a major step forward towards becoming a wireless city, with the official launch of its WiFi system on Tuesday. WiFi is short for wireless fidelity, which enables people to log on to the Internet and receive e-mails on the move.

Free WiFi will be rolled out at about 350 sites over the next two years. The Hong Kong SAR government will prioritize sites frequented by the public, including libraries, community centers, parks and government buildings. And the SAR welcomes industry players to participate in the program as contractors, and explore new business opportunities by providing more wireless applications and mobile products to residents.”

Notice that:

They are not trying to cover Hong Kong, but picking out 350 strategic locations.
Schools, government buildings, community centers, parks, are deemed strategic.
There are not enough devices in people’s hands, and not enough to do with them. A successful deployment depends on changing that.

That, in a nutshell is how WiFi Salon believes muniWiFi can best happen.

We are of course aware that such a network would be a “walled garden,” with web activities more easily monitored, and more readily correlated with location — for authoritarian governments and marketing executives, a valuable platform.

So how does one provide personalized, location-aware information, advertising, services, on one hand while retaining privacy on the other? The dream of ‘the internet everywhere’ may become the nightmare surveillance state. How do we navigate this? Another topic, to be sure.

Fast Company -- Fast Cities Struggle to Go Wireless

2007-07-31T17:52:58Z

Well, we all know the winning model for muniWiFi is not here yet. Here is the current litany of pain from Fast Company: Fast Cities Struggle to Go Wireless

People are discovering that WiFi cannot compete side by side with the telcos to provide universal broadband access over a large geographic area with anything like the QoS that people expect. Cell gives people universal coverage. They want their muniWiFi to provide it, especially if they are being asked to pay for it.

Mesh would be the way to go, except the attenuation (degradation of signal) between hops makes the technology — so far — not nearly as robust and cost effective as it needs to be. Earthlink/Philly/Tropos is what is cited as the main example.

What everyone seemed to forget as they were laying out their plans for a wireless municipal network is that WiFi by FCC regulation, and given where it is on the spectrum, doesn’t penetrate well — into buildings, through trees, down the hall, etc. People also forgot that this is open, unlicensed spectrum, subject to interference from cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, fish tanks (Wi Fi can’t penetrate water), other WiFi networks, etc.

WiFi itself was created by people who took the thin slice of free or junk spectrum alloted by the FCC and went with it well beyond what anyone could have anticipated. That said, there are continued limitations with WiFi that correspond to laws of physics. More robust spectrum at a higher power level is what is really needed.

In the meantime, let’s take what WiFi does well — provide local broadband connectivity. Let’s create a local wireless broadband experience within a neighborhood public space or commercial corridor.

Forget city networks. Too big, too bold, wrong paradigm for the spectrum you have been alloted. Dig “community wells” rather than trying to lay all the pipes necessary for “indoor plumbing.” Don’t go toe to toe with cable and the local telco and try to be the third player. You will lose because you will have a lot of the headaches and overhead of a telco — the in-house wired infrastructure, a large sales, marketing and customer service force — and not nearly the means given WiFi’s limitations to deliver a service that can compete in terms of price and quality, not with DSL prices continuing to drop, and I daresay $99 voice, cable and internet triple plays to be had at internet speeds far far higher than what WiFi would provide indoors.

We should try to instead create Community WiFi, as opposed to Consumer WiFi. Establish Hot Zones that are highly local, not mobile or municipal. WiFi Salon believes WiFi should be established the community’s centers — the schools, libraries, parks, public squares, the business districts. If you try to bring something to everyone everywhere, most certainly you will spend too much and still come up short because in the end you won’t be able to deliver enough to individual homes and offices. As a location-based service in key areas — well that is another matter.

The Wall Street Journal 7-31-2007 On Ad Supported MuniWiFi: "Wi-Fi Sponsored By...

2007-07-31T16:21:30Z

The Wall Street Journal today had an interesting article on one potential business model that would support MuniWiFi: Advertising.

Here’s the link:).

The article discusses how the ad supported muniwifi model has not taken hold because large advertisers cannot buy ads in bulk or across large areas because WiFi is a very local and small scale thing. Each municipality is a separate negotiation. If you are selling or promoting a national brand, that is a problem.

One potential answer, according to the article, is to aggregate the locations, get a hundred providers to sign up with your ad service, and then turn around to the major brands and sell that space. This is the JiWire strategy. They are a WiFi directory service, a provider of WiFi security solutions, and now in conjunction with Microsoft a provider of advertising network services.

The value proposition is this: You are a Wireless Service Provider (WISP). You run their ad platform on your network. They have many dozens of networks signed up. They are able thus to grab ad dollars from national advertisers because they now have the reach and scale necessary, and they split the revenue with the WISP. Free WiFi, ad supported.

Will this work? I would say that unless this otherwise top-down platform allows also for a means by which to create highly local ads, and support user generated content for reviews, recommendations, new locales, this alone will just will not work for (free) muni WiFi.

A director from Digitas noted that people would be very likely to tune when watching the obligatory ten second video that would pay for the free WiFi. Maybe so, but the medium — broadband wireless internet — is going have advertising possibilities — interactive, location-based, IP based — that this re-purposing of desktop ad technology just lacks, and which is now, as noted, real tired.

We respectfully submit that WiFi’s strength is that it is the internet, localized. Local content, services, and yes, advertisements. Advertising is relevant to the extent that it is actionable. With WiFi, the customer is the point of sale, and a WiFi Zone and a Commercial Zone can be one and the same.

Integrate local advertising with a local interactive map, geolocate the content, enable user created content. Keep it hyper local, aggregate. The Long Tail, if you will.

We believe we are a ways from where you can show the right ROI to local businesses using traditional ad placement sales: How many devices / users would you have to have on a network to create enough sales to even pay for a $135 ad for a pizzeria. The question is, where do we see the right density of devices in use at WiFi Hot Spots —2008? 2010? — to command the ad rates needed to sustain the local WiFi network? Microsoft and JiWire have their projections. More revenue sources beyond advertising is required for now.

We believe strongly that lighting up a commercial corridor and seeding the area with wireless screens, kiosks, handhelds, and providing a local interactive map will create advertising solutions that will be all the more effective for being part of an “immersive” wireless experience. Do large brands even have a place here?