Recently in New York City 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.

 

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."

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

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.

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:

1. Muni Wireless should not be about trying to create yet another network.

2. There is enough infrastructure out there to provide communities with broadband as a shared resource.

3. 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.

4. It should not look to become the cure all for everything — in some cases, wired solutions will be superior.

5. 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.

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 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?

WiFi Salon has been asked often “What is the capacity of your network?” “How many simultaneous users can you have at any one Hot Spot?” Currently, WiFi Salon has 3 Mbps DSL lines to all its locations, with Columbus Circle and Sheep Meadow upgraded to 8 Mbps with Covad’s new ADSL2+ lines, and with Washington Square, Union Square, Summerstage, and The Delacorte/Great Lawn getting the same upgrade.

What does what we have now deployed, 3 Mbps, get us? If this DSL line was say serving a small office and several people at the same time were trying to download something, performance would suffer unless of course there was some kind of bandwidth throttling.

By bandwidth throttling, we mean apportioning to each user a certain amount of the pipe when they download — for us it is now 200 kbps. As a Youtube video only requires 55 kbps, we consider this a sufficient amount.

In this scenario, if say 15 people were downloading a video four times as bandwidth intensive ( better resolution, larger size ) as the standard Youtube video at the same time, that 3 Mbps pipe would accommodate only 15 users.

Real world, user behavior is quite different. Culling from years of data analysis in administration of the Bryant Park Wireless Network, Marcos Lara, my CTO, and network architect found that the most congested his network ever got was ~75 users on about 2.4 Mbps of the available 3.0 Mbps.

Bryant Park has, to be sure 2 T-1s, which are dedicated, versus our one DSL at each location, which is “best effort.” Shouldn’t 2 T-1’s then outperform? Not necessarily, so we manage the network, allocating bandwidth per user, shaping traffic.WiFi Salon believes that we will witness the same performance on its network. 3 Mbps well managed will support around 70 users, that we will see the same performance on the parkwifi network that Marcos was able to achieve at Bryant Park.

At ~$900 a month for two T-1’s it would not be financially possible to install T-1’s at all 17 of our locations. Byrank Park has the luxury of being a location that is at one physical address, we do not. This leaves us with DSL as our only consistently reliable solution.

So the question is can we provide a similar experience to Bryant Park’s dedicated two T-1s (1.5 Mbps each), versus our single DSL lines at each location.

The answer is yes, thru traffic shaping. Each of our DSL location employs network traffic shaping to ensure each user gets a quality experience similar to that Marcos was able to achieve at Bryant Park.

For example, in Washington Square recently, we had 23 simultaneous users consuming just 688 kbps of bandwidth, or less than 25% of the 3 Mbps capacity. This is due to the nature of web surfing and Internet usage. The truth is that web surfing behavior in the real world consists of people mostly reading and writing documents, which uses up no bandwidthand the time a user is actually transferring data is quite small. this is not the case with VOIP and Video, but those still represents a small but growing amount of Internet traffic at this time.

Over the next several weeks we will be nearly tripling our capacity with the new ADSL2+ lines in Washington Square and at five other key locations. this will further increase each users experience. however there are still other factors involved in how many simultaneous users can we support.

If more than 70 users were all trying to transfer data with the same wireless access point at the same time any wireless network would start to experience wireless network congestion that limits the all the connected clients ability to communicate effectively.

This “crosstalk” — too many trying to be communicate on the same wireless frequency can only be addressed thru the addition of more wireless access points to share the user load.

WiFi Salon would start to worry about crosstalk when usage reaches around 70 simultaneous users. Such as if there was an event we were hosting that might attract a larger number of users for an extended period of time. in those cases we bring out our big guns, very special wireless hardware, that can really handle a heavy load. it is expensive but well worth the cost if you’re hosting a special event.

One such piece of equipment is a world class radio manufactured by Altai. For distance, performance, quality of service, and we have seen nothing better.

Combine Altais with ADSL2+ in a commercial district, you really would have something. It works really as best as WiFi can within very noisy urban and congested environments.

WiFi Salon would start to worry about the crosstalk problem at around 70 users. If there was an event we were hosting that might attract larger numbers, we’d bring out our very favorite piece of hardware, the Altai.

This is a world class radio — for distance, performance, quality of service, we have seen nothing better. Combine Altais with ADSL2+ in a commercial district, you really would have something. It works really as best as WiFi can within very noisy urban and congested environments.

As it is, when we look at historical data on usage, we note at no more than 1% of park goers will log on a park’s WiFi network on a given day. In other words, 7,000 people would have to be on the Sheep Meadow at the same time for us to be concerned we were hitting capacity, at least in terms of crosstalk. Crosstalk, and not bandwidth, would be the first problem — and now especially at Sheep Meadow after its upgrade to ADSL2+.

So if crosstalk appears to be the limiting factor, and not bandwidth, why are we adding the ADSL2+ lines? What if we were able to give each user a larger ‘pipe’ than is otherwise available in public WiFi Hot Spots? How much better can we make the user’s experience? How much more in the way of multimedia could we support?

We want the very best speeds available, and we want to support as many users as possible. We believe that WiFi’s true strength lies in its ability to deliver rich local multimedia content, services and experiences, and local high speed wireless connectivity.

WiFi, a low power piece of open spectrum as regulated by the FCC, has many inherent real world limitations. The WiFi industry, born by accident and incredible resourcefulness, is engineering feat by engineering feat, eke-ing out further performance enhancements within the very restrictive parameters that constitute its regulation.

WiFi Salon’s mission is work with companies that are seeking to push the technology as far as it can go, where let’s say for now 70 people at a WiFi Hot Spot can all have a rich media experience. With the parkwifi network, we are providing park goers in New York with a free amenity that we will continue to scale as needs evolve.