« What Stands in the Way of Unwiring? | Weblog | Seeing RED, Seeing Green »

Unwired Cities: Early in the Cycle, but Not Too Early

The growth of the Internet has paralleled that of most industries based on revolutionary technology. Canals, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, cars, radios, personal computers - all progressed (or are progressing) through four phases of development: boom, bust, mature growth and decay.

Irreplaceable Exuberance - New York Times I like articles like this that put things in perspective. According to the author, we weren't all insane in the late 90s, nor were we overly exuberant, so much as we were caught up in an inevitable cycle of a new technology. Hey, it happens. Well, OK some of you out there were a little over the top, but not me. I'm with this guy, it was a cycle-thing, and I was involved with "trial and error adaptation," busy helping to form a new industry.

The good news if you follow this line of thought, and I think it makes sense to do so, is that we are entering the longest and most lucrative of the four phases. Having gone through the heady days of Boom, and endured the humbling of the Bust phase, we now find ourselves at the dawn of the Mature Growth phase, which is a fun place to be. While not as fun as having a ping-pong table in your lunch room and massages on Friday afternoons, this is the more enduring fun of discovering a business need and providing a meaningful, competitive solution, with the wind at your back. Kind of like the difference between being infatuated during the first weeks of a romance, and settling into a long satisfying marriage with a compatible spouse.

That's where we are with municipal wireless networks. Cities are interested in this new technology not because it is some kind of fad. They realize that the Internet is entering a long-term high-growth phase and if a city is not on the highway, it will be left behind. We should all heed the cautionary tale of the Internet Boom, however, and not build networks that do not make financial sense. As the article says, "Gradually, through trial and painful error, we developed more refined ideas about what the Internet would become and why."

Because predicting the future is hard, we resist jumping in too early and making the wrong picks, but we also don't want to be left standing on the sidelines, watching the future pass us by. That's why I like the modular nature of wireless networking, which allows a tentative buyer to shop and then stick her toe in the water with a manageable project. So if we acknowledge that the Internet is no fad, and high speed access is the way to go, then recent measures taken by city leaders to ensure widespread access to the Internet must be seen as prudent, as long as the network can work as promised, the costs are reasonable, and there is a clear path to financial payback. To sit on the sidelines in this cycle would be to miss an opportunity, because this is no new Boom phase, but rather the continuation of the Internet Revolution that began 15 years ago.

Posted on August 31, 2005 at 02:11 PM

Comments


Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)