WiFi Salon

Sewell Chan, New York Times City Desk Hack

2009-01-08T00:40:26Z

I must take issue with Sewell Chan, city desk reporter for The New York Times, as he reports on Wi-Fi Salon's demise in Deal Collapses for Free Wi-Fi in Parks.

He begins with this "The long-troubled arrangement to install wireless Internet networks in Central Park and other New York City parks has quietly collapsed after the contractor, Wi-Fi Salon, ran out of money because it could not find corporate sponsors."

Now one might assume from this that the network was never built, that it was an intent to build that was never acted on.   The fact is that the parkwifi network was built out in the second half of 2006 and for 2007 and 2008 served 1000+ New Yorkers a day in 17 locations in 10 parks in 4 boroughs.

Now Sewell went to Harvard and majored in English. I think he knows that the phrase 'arrangement to install' means. It means something quite different from 'built out and maintained,' which we did for years. In fact I pointed out this out to him. He said he would 'consider changing it.' Nice slant there, Must be nice to have so much ink to spill on someone.

Let's go back to his first words -- "long-troubled arrangement" -- now. The Parks Department gave Wi-Fi Salon an initial three year concession, renewable after that year by year. After the first three year installment, during which Wi-Fi Salon invested 1.3 million dollars to build out the 17 locations, the concession was renewed for 2008. Wi-Fi Salon was well on its way for renewal for 2009, contingent on payment of $16K concession fees and another $7500 as a security deposit when September hit. We just could not find a sponsor quickly enough to cover those fees and the considerable month to month operational fees in time (10K/month for 17 locations in bandwidth, overhead).    The shut down was quiet because right up until the last day (December 5th) we were working with a potential sponsor to offer something more than a written commitment and write a check, which in this climate was just too much to ask.

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We will still be lighting up public spaces through Wired Towns, a new venture begun in early 2008 to serve business improvement districts in New York and other cities. Our first location is in Union Square, where we have a network that, using equipment from Altai technologies, covers the entire park and supports 250+ users. Whatever NYC Wireless has to say about things, they cannot touch this kind of performance. Only Bryant Park's Wi-Fi network can match this.

Sewell only notes this   "Last year, the Union Square Partnership agreed to work with Wired Towns to restart a network in Union Square Park and its surrounding streets." I told him we've been up since September there, and that it represented a new step forward for Wi-Fi in New York. I guess he is 'considering' reporting on that as well.

My goal is as it has always been -- to provide New Yorkers and now other cities with community Wi-Fi. I am eager to work with the City on bringing Wi-Fi to public spaces through Wired Towns. For now, and presumably for 2009, the ten flagship parks we served will be dark. There are still a dozen parks run by NYC Wireless, and of course Bryant Park.

I hope the next time (the soon to be unemployed?? -- see below ) Sewell writes on me and public Wi-Fi, I get a better shake. I hope for a lot of things though. If the phone rings and its Sewell, he's gunning for you. Ask any city administrator. He had already posted an even more biased version of his article today before he even spoke to me. I don't know if the NYTimes thinks going New York Post-al is going to increase its readership. I just lost a lot of respect for the paper today.

Don't mean to tangle with The Old Grey Lady, but she ain't what she used to be.

Addendum: Here's some delicious irony -- As Michael Hirschorn writes in The Atlantic in an article entitled End Times, The New York Times itself is facing a credit crisis that plausibly could put it out of business by May. It's tough out there.

Glenn Fleishman, Armchair Critic, Part II

2009-01-06T17:03:52Z

Glenn Fleishman was good enough to post my response to his slam of me on his site along with an apology of sorts:

"Marshall Brown, Wi-Fi Salon's founder, takes issue with my characterization of his operations. No one--especially me--ever claimed that building outdoor networks was easy. From all that's happened in the last few years, it's clear that building large, sustainable, free (sponsored or otherwise) networks requires many stakeholders, a diverse revenue stream, and real purposes for a network beyond public access."

The trouble is, what Glenn here proposed as 'lessons learned' along the way are things that some people knew from the very beginning. We in fact were awarded the concession based in part on what one must call prescience.    Ideas and words come easy though.   It is making it happen in the first place that mattters, getting to the endpoint still alive and kicking while everyone else has cratered that ultimately counts. Now with Wi-Fi Salon we fell short of the vision, but the vision is still as valid now as it was when I first proposed it to Parks in August 2003, and through Wired Towns I intend to play a part in its fulfillment:

From the Original Proposal to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Executive Summary 8-11-2003:

"The WiFi Salon proposes that The City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation become the test bed for a new generation of WiFi Hot Spot design.   We call it WiFi 2.0.   The content is multimedia - with streamed video and music, archived or live.   It is interactive, enabling IP Telephony, gaming, personalization, and even web video conferencing.   It can be delivered to all web enabled devices - phones, PDAs, flat panel displays, kiosks, laptops and desktops.   It is also location specific, where each Hot Spot defines a unique social space through the content it offers.

Our consortium is convinced that WiFi 1.0 deployments, where people are expected to pay for mere Internet access (whether by subscription or a la carte) will not succeed as businesses. Access is but a commodity, and it is one that is rapidly depreciating.The price wars between WISPs, whether they are at core cable/DSL companies, cell phone companies, or WiFi specialists, are rapidly removing any profit from the equation. Further, the 'demand' side for WiFi access, while expected to grow significantly in the coming years, will not generate nearly enough demand to make up for the commoditization of access ( See accompanying Spreadsheet, Attachment A)

We in the WiFi Salon are all in agreement that WiFi's real future lies in the fact that it represents the localization of the Internet as a broadband interactive experience.   Our aim is to turn Hot Spots into destinations for tourists and other park visitors, into portals for art and culture, into a platform for the delivery of business services and essential public services, and into 'social computing' experiences for those residing within the community defined by the Hot Spot.

WiFi 1.0, like the early Internet, was about grabbing land at whatever cost then charging people to get online. WiFi 2.0 is a broadband experience that offers people customized rich content.

By creating a platform that allows various content providers to reach their specific audiences, WiFi 2.0 makes the network itself valuable, worth paying for as a resource, service, or source of entertainment, and worth sponsoring, either by corporations or by the content providers themselves.

Where Wi-Fi 1.0 just gets you to the web, WiFi 2.0 situates you at the center of a community where local businesses, non-profits and local government are all represented. In Battery Park, for instance, the Parks Department would have access to the network for its own internal communications. Small wireless web cams would be positioned both for security and commercial purposes. Tourists could have a digital snap shot taken to be e-mailed home. The Korean War Memorial (see photo) or the 9/11 Memorial (see photo) could be augmented with interactive content. While waiting for ferries to the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island, tourists could experience a preview of both places wirelessly through kiosks, panel displays, and other WiFi enabled devices. A location-based tour of Castle Clinton (see photo), using pictures, sounds and text provided by The New York Historical Society, can help bring the past to life. The American Café, like other restaurants within the park Hot Spots, could use a Wi-Fi driven solution to deploy a system that would take food orders, handle billing, and help control inventory.

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We believe that the future of WiFi lies in its customization for location specific purposes and as an interactive broadband experience. The challenge and the opportunity will be how we go about creating Hot Spot specific applications and services. It takes a great deal of planning and experimentation to establish, one by one, these virtual communities, to discover what will work and what won't from a design, content, and business standpoint. However, in time we will learn what works and learn how to 'productize' it for deployment at other Hot Spots in New York, in other cities, and around the world. To all concerned this is the large opportunity that developing WiFi 2.0 services at these sixteen park sites offers us.

While WiFi 2.0 will eventually lead to WiFi deployments that are at least self-sustainable if not profitable, it will take significant time and investment to build the services and applications to bring it into being. At this time, it is impossible to say what the key revenue streams will eventually be. For now, we have only the expectation of creating something dramatically new, and hope that Parks & Recreation will join us in this effort."

Glenn Fleishman, Armchair Critic

2009-01-05T22:05:04Z

I'm sorry, this from Glenn Fleishman is just annoying:

"Eagle-eyed correspondent Klaus Ernst noted that the Wi-Fi in the parks project has shut down. Wi-Fi Salon, the concessionaire for most of the major parks, posted a message about the current economic conditions, but the note is undated.

I was always dubious about Wi-Fi Salon due to the surreal technical explanations made by its founder, its small size and lack of real-world experience, and the extensive delays in every step of the project. Ultimately, something closer to kiosks than coverage were erected, and I've never seen any usage numbers.

Community Wi-Fi organizers in New York City had a variety of other ideas about how to offer free Wi-Fi, but parks had its own agenda. Let's see if they approach this differently this time around."

First off, Glenn, what Klaus noticed, if he is at all honest, is how the Wi-Fi in Union Square is superior to ANY offered in NYC outside of Bryant Park. Period. That is with over 200+ contending networks.

Two Altais, one mounted on Barnes and Noble, the other on Whole Foods. You want numbers, Glenn? How about 300 users a day even in this weather? How about the ability to support 200 + users simultaneously? That is without much publicity, no signage, and the northern part of the park closed for renovations. This is all through Wired Towns, my new venture begun in early 2008 to support business improvement districts and small businesses.

There's more to come, too -- other BIDs -- so enjoy your schadenfreude while it lasts.

I will date the note if you like -- December 5th of this last year. That was when my time ran out with parks.   Can you even imagine what it is like to get sponsorships in this environment? Whole marketing groups fired, budgets slashed.

And btw Glenn, I believe you have no inkling how hard it was to get the funding to build a free citywide 17 location network. How many phone calls do you think you have to make over how many months to get a sponsor to come to the table? How many meetings? Having ideas about how you'd do something is one thing. Getting it paid for is a whole other matter.

And what other great ideas do others supposedly have to do this? For backhaul, all you have are some real shaky DSL lines. To make matters worse, you have no physical addresses for any of the park locations where we deployed. When a Verizon/Covad technician was dispatched to install a line, he just plain couldn't find the place given what they had for addresses and moved on.

Delays?   It took six months, an average of 12 visits and $250K just to get the 17 lines in. I had hired high level telecom project managers and professional field forces to roll this thing out, people who were otherwise doing citywide and national rollouts. We worked and sweated each day for six months. I dare anyone else to attempt it.

But I'll tell you what, if they do, they'd better go fixed wireless off a rooftop and they'd better employ something as heavy duty as an Altai. That is my strategy with Wired Towns.   Parkwifi was first generation -- in equipment, and devices.   How good in your estimation was it supposed to have been, given that this was Wi-Fi 1.0?   Everyone else btw cratered on this -- philly, SF, etc, etc. Why the vitriol towards me?   I guess its easy to do, that's all. At one point -- 2006 -- I had a 46 Mbps fixed wireless link going in to support all 7 Central Park locations. Not bad, given the time. Is that what you meant by surreal? I was trying to push the envelope on behalf of all New Yorkers, but timing here is everything. We needed 'good enough' gear and enough devices. That is only happening now with Altai, with iPhones and other devices.

Now with parkwifi we did achieve some pretty good coverage -- from 400-500 feet away, you could still connect. Not bad. I don't even know what that snide remark about 'kiosks' is supposed to mean. At one point you assumed that we'd be covering all of Central Park -- 843 acres. That is just a little surreal itself. Tell me how that might have worked? You need electricity, backhaul in open green spaces. Good luck with that.

I invested over $1.3 million dollars in sponsorships and personal investments to build the parkwifi network.   Do I now look back and say what else could have been done, where I made mistakes? Of course.

But in the end, we had 1000+ users a day -- there's your numbers -- the technology got better, the devices started to arrive (iphones), and the stage was set for providing public Wi-Fi that is 'good enough.' Unfortunately, I will not be doing that in NYC with fixed wireless and Altais because I am 500K short.   Any lead on how to secure that in this business environment would be appreciated.

I invite you to respond to this publically. I notice that your blog does not allow comments. That speaks volumes. By contrast, I allow comments and will allow yours. You can always e-mail or phone.   I want the same thing as you do -- reliable, free public Wi-Fi.

So Glenn this is your opportunity to be a mensch -- speak to me directly and honestly. I can be reached at marshall@wiredtowns.com or 212-362-6546. If someone has a better idea to do this, that is cover the parks, fine. Love to see it.    Over the past five years, I have worked with some really smart people for a long time to do this as best I could. Right now, you are just flaming. You called me out. Here I am.

"Let Your Fingers Be the Guidebook": NY Times 06-29-08 On Local Content via Wi-Fi

2008-07-16T18:52:28Z

In an article entitled Let Your Fingers Be Your Guidebook, Seth Kugel offers that with the growing abundance of public Wi-Fi Hot Spots around museums and other points of interest in NYC, tourists are increasingly able to access the websites that pertain to them, and get useful information -- hours, fees, new exhibits -- even before their visit.

The parkwifi network takes this process one step further. We offer more than access. We also offer local links. Someone for instance logging on to The Delacorte Theatre on the southern part of The Great Lawn, for instance, will see an interactive map of the park location and surrounding neighborhood that looks like this (click to enlarge):

Kugel notes that the free Wi-Fi now available in NYC public spaces means that tourists can access google, wikipedia, or even The New York Times website. But why not make it even easier for tourists, who frankly might not even know what they are looking for, by aggregating local links?

We want people when they are at the Delacorte to know that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is close by, and we want to make it easier for them to visit that site, rather than going through all the extra steps. By aggregating local content and links at its 17 parkwifi locations and local portals, Wi-Fi Salon wants to give people -- for free -- the local information they want, along with the free Wi-Fi, of course.

WiFi Salon Provides Uplink for Parkinson's Unity Walk in Central Park

2008-05-28T13:28:51Z

On April 26th, The Parkinson's Unity Walk took place in Central Park. WiFi Salon was asked by Netbriefings, a company specializing in high quality large scale webcasts, to provide an uplink to the internet so that they could conduct 'man on the street' interviews along the Mall in Central Park.

WiFi Salon ran a 300 ft cable from Summerstage to the Naumberg Bandshell. From there, the photographer was able to transmit his photos and videos wirelessly from 200 feet further away.

We are proud to have enabled webcasting for this event.

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.