[Speed Gibson,
Monday December 12, 2005 at 9:46pm]
Public Ownership of W-Fi
I chanced to record the hour Wendy Wilde spent on December 6th with David Morris of newrules.org, a liberal policy/think tank. The subject was public ownership of Internet Access, from trunk lines to Wi-Fi. As do a number of MOBsters, I happen to know a little bit about the physics and the business of telecommunications. What I heard, after a quick smear of Rep. Mark Kennedy, was how Chaska, St. Louis Park, and St. Paul are doing it right. These cities are installing their own "public" Wi-Fi (wireless internet) systems, ostensibly to serve their city and public safety needs, but with enough capacity to sell to or tax from the pubilc residential and small business access. Cities like Minneapolis are doing it the "wrong" way - engaging a private partner to provide municipal service.
What I heard was broadband bunk. Did you know that Europe and Asia provide their citizens with much faster internet access, 10-20 times faster? To get there, Morris first level sets the US "standard" broadband speed at 256 kb/sec. By that reckoning, my Comcast service that I have clocked at the promised 6 mb/sec download speed is more than 20 times faster. In fact, if you check the New Rules web site, you see what they're realing talking about are subscription rates. In Europe, where the telephone companies have been publicly owned from birth, they can and do offer subsidized rates. But it's mostly telephone (ADSL) technology, which seldom delivers the advertised top rate.
Morris continues, saying the "next generation" will provide the kind of speed needed to download movies or perform teleconferencing. He said the one to two hours needed to download a movie isn't feasible. Earth to Morris: it's being done now, sometimes overnight, which makes good use of that otherwise quiet network period. And it can be done in minutes, not hours even now.
But what Morris is really doing here is setting your expectations, setting them quite low even by five year old DSL standards as Wendy Wilde inadvertently observed. Why? Because air is a poor conductor electricity, meaning that whatever speed a wireless network might achieve, a comparable wired network will blow its doors off. For his municipal Wi-Fi systems to look good, he has to make sure that you at least think that your DSL and Cable alternatives would give you about the same level of service. You can't download movies, remember? Repeat after me, you can't download movies, you can't download movies ...
In other words, those that think this is such a wonderful idea are basically selling you "mature" technology that will have increasingly less appeal to consumers and business owners. And if you think telephone and cable companies are intractable, try taking your case to City Hall.
Then there's the political risk. You may have seen the Legislative Auditor's report on the lax computer security at the State level. Do you really want your personal traffic flowing through a municipal switch? It's not hard to imagine that the "muni" would demand M.D.E. unmask lest his site be blocked. If a few users start downloading movies, soaking up the limited Wi-Fi bandwidth, oh, wait, you can't download movies...
Keep the government out of Wi-Fi. It will raise costs. It will limit service. And soon you may be asking, "Who hired Craig Livingstone?"
What I heard was broadband bunk. Did you know that Europe and Asia provide their citizens with much faster internet access, 10-20 times faster? To get there, Morris first level sets the US "standard" broadband speed at 256 kb/sec. By that reckoning, my Comcast service that I have clocked at the promised 6 mb/sec download speed is more than 20 times faster. In fact, if you check the New Rules web site, you see what they're realing talking about are subscription rates. In Europe, where the telephone companies have been publicly owned from birth, they can and do offer subsidized rates. But it's mostly telephone (ADSL) technology, which seldom delivers the advertised top rate.
Morris continues, saying the "next generation" will provide the kind of speed needed to download movies or perform teleconferencing. He said the one to two hours needed to download a movie isn't feasible. Earth to Morris: it's being done now, sometimes overnight, which makes good use of that otherwise quiet network period. And it can be done in minutes, not hours even now.
But what Morris is really doing here is setting your expectations, setting them quite low even by five year old DSL standards as Wendy Wilde inadvertently observed. Why? Because air is a poor conductor electricity, meaning that whatever speed a wireless network might achieve, a comparable wired network will blow its doors off. For his municipal Wi-Fi systems to look good, he has to make sure that you at least think that your DSL and Cable alternatives would give you about the same level of service. You can't download movies, remember? Repeat after me, you can't download movies, you can't download movies ...
In other words, those that think this is such a wonderful idea are basically selling you "mature" technology that will have increasingly less appeal to consumers and business owners. And if you think telephone and cable companies are intractable, try taking your case to City Hall.
Then there's the political risk. You may have seen the Legislative Auditor's report on the lax computer security at the State level. Do you really want your personal traffic flowing through a municipal switch? It's not hard to imagine that the "muni" would demand M.D.E. unmask lest his site be blocked. If a few users start downloading movies, soaking up the limited Wi-Fi bandwidth, oh, wait, you can't download movies...
Keep the government out of Wi-Fi. It will raise costs. It will limit service. And soon you may be asking, "Who hired Craig Livingstone?"