ISPs Losing Interest In Citywide Wireless Coverage 98
The New York Times is running a story about how hope is fading for the implementation of municipal wireless access in cities across the US. Major cities and small towns alike are finding that ISPs are withdrawing from such plans due to the low profitability of ventures that are similar to Philadelphia's incomplete network. We've previously discussed Chicago's and San Francisco's wireless status, and also some of the stumbling blocks other cities have faced. From the Times:
"In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity. EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that 'the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company's strategic direction.' Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed."
Not really surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
They're facing competition at both ends. They can't sell the service as 'Internet access in that place where you really want it' because often 'that place' already has free WiFi. They can't sell it as 'Internet access everywhere' because they don't have the coverage and their competitors, the mobile phone companies, do. Always-available Internet via my mobile phone costs about the same, per month, as via my cable modem (albeit with slower speeds and much smaller caps). For people who are willing to pay for Internet to be available all the time, that's a much better option than WiFi.
Profits (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Profits (Score:5, Insightful)
I still believe (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess we're stuck with hotspots then (Score:1, Insightful)
Coffeeshops rejoice, justified at pricing their coffee at more than $3 per cup.
Re:Profits (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I'm no fan of corporate greed somebody, somewhere has to pay for the service.
Sad, but not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, 802.11 is a LAN technology, not a MAN technology. Lipstick on that pig, even with cool mesh network attempts, isn't going to make it better. It was designed for local radial-cellular access by its channelization, and it's not good for covering wide areas. My sentiments go out to Strix and Firetide; both have decent models to make it wider. Cities have to figure out that broadband access is a utility, not an option.
We all have to sleep in it... (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISPs fought tooth and nail against even modest municipal wifi limited to public areas like libraries and shopping districts, because they wanted to make money from it. So rather than municipally funded projects they promoted these ad-hoc "partnerships" that didn't, in the end, make money.
They're too obsessed with $ now! (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess the ISPs decided trying to wiretap MANs would be too hard because they have no way of proving that a certain data packet came from a certain person, and because then everyone wouldn't have to pay outrageous ripoff prices for a watered down, censored Internet...
Re:They're too obsessed with $ now! (Score:4, Insightful)
While countries elsewhere in the world are altruistic, caring little about money?
Re:TANSTAAFL - where muni access makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Most taxpayers don't want to see their money going to subsidize a few people who want to use a laptop in the park, even if that's not really the point. And using anything other than a property tax that included business property wouldn't be fair to people who don't live in the area (you mentioned a wage tax - which is almost always a death sentence for local job growth in a struggling economy).
If these municipalities were really serious, they would partner with someone who already has a wide area network in place (like Verizon or Comcast in the case of Philadelphia). For them, it would be incremental revenue, not primary. Pay them enough to get a couple of techs trained to maintain the system, give them some manner of exclusivity and limited liability, and DON'T make them provide end-user tech support. However, the muni could (and should) demand coverage minimums, QOS/uptime requirements, "openness" etc.
Of course, that would require one to admit that networking is hard, expensive, and low margin.
802.11b,g = Silly, WimAx could work briefly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now doing the same thing with public spectrum WiMax or UltraWideBand could work for 2-4 years until the next wireless technology improves upon it. It might work because it can cover much greater distances, so less antennas, and better ones (MiMo) and most importantly, tower equipment is expensive enough (though not very), that the average home user isn't going to be able to afford a transmitter to compete with it.
There is one gotcha, and that is that sharing some 50 Mbits over 3-20 KM would never work because most Metro cities are too densely populated. Unless you use deep packet inspection at endpoints and allow only SMTP and true HTTP/s traffic and deny all else. South Korea has standardized on WiMax for wireless, not WIFi, and their network is mostly complete.
Ultimately, there is a reason why Telco's pay Billions for private spectrum, because there will be (in theory) zero interference, and zero competition - although Google changed the latter slightly, lately.
PS. If you want to learn way more on WiMax read the wikipedia page, it is very informative.