BostonWAG Weblog Archives
BostonWAG is represented at today’s Boston Wireless Unveiling
July 31, 2006
Mike, co-founder of BostonWAG, is scheduled to appear today at the Mayor’s press conference which will unveil Boston’s proposed wireless model. He was a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Wireless in Boston - and as covered in today’s Boston Globe - the model that’s being proposed is quite disruptive. More details once the press conference is complete.
Community wireless - costs, diversity, and availability
May 7, 2006
The move toward a Boston wireless network has many wonderful opportunities. I’m posting here to try to establish for the less computer literate like myself, a list of reasons and targets that can directly appeal to the diverse audience from whom municipal wifi will need support in order to succeed. In skimming through the blogs, I have a difficult time finding a simple way in which Boston wifi can make a difference in the lives of people. Their is much discussion on the relative roles of government, telecoms & ISPs, and citizens; but nothing, in my opinion, which “crystallizes” it all in one place.
If I were to list a manifesto for Boston wireless, what would it include? The following are some options:
- The Boston Municipal Wifi will create an environment for each and every citizen of this city can take part in the digital revolution in their own way.
- The Boston Muni-wifi is a worthy investment of our tax dollars, as it will enhance the educational, cultural, social, and economic lives of our children.
- The Boston Muni-wifi will allow for diverse forms of respectful expression, even those that we don’t necessarily agree with, in order to hold true to our democratic (little ‘d’) values.
It should also be clear what model is being advocated by a vocal portion of the Boston WAG: one where government possesses a significant hand. As citizens, we should always be wary when another bureaucracy takes shape, whether government or big business is the source.
May 2006 Boston Wi-Fi Meetup
May 6, 2006
The next Boston Wi-Fi Meetup will be on May 17th at the Wentworth Center for Community & Learning Partnerships. Sean Bender, director at the center, will lead a discussion about the wireless network the school is building for the local Boston community.
The Wentworth-Mission Hill Wireless Project is a partnership between Wentworth, the Boston Main Streets, and several other Mission-Hill community organizations. It is an initiative to strategically address the issues of the Digital Divide as a whole within the community.
Elements of the overall initiative are meant to weave a fabric of infrastructure, programs and activities working to eliminate information technology disparities that exist among the local Mission Hill residents, small businesses, and community-based organizations.
Complimentary parking has been made available.
The Essence of Community Wireless - Ownership
April 10, 2006
I just got back from the National Summit for Community Wireless Networks (NS4CWN) - the 2nd annual (skipping a year) summit.
The first time I was there, all the talk was on models like Boston’s own NewburyOpen.net - amalgams of hotspots put together in community networks providing low-cost (i.e. free) access. This year, it was all about municipal networks…
More on why that trend changed in a future post, but for now, let me address one of the more important issues of municipal networks - one that has gotten very little scrutiny is the idea of who owns the network.
Unfortunately, in many of the muni-models for wifi access, the predominant business model is to let Earthlink (or another ISP) have ownership over the network (and its responsibilities). I understand why they do it - after all, it’s easier to let someone else deal with the hassles of running a network - but we’re giving up one of the city’s most valuable assets to an ISP that doesn’t even have its roots in the area. Control over a municipal network, one that will help educate and foster the development of intelligent communities in their cities, is a very valuable asset and shouldn’t be given away just because it’s the easiest thing to do.
I, along with many CWN supporters, believe that cities should have some ownership - and therefore control - over their networks. They don’t need to build a mesh or have a help desk, but they need to have some part of the infrastructure that it theirs - that they can use as bargaining or at least as leverage to get things done.
Earthlink (and the like) argue that they will provide “open networks” for others to resell their services - but yet under the table, they argue that there’s no enough value in chain to provide just wholesale or just retail. So I have to think that it will be difficult for them to be truly “open” to other retailers - after all, they’re setting the wholesale price, so what incentive do they have as a retailer themselves to set that fairly?
In the world of muni-fi, the sensible thing would be for the city to own and manage some of the critical backhaul. If you have to give away the house, at least keep control over the front and back door (and the garage).
Now, I have to say, I’m not a muni-hater - I think that municipal government is pretty good about getting me water and picking up my trash. Many will argue that municipal governments aren’t good at doing “advanced” things. But I don’t think the phone company isn’t really much better.
Sure, it’s not exactly easy to run a good network, but I don’t expect the same people picking up my trash to be running the WiFi network (not that they aren’t capable, I’m just saying…).
I’d expect this service to be outsourced to a good entity that can run a high-bandwidth, high-availability network with really good fibre infrastructure. There will need be an upfront purchase of dark fibre and some great equipment to keep it running, along with peering with Internet providers, but that’s the cost of being able to own your own network. Hundreds of organizations (schools, universities, regional ISPs, large corporations) run networks like this throughout New England, I doubt it would be very difficult to keep it running.
That fibre can provide an important resource - high speed connectivity for community centers, housing projects, and schools - provided by a city authority. it can provide a high-bandwidth backhaul to a municipal mesh, redundancy during times of crisis, and true city ownership of the bits that flow through it.
But the most important thing about it is not that we get to run the network - the important thing is that a critical piece of the community. Cities are part of the democracy of our great land. There are elected officials at the heart of every municipality, and in that sense, if the city owns the heart of the network, then the community also owns it as well.
It’s a lot better than a company based out of Atlanta, GA owning my bits.
Mike
Co-Founder, BostonWAG.org
Precise execution needed for Boston’s wi-fi deployment
March 24, 2006
Here’s a guest column that I wrote about Boston Wi-Fi challenges, published in this week’s Mass High Tech.
Last month was a good one for American snowboarders in Turin and municipal wi-fi proponents in Massachusetts. In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino announced the appointment of a new wi-fi committee charged with drafting a road map by this summer, and the Boston Foundation released its long awaited report, Boston Unplugged: Mapping a Wireless Future at a well-attended event at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology.
Meanwhile in Brookline the town’s wireless committee narrowed seven proposals down to three finalists for a municipal wireless public-private partnership. And in Cambridge details began to emerge about plans for a wireless network inspired by the open-source, open-access model of MIT’s Roof.net project.
The excitement about municipal wi-fi in Boston came to a head last May with a wireless summit at the Boston Museum of Science. Following a community meeting on wireless broadband at the Boston Public Library in April and months of meetings by City Councilor John Tobin’s wireless task force, the summit was buzzing with enthusiasm about how municipal wi-fi could enhance the city’s image as a hub of innovation while bridging the digital divide, fostering economic development, building community, and improving city services. As months passed, momentum lagged and soon questions arose about parochial politics overcoming creative collaboration.
Even now, with the Boston Foundation report making a cogent case for municipal wi-fi and Menino showing some visible interest, people are skeptical. Questions are fueled by mixed messages and poor coordination. By skipping the Boston Foundation event, Menino missed an opportunity to recognize Tobin’s hard work and praise the new report. Instead of explaining how his new committee will build upon the work of Tobin’s task force and how another report, due this summer, will be informed by the Boston Foundation report, Menino has kept citizens guessing.
Nevertheless, the energy at the Boston Foundation event was palpable. Members of Menino’s new committee introduced themselves, citizens asked tough questions, community advocates articulated important goals, and vendors sung their own praises.
The next steps will be challenging for Boston. The Mayor’s committee needs to translate the general value proposition outlined in the Boston Foundation report into a practical road map. One difficulty is the extent to which municipal wi-fi means many things to many people. While a multipurpose wireless network can serve many purposes simultaneously, any particular approach will prioritize certain goals at the expense of others, and raise fundamental questions. Will Menino direct city departments to identify significant cost savings for existing and emerging municipal applications and leverage sufficient economies of scale into a single network? Can ubiquitous access to high speed Internet be made cheap or free without undermining the market for commercial high-speed Internet services? Can a wireless network have the scale and scope required for diverse, robust applications while being open and flexible enough to adapt to shifting uses and technologies in coming years?
The good news is that a plan for Boston wi-fi can be informed not only by projects around the country and the world, but also by projects in its own back yard. In Framingham, a limited wi-fi deployment is being used for DPW applications. In Malden, a wi-fi bubble offers public access to municipal information and services. And on Nantucket, wi-fi fills a market demand for better commercial broadband services.
Alternatively, the city of Cambridge is aiming to bridge the digital divide with low-bandwidth access at minimal or no cost to its citizens. Wi-fi advocates should embrace such diverse experimentation with an open mind. And Boston should foster not only extensive internal collaboration but also external exchanges with its neighbors to identify best practices. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to heed some of the lessons from American snowboarders in Turin. Boston innovation and execution will be critical, but talent alone — especially when trying to catch some air — isn’t always enough.
Two finalists vie for Brookline municipal Wi-Fi project
March 2, 2006
Following a public meeting in Brookline on Tuesday Feb 28th the town’s wireless committee narrowed a field of three vendors to two finalists. The committee and members of the public heard presentations by Galaxy Internet Services, AIM (Airport Infrastructure Management), and EarthLink. Questions were raised about the use of towers and the viability of 4.9 GHz for public safety applications. Galaxy, whose partners include NeoReach, SkyPilot, National Grid, and the Yankee Group, and EarthLink whose partners include Tropos and Motorola, were both chosen as finalists. A decision is expected by the end of the month.
Notes from the Boston Foundation “Boston Unplugged” Report
February 17, 2006
Just some general notes from The Boston Foundation event held on Wednesday, February 15, 2006, where they released the “Boston Unplugged” report [pdf].
First off, BostonWAG.org is very happy that this report was released. Although later than expected (the first draft was supposed to be released in 2005), it sets an important context for moving ahead with city-wide wireless - municipal or not.
Let me also say - the report was never meant to be the final solution to the boston equation, it’s really just a piece to set the tone for the conversation. So in a way, it brought up many more questions about what a city-wide wireless would look like in Boston than before, but that’s good - these are the questions that need to be answered BEFORE the network is created, not after.
There was some time spent on talking about other projects throughout the country and world- SF, Tempe, Taipei, which I think was really helpful to show people that it’s already being done.
In the last section - audience Q&A - there were a lot of great questions - which unfortunately were not answered (see above), but the Mayoral Task Force has been charged with answering some of them.
Just a few of them:
- What do the telecoms in the area think of muni-wireless?
- Wireless access may solve part of the equation of the digital divide, but what about computer access and training?
- What standards will be used in the implementation?
- What will it cost?
Community Broadband Action Alert
February 13, 2006
MuniWireless.com reports (via Adina Levin at the Community Broadband Coalition):
This coming Tuesday [February 14, 2006], the Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing on municipal broadband. It is critical for the committee to hear from you — the people who are making community broadband work, and who are bringing the benefits to your community.
Please call, fax, or email your Senator and ask them to support the Community Broadband Act. The bill, cosponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) and John McCain (R, AZ) protects the rights of local government to support broadband access in the manner that is best for local needs.
Contact information to fax and email members of the Senate Commerce Committee and a sample form letter are avaialble at MuniWireless.com. Read the Community Broadband Act of 2005 at the Library of Congress website.
Mike
Notes from the February 2006 Wi-Fi Meetup
February 8, 2006
The co-organizer of the Watch City Wireless project in Waltham led a hands-on discussion about Linux and wi-fi routers. He covered a lot of the technical features and benefits of OpenWRT and Sveasoft.
Apart of the technical questions and issues, he also brought up questions like - would people be interested in using these devices for a larger network? Would their friends and family be able to handle firmware uploads? Does this model work for a large scalable network?
Lots of talk about spectrum usage in 802.11b, g, and n, and a… Some lively conversation about how we should all be collectively lobbying for more spectrum, including the analog TV channels (which are barely in use nowadays).
Talk about the Cambridge/Roofnet project, using WGT634 Roofnet Variant (closer to OpenWRT than Roofnet. Cambridge will use the concept of a “Multi mesh” - location sensitive network, not like a true mesh that doesn’t really care where it is.
First antenna on Cambridge City Hall.
Pat M of BostonWAG asked what’s the application/business model? Public safety? Digital Divide? Answers are more on the Digital Divide side - it’s not a muni-net for public safety. Right now, at least.
Pat asks if there are problems with permitting in the city, like the problems that Steve Ronan experienced in Boston? Unknown.
Kurt says that the city will be able to provide equipment (repeaters) for public access in cafes - for a price, of course. Business model still a little bit up in the air, but it does seem that this more grassroots network supported by real tested technology could work. Cambridge is also ready to cap the expense on the network - they aren’t going to burn money like other cities - it’s a careful, staged plan it seems.
Talk about FOIS and Verizon, Comcast and what they would think of this and other muni-networks.
Steve took us on a tour of the Castle Square community wi-fi project across the street.