Recently in municipal Wi-Fi Category

That's always been the dream of public Wi-Fi:   That it would put poor and rural communities on the global grid, and give them the skills they need to compete and even live in this world.  Thus far however, the results have been disappointing.    Too early -- just not enough devices, and very clumsy about finding you networks and logging you on.   Poor network performance --   very limited range of 150-300ft, unstable connections, poor network management -- the tools needed to be developed.  Then there are all the technical limitations that are endemic to operating in an open, unlicensed spectrum at low power.  Other networks interfere.  Doesn't penetrate foliage, or walls.  Thus the early business models that relied upon anyone -- users, municipalities -- paying for this all failed.  Who would pay for the above?  Google of course has been focused on ad supported public Wi-Fi, but that takes networks that work and devices that are Wi-Fi friendly.  No traffic, no ad revenue.

But even now as various muniwireless projects are shuttering, because the network cost far more and performed far worse than expected, new devices like the iPhone are starting to drive demand for Wi-Fi networks, and new Wi-Fi networking technologies are now making possible at last to have 'good-enough' networks, ones that could indeed provide enough in  public amenities and revenue streams to actually  cost justify the building of such community Wi-Fi networks.

Taking a look at matters all together, from the current state of antenna technology, to what Wi-Fi network managing and monitoring tools that are now available, to the flood of consumer-friendly Wi-Fi enabled devices in the pipeline to Web 2.0 (dynamic, interactive, content driven) functionality being now implemented on community portals, to what we have been hearing in the market as we speak to BIDs (Business Improvement Districts), the time for community Wi-Fi is finally arriving.

That is great news for local businesses --  community Wi-Fi and the community web portals that come with them will make those local business much more visible locally and on the internet. 

That is also great news for those who can't afford access.  The Digital Divide leaves the poor and the rural off the grid.  It renders them information-poor and less employable.   It leaves too our nation at a great disadvantage as we compete with the many countries around the world where the internet is much more available, much faster and much cheaper.

The best news is that we are at an early phase in the evolution into the world of pervasive computing, the world of the wireless web.   Devices will become ever cheaper and ubiquitous.  Witness what One Laptop Per Child is trying to do, create a $100 Wi-Fi enabled laptop to bring the web to children globally.   What should be the dream for this country?  Should it be any less so?

We see Wi-Fi renewing communities by connecting them both to the web and to the local web of their community via the web portal.   We see the community portals within the Wi-Fi hot zones encouraging people to buy local.   We see local citizens bringing arts, cultural, civic, and historical information to the local portal to share.

The devices and networks, after five long years, are finally arriving.  We are fast approaching a platform that can support the dream that we began with, that Wi-Fi can renew communities by bringing them the Internet, but localized.

 

With the world going broadband and wireless, and with the web becoming pervasive and social, with hyperlocal content and advertising and location-based services now being enabled through the geocoding of information, or through GPS, business improvement districts (BIDs) in towns and cities everywhere have in potential a rich new marketing and communications platform for local businesses.

What BIDs generally need to do though, to meet this opportunity, is to develop a set of best practices in  web site design, digital marketing, telecom, and so forth.  Today I will just discuss what could be done with BID web sites in this new environment.

The Local BID Portal

Typically, when you look at a BID web site, you will a membership directory, usually searchable by business type.    You will often see a BID map as well.   You will sometimes see a map with the BID members located on it.   You rarely see the BID map with the members located on a map dynamically -- that is, as something you can click on to get a menu, hours, phone number, web site, etc.

This kind of functionality is of course available on Google, Yahoo, or Citysearch.   Given the direction coding for the web is going, every BID could have such functionality on their sites.

Since most BID sites were built say more than a year ago, most don't have 'dynamic content' -- that is local news feeds, local event feeds, content aggregation tools.    Instead, content must be 'posted' by their marketing person or webmaster or by the company that designed the site.   

With the web now feed driven and modular, local BIDs can now have portals designed to capture all relevant information about the neighborhood and its local businesses.  With the content auto-refreshing, the site becomes more 'visible' more interesting to visit and much easier to manage.

The next step after creating a feed driven local portal is to give locals the ability to post their own blogs, photos, videos about the neighborhood and its local businesses.   

How valuable would it be to have locals aggregating local content for the BID portal?  When people come to the BID's community web portal, they will read what the locals have to say before anyone else.

As we speak with our clients, we find more often than not, they would want the comments and user submitted content to be reviewed first.   The good news is that this functionality is easy to implement.

Next:    The Local BID Portal in a Wi-Fi Hot Zone





 

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."

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.