Municipal WiFi Costs Outweigh Benefits 322
TheSync writes "JupiterResearch claims that muni WiFi costs outweigh benefits. It can cost up to $150,000 per square mile over five years, which may not even provide each user a benefit of $25 a month. They suggest that such projects only be taken on as public-private partnerships."
costs outweigh the benefits? (Score:5, Interesting)
It has to work better, first (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Minor Details (Score:3, Interesting)
- "Hey, everyone else is releasing biased reports!"
- "There must be a market for biased reports!"
- "Lets release our own biased report!"
- PROFIT !!!
Fucktards (both Jupiter and anyone who pays for this "report").Re:Hark to my voice of warning! (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree about private corporations being involved (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of municipal WiFi, there are a huge number of public or semi-public hotspots all over major cities. The local governments would have to be offering a really good deal to make this beneficial to everyone. And if this is really a government service, though, one presumes it would be paid for via taxes of some kind. It would be better if the city got involved in helping private companies find places to put access points, perhaps providing some measure of physical security to those locations, for a fixed amount per location per month (let's say it's $3 per AP per month with a minimum of 1000 APs to cover a decent area). The company could then use some kind of authentication mechanism to make sure people connecting had paid for its service (maybe $25/mo).
The university I attend is modifying its wireless network to broadcast two seperate SSIDs - one that authenicated users (ie students, staff, faculty) can use (and is firewalled, etc) and a second that is wide open for anyone to use, but has no security whatsoever. Non-authenticated users could use a lower speed, and unsecured, version of the network (throttled back to a max of say 802.11b), while the paying subscribers would be able to use the higher available bandwidth (802.11a/g). This would allow people in lower income areas to still use the internet, but people who wanted more speed could pay for it.
Of course, with the new precedent set in Tampa Bay FL [slashdot.org], how would municipalities actually be able to act on people using the network for illegal activity? (I personally think that it's the user's responsibility to not do anything illegal, but heaven help you if you believe in personal responsibility in America.)
Such muni WiFi projects could also impact other types of internet subscriptions (especially dial-up), and might be viewed as very anti-competitive to local, traditional ISPs.
Ask Hugo, Colorado... (Score:5, Interesting)
Qwest has the DSL rights in Colorado pretty well locked up, and simply won't give service in the rural towns until it's damn good and ready..and that won't be anytime soon, because it hasn't even finished wiring Denver yet. Meanwhile, it's lobbying for a state law to ensure that its monopoly will continue to await Qwest's whim.
rj
Re:Minor Details (Score:5, Interesting)
What would be a reasonable average proportion of wired internet to wireless?? We get both Cable Internet and DSL around here, and I'd guess the wired households probably outnumber the wireless household by at least 2 or 3 to 1. OK, not all the wired households would go wireless, but some would. We dropped cable completely because the cable (digital TV + internet) costs kept creeping up. DSL + DishTV turned out to be cheaper, plus there're no port or server restrictions... If wireless was available at a competitive price, we'd certainly consider it.
They won't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether this effort does this successfully is what's being debated. It's likely that you will be able to get other forms of internet connection, because having a public version will just give the companies who provide it a point of comparison. But people who will be able to have at least that standard, which may be the point.
My problem with this effort is not the government possibly controlling internet access, it's a.) the governments that try to control web _content_, i.e. China, and b.) the fact that WiFi is useless for people too poor to afford computers. Are they going to provide computers, too? Because the cost per person goes up substantially at that rate- without it, though, it's a profound waste of money anyway.
Me, I'd like my town to have more funding for the library, which lets kids use the computers for homework if they don't have them at home. Or the digital bridge projects out there, which provide home computers for families that don't have them- and training to be able to use them.
Re:WTF! Yeah it is cost effective! (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's say 10 years ago most people were on 56kbps dial-up for $20/month. By my calculations, that's about 36 times more expensive ($/bps) than my service today. Taking the square root of 36 (because we are projecting five years out instead of ten), and projecting a price-performance trajectory at the same rate, I expect that prices will be 6 times cheaper five years from now. By that, I mean that either you will be able to get 24mbps service for $40/month, or you will be able to 4mbps service for $6.67/month, or some other configuration that is just as cheap per bps.
$25/month five years from now does not appear to me to be the bargain you think it is when compared to the private sector. And this assumes a heavily regulated telecom industry! If we took the shackles off of the smaller players, we could see some stiff competition and genuine innovation that might push prices for consumers down even further.
Re:Minor Details (Score:4, Interesting)
Only reporting on a limited scope isn't bias, it's merely a boundary.
What gets me is the emphasis on breakeven points, profiteering opportunities, etc. Not everything needs a 100% quantifiable ROI. Muni WiFi is just that; the benefit it provides is a convenience for the community for both casual users (check mah email) and mobile workers. I.e., build it if you can afford it.
As a last resort, we could always measure the usage in kilogirls.
Re:It has to work better, first (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Minor Details (Score:4, Interesting)
What they fail to mention is whom it works/doesn't work for. WIFI in small communities doesn't work for Big Business when the community does it effectively. It does work for Big Business if you can layer the FUD enough to convince the community to piss money into a private company for no reason at all.
I've seen enough small town WIFI installations, done by the community, to know that this 'report' is a low down dirty shame.
Anyone seen any reports from the other angle? Reports on communities successfully deploying WIFI on their own, for low cost?
Re:Minor Details (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Contract research (Score:5, Interesting)
As it stands, there's no way in HELL I'd ever take a report from these guys even remotely into consideration. It's just buying false advertising really, with no disclaimers attached. Or even the brand of the company paying for the advertising.
It's low down, sleazy, and IMHO, should be illegal.
keeping smart workers around (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:costs outweigh the benefits? (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither do libraries.
Actually, maybe it doesn't increase the tax base, but municipal wi-fi would free up money for residents to spend locally instead of sending it to Verizon or Cablevision. Not that they necessarily will, of course, but it's not a total loss.
Bullshit headline... TFA says something different (Score:3, Interesting)
It shouldn't be hard to make the numbers work, provided that one can divide:
Finding 100 users per square mile should not be hard. Medium-density suburban lots are typically 0.3 acres, for an average of about 1000 houses per square mile (including a factor of 50% for infrastructure). So if one in ten households uses the WiFi regularly, the system breaks even at the stated price.
City centers might have a factor of 10 more people in them; so if 1% of city core dwellers use the WiFi regularly, the system is working.
On the other hand, low-density suburban areas might have only 100-500 households per square mile; those areas might not get enough users to make sense.
Re:Minor Details (Score:1, Interesting)
Then see them get jobs with private companies, stop paying their original salaries or welfare, make the money back and plenty more when you don't need to pay extra middle men to get the job done.
They forget that government pays more for each worker, corporations just take all the profits to the people on the top.
No, that's the point. The government spends (ie: Pays) more for each worker, but the worker doesn't see that money in return (I should know, I've seen plenty of gov't paycheques). Instead it is eaten up by idiotic mis-management.
When people see the guy on the bottom makin money they claim he don't deserve it and its waste. But when the guy on the top does, they don't complain.
Uhhh, yeah, that's sorta the point. Have you ever run a business? Do you know how much work it takes to own and run a small business until it gets big enough to have employees?
Get back when you do.
Its whack.
No, it's spot on correct to let people only pay for what they want. It's totalitarian and mean to force someone to pay for something they have no interest in. It's tyrannical when it is something they not only have not interest in, but completely disagree with (and there's plenty of things your government's money is paying for that I'm certain you heartily disagree with... in your case privitization).
Besides, every new business should expect to loose money its first several years...
Yes. Unlike the government, they only expect to lose money for a few years. With the government, you can expect to lose money forever, except for the very rare case. Care to tell me the ratio of profitable years in various governments to years of government in debt? I'm willing to bet it's below 1%.
+5 mod? Communists on slashdot are at it again. I wonder how many of those mods came from China IPs.
Re:Failure in the Logic Unit, Replace Please (Score:2, Interesting)
You might want to look up competition in the dictionary.
Economics 101, my friend.
When the Father of Capitalism published his theory, it was prefaced on the municipalities providing common goods to permit all players to compete equally in the marketplace.
The provision of a common good such as WiFi permits small capitalist entrepreneurs to compete head to head with large soulless [his words, not mine] corporations equally, allowing capital formation and the success of better ideas without the natural tendancies of monopolistic anti-capitalist forces from crushing them.
Face it, common WiFi for an entire municipality is the essence of true competitive advantage for a nation of small wily entrepreneurs to bring forth the competitive pressures of the marketplace and encourage higher yields of productivity.
Re:Minor Details (Score:3, Interesting)
Chinese use central planning, we no worship market as god.
quote from the CIA factbook on China [cia.gov]:
In late 1978 the Chinese leadership began moving the economy from a sluggish, inefficient, Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented system. Whereas the system operates within a political framework of strict Communist control, the economic influence of non-state organizations and individual citizens has been steadily increasing. The authorities switched to a system of household and village responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprises in services and light manufacturing, and opened the economy to increased foreign trade and investment. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978.
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