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Ohio: Dayton - Then and Now

Category:  Action > Request for Proposals (RFP)

Bill Hill, director of Dayton's information and technology services department, has launched a pilot project that offers free wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, in the city's public space. The program started in April and gives Wi-Fi, short for Wireless Fidelity, to citizens in one square mile of downtown's streets, sidewalks and streets. As the test run comes to a close at the year's end, Hill is taking bids on a permanent project that will expand free Wi-Fi to the 55 square miles of the city. He plans for free wireless for the entire city public space by the end of 2006. City IT director talks about Wi-Fi potential

I met Bill Hill at a PTI conference where I gave a keynote back in September. He is a true municipal wireless pioneer. We talked about the correlation between municipal wireless today and the advent of wireline telephony 100 years ago. He shared with me a picture of Dayton in 1895, and while I try to keep this space free of high bandwidth picture files for those readers who don't yet have broadband, I'll make an exception here because its pretty rich.

Bill sent me this picture after we met to show me the telephone utility poles with multiple crossbucks - look closely for the multiple cross bars on the poles - they are there for the different wireline owners. This is why the US decided to regulate telephony and give ATT a monopoly - multiple providers in one town did not make sense. And this is why ATT is where it is today - by the grace of our government which granted a monopoly, and its millions of ratepayers, whose regulated rates paid for the network that CEO Ed Whitacre at the new ATT is now so proud of - and this is why there's a race afoot by municipal broadband vendors to get out and get networks deployed in towns - those networks constitute a "natural monopoly" at least for a while, and competitors are much less likely to put in a secondary overlay network if a network is already in place in a town. It pays to go first in this industry.

Posted on November 21, 2005 at 10:10 PM

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