The Great is the Enemy of the Good

Three articles at the top of Wi-Fi Networking News this weekend led me to ponder these and other questions. Thanks, Glenn.

First, city officials in Boca Raton have pushed Wi Fi mesh networks down their list of priorities citing some spurious reasoning and one failed downtown network. I wonder what priorities went ahead of ubiquitous high-speed connectivity. No doubt, more pedestrian (but also, more immediate and better understood) concerns such as property taxes, no-smoking ordinances, and city staffing levels beat out the more esoteric Wi Fi mesh proposition. Despite considerable progress in raising the debate in some quarters, this issue continues to be debated locally in city councils around the nation in an atmoshphere of half-truths, misunderstandings and general lack of awareness (or mistrust?) of the dramatic transformations that ubiquitous high-speed connectivity enables.

Then in Pittsburgh, the city council seems to be working down at the micromanager level, debating pole attachment rates. When do such esoteric issues merit board level discussion? I'll tell you when - when perceived political risk gives politicians a ratioanle to look for delays and reasons not to say YES to change, because something better may come along and they will be second-guessed. If "Great kills Good," then its companiion must be "Fear trumps Faith." These are rapidly changing times and we all need to be able to look at new opportunities with new yardsticks, which factor in unknown upsides against better known risks, and account for opportuniity costs. There is risk in every change, but there is also risk in delaying change, and I would argue that cities are delaying making prudent decisions and are not attaching a cost to those decisions. If they did, they would vote to take small risks in demonstration networks while they consider the bigger picture, but continue to move forward just the same.

Finally, a breath of fresh air with another bold county-wide initiative, wherein a large county moves forward with dramatic plans for a large-scale wi fi mesh network. In
Suffolk County Plans to Offer Free Wireless Internet Access - New York Times, we learn that one government council thinks that the merits outweigh the costs and that a county plans to proceed. There is a long way to go to getting the network, however, and the forces of "prudent decisons" - read "risk-free decisions" - will raise their heads here as well. Count on this project to hear from critics who will argue that the project is too risky and that the county should wait until they know more.

I'd suggest to all three regional political leaders, in Boca Raton, Pittsburgh, and in Suffolk County, that there is a safe path to move forward, which begins with widespread regional discussions and education campaigns, complemented with targetted and well-publicized demonstration deployments of wireless networks so that everyone can see, touch, and feel this new technology. Wi Fi mesh and other new forms of wireless broadband access require us all to try them out, to consider how we might use them, to imagine a new way of communicating and to debate worthiness based on a full understnading of the potential risks, costs and benefits.

Waiting for the Best solution to come along - free, fast, free, for everyone, free, and .... risk-free - condemns a population to live without the benefit of the new experience, new knowledge, and new potential that would come from a smaller, less ambitious (but accesible and deployed) neighborhood network, which would still be a Better communication solution than what they currently have. Waiting for a full-city or county-wide network to be debated to the point where no risk is left in the decision is deterministic - it will not happen. It means that your population will not get to the future until their incumbent providers take them there, and the opportunity cost will be huge (and most likely, unaccounted for).

And that, my firends, is how a nation slides into 16th place in the global race to broadband connectivity. Safe, and mediocre, ever patient and waiting for somebody else to go first, and for the risk-free answer to all their prayers. Not unlike, I might add, the transition to alternative fuels, but that is a whole other can of worms...