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February 2007 Archive

Lead, Follow, or Get out of the Way

Here I go again, commenting on blogs. I guess I've caught the bug again. After reading two posts about broadband on MuniWireless.com - Another "victory" for US broadband: cable will win and Broadband Policy: Too Much or Too Little? - I felt compelled to weigh in with my comments, which are captured below. While I understand corporate behavior, believe it or not, I have nothing against large corporations. I believe they should operate with efficiency and keep the long-term view in mind (see my post referencing Toyota from yesterday here), but other than that, I'm all for corporations competing and winning - but it has to be on a level playing field. I just don't like it when corporations leverage their privileged access to government, and most of the big ones do just that. they do it because they can very cost-effectively put pressure on lawmakers to craft policies that favor their business interests. It's another form of competing, but one only available to deep-pocketed companies, and a practice that slows down the natural cleansing functioning of markets. In the end, they only hire lobbyists and exert undue pressure on lawmakers because we let them, and because it works.

So no, my chief complaint is not with big Telco and big Cable. No, I hold my full wrath for those public officials, elected or appointed, who once in power turn their backs on constituents, in favor of serving the interests of the big businesses who make large political contributions that will keep them in office or on the job. Too many of them have abused their power and lost sight of their oath to defend the constitution, too many have pursued policies that favor those already in power at the expense of fair competition, or at the expense of the weak and disenfranchised.

I recently ran into my professor and mentor from back when I was in the Graduate School of Government at the University of Texas, 20 years ago. His specialty was the alignment of societal, corporate, and political elites to control political outcomes. He has written extensively on this topic, and even though I know it is the way of the world and human behavior, it chaps me when I see the perverse side effects of elite control in societies, whether it's in the Third World or the First World.

My copy of Dr. John Higley's latest book, The Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy is on its way to me from Amazon. It's likely to be pretty thick reading for the non-politcal junkie, but it is revealing to this debate. The good news - the reed of hope I cling to - is that elites respond to political pressure from the masses and to public exposure of anti-competitive private behaviors. I think it is our role as leaders promoting a more open and progressive national debate on broadband policy to bring political pressure to bear on these corporate and poliical elites, who currently manage broadband policy to serve their own interests. Only then will we see positive changes start to occur.

Here below then is my screed on Change and the Status Quo regarding Broadband Policy.

I just read this post and Gary Bolles similar post describing the discussion on broadband policy at the Tech Policy Summit (Broadband Policy: Too Much or Too Little?) - so this comment applies to both.

While I side with Jim Baller on our need for an EXPLICIT, broad-based, comprehensive national broadband policy based on a national discussion of all interested parties on this vital strategic issue, I can't help but juxtapose that idea with what I see in these two posts that is revealing of the incumbent vision, and ask the reader - which POV most closely aligns with our ideals of an open, pluralistic, democratic society?

Esme describes what can only be seen as an IMPLICIT policy of giving telecom and cable incumbents free rein and continuing an advantaged position for them - in effect, the result is a pro-corporation, anti-consumer policy. Through its inaction to promote a national discussion and seek a more balanced middle way, the government frees the large players to execute their business plans on their own timeframes. And every year of inaction to create an inclusive strategy based on a balanced discussion equals a delay in broadband options for consumers and billions more in revenue for the incumbents. This is Laissez-Faire economics on steroids. I would argue that it is not inattention by government leaders either, but a defacto government policy on broadband, just not one that most consumers should favor.

The result is predictable (if depressing): 1) a redlined telecom fiber broadband network that serves the densest, most profitable territories; 2) urban cable broadband access available wherever their cable infrastructure happens to be (dense neighborhoods, but still wider distribution than newly laid telco fiber); 3) mobile internet access from cell carriers through expensive data plans, featuring Walled Gardens of content made available to cellphones tied to one specific cell plan provider's two-year lock-in service plan, with bandwidth sufficient for email and surfing the web - a plan almost exclusively tailored for limited use by the business traveler; and 4) slow, but growing adoption by municipalities of newer technologies like Wi Fi Mesh and WiMAX, in essence a work-around for this lack of an integrated national broadband policy, but one which is constrained by lack of access to unlicensed non-line of sight spectrum, which would lower costs and increase the value of these networks.

When there is no broad-based explicit policy, as Jim promotes, there is nevertheless an implicit policy in that vacuum. We should call this one as it is, an elitist unwritten policy of corporate protectionism. Seen in this light, it's no wonder that we hear arguments in Gary's post from the ATT executive against the need for unfettered end user equipment, and from the Verizon executive against the need for a government policy on broadband.

From their perspective, after all, things are going well and according to plan. Incumbents and beneficiaries of the status quo NEVER favor change that opens up markets, lowers costs, or provides customers with more freedom and power. That would be irrational and anathema to the interests of their shareholders; I understand it, but I don't like it.

Taking care of ALL the people, not just shareholders, is the government's job. It's most efficient on issues like broadband policy when national government leaders accept the mantle of leadership and take action based on principles - sometimes they have to take action to rein in corporate behavior that does not suit the broader national interest, even if it hurts them politically. But we haven't seen that in a long while.

At least a growing number of local governments (and a few state governments) still understand their role in a democratic society - to support the welfare of all citizens. Until we see a change in attitude from our national government institutions, I'm afraid we're unlikely to see a more balanced and open national broadband policy. The status quo serves the interests and aligns with the world view of our current political and corporate leadership.

Posted on February 27, 2007 at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

What's Municipal Wireless Good For? The Whole Enchilada

Whether Toyota has evolved into the world's most sophisticated modern corporation - one whose example has challenged the American model of manufacturing and management - happens to be a common topic of conversation among business analysts these days. '"It's influencing just about every major company in the world, in that they're asking the question: What can we learn from Toyota?'" says Jeff Liker, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan who has written several books on the company. Indeed, what you can learn from Toyota is something that even Bill Gates has pondered publicly. And yet deconstructing Toyota means breaking down a corporation that uses all its resources, and more than 295,000 employees worldwide, to construct things that are not meant to come apart. NYT Magazine Article: From 0 to 60 To World Domination (Premium Membership Required)

How does Toyota grow consistently, even as its competition slides into the abyss?

The article describes a formula for success characterized by these traits, among others:

1) Kaizen - constant incremental improvement, long-term focus, R&D spending, and innovation-based DNA together support a relentless drive to the top (hint: "never rest on your laurels");
2) a fixation on idealistic perfection as a standard of excellence and benchmark, rather than just doing enough to stay ahead of the competition, or to preserve a lead, or to get by;
3) a corporate culture that embraces risk-taking, as long as it conforms to the corporate goals of improving customer experience and adding to the bottom line; and
4) a culture that rewards honesty and candor, which allows the company to realistically assess their long-term prospects and craft a sound strategy that provides them with the flexibility to grow into an uncertain future.

So, how do you see your local broadband provider stacking up to Toyota?

1) in value add?
2) in customer satisfaction?
3) in introduction of new products that anticipate the future and incorporate the latest technologies to keep costs down and increase value at the same time?

Why don't we as consumers demand the same level of service and focus on excellence from our telecom providers as we enjoy in the best of our personal transportation vehicle providers? Is the situation that different as to make this question moot?

I don't think it is. I would argue we accept what we are given because we have been led to believe that we are already getting the best possible, and besides, there is little choice, and so - little we can do about it, so we might as well accept it as the best we're going to get and move on.

I watched a magic show at my son's Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet last night, and I recollect how we as an audience tended to be duped and entertained by the magician's patter. We know we're being led down the proverbial path, and yet we go along, because its entertaining. In a similar fashion, we tend to be duped by big communication providers, even willingly, when we fail to challenge them to do better and fail to hold them to the same standards we hold the leaders to in other industries. Let's not give Telcos and Cable Cos a free ride...

If I were a leading telecom or cable company executive, I'd be hanging around Toyota and soakng up some of their magic. And therein lies the lead for this particular blog. FINALLY.

The presence and growth of the Municipal Wireless industry is prima facie evidence of a market demand. That demand is for greater broadband options, increased innovation, lower prices, which has not been satisfied by the incumbent operators. So when a technology comes along to let municipalities take control of their telecom destiny, some step up, a few at first, but more and more as the costs and risks go down, and so a new industry is born in the vacuum left by an old one.

I think that telecom is an inherently complex operation, and that cities, especially smaller ones, benefit when they assume a partnership role with private players. Cities are best served leaving the risky and complex jobs to the private sector where possible, focusing on what they do well: providing for the general welfare of the citizenry, prinicipally with better public safety, better infrastructure, better prospects for the future (eco dev), and increasingly, better protection of the natural environment.

Not to say that cities can't and shouldn't still be great catalysts for change, and that is the essence of what Municpal Wireless is good for. It helps cities be better at what they are good for - taking care of their citizens. Thus, you have my first three reasons from the previous blog:

1. Muni Wireless provides a stimulus for national debate on broadband (at a time when local broadband providers are not keeping up with the global Jones).
2. Muni Wireless provides us a vision in the absence of national leadership (at a time when national leaders are setting the bar very low).
3. Muni Wireless gives us all a Straw Man to Consider - and one that also Embarrasses Incumbents and Powers That Be and Stimulates a Response (at a time when a call to action is needed).

Here are a few more things that Municpal Wireless is good for.

4. Muni Wireless is spawning a new wireless applications industry. This new industry is starting at the municipal applications level, but it will expand to encompass consumer applications. These networks will not sit idly by for long, being used solely by laptops equipped with Wi Fi chips. No, these wireless clouds are the equivalent of curvy roads in the country, where young creative minds will turn to race their wireless application hot rods, just like their grandparents did back when they were teenagers toying with rebuilt cars and souped up engines in races for "pink slips."

5. Municipal Wireless spurs community innovation and creativity. Want to kick start your town and shed an old image? You could do worse than launch a study of Wireless Broadband, convene a Mayor's Task Force, create community study groups, host Trial Projects with vendors, or invite the local university to participate.

Such is the value of getting busy and mobilizing a community. Sleepy towns tend to accept their fate and mosey along, content with today, and in so doing, they suffer a slow decline. Restless towns, like Toyota above, are not content to rest on their laurels, to set minor goals, rather, they focus on an idealistic future, craft a vision, and pursue it. It just so happens that Muni Wireless offers leaders a tool to emulate Toyota, to capture their citizens' imaginations and mobilize a change effort.

6. Muni Wireless opens up new economic development alternatives. Critics (and cynics) tend to make light of the economic development argument, taking a narrow view of that term, and then dismissing the impact of Wi Fi Mesh networks when they say "I doubt that Dimebox, Texas, is going to suddenly attract businesses and individuals to relocate because they have a Muni Wireless network." Critics make their points with an exagerated argument - essentially, building up a straw man only so they can knock him down.

I think that statement above is a facile and dismissive argument, one that misses an important aspect of economic development, highlighted by Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class. Namely, creative people drive innovation and make pleasant places to live, which in turn stimulates a virtuous circle, where environment makes a big difference in drawing in more creative types, and in keeping creative types at home as well, should they decide to stray. An additional impact of economic development, perhaps one more suitable for municipal wireless, is when a region has a wireless capacity and several changes lead outsiders to consider the region in a new (and more favorable) light.

Just to make the argument, let's imagine Dimebox for a minute. Small town in rural Texas, with cheap land and beautiful sunsets, perhaps not much more than that, as far as outsiders are concerned. So, when their future-oriented city manager works with a private provider to bring in a Muni Wireless system, everyone in Dimebox ends up getting more affordable broadband. They spend their extra cash, normally part of their telecom budget, on buying more stuff, which provides a lift to the local economy on a regular basis, because the effect is to keep money local - EVERY MONTH. This is the argument made by St. Cloud city officials. There is an economic development element, even if nobody moves in.

He's putting the money saved by residents at $3.7m per year based on an average fee previously paid of about $36 per month. (If you were paying $26.95 for AOL for dial-up, that's now dropped to $9.99, but I figure there's a lot of variation among dial-up and broadband monthly fees.) These are pretty cool numbers because they support both Baltuch's case - the idea that free Wi-Fi paid for by a city could produce economic effects and high uptake - and the opposite. St. Cloud Says 77% of Households Registered for Free Wi-Fi
OK, so nobody moves in. Let's think some more about those who are already there. The high school brings in a Digital vocational ed class, and some kids develop blogs and commercial web sites. Some of them stick around because they have much of what the outside world would offer, while others move to the big city (you're not going to keep them all down on the farm with broadband, but some may stay with more local opportunity).

Stimulated by the changes in broadband access, more local merchants hire web consultants and give their brochure websites a makeover (or finally get one). They go on to start developing buisness on-line, from around the globe - lo and behold, there is a market for rattlesnake handbags in Osaka and Mumbai! Long Live the Long Tail!

The library sponsors classes in digital literacy, where attendance increases because of the attention the Muni Wireless project generates. Grandparents figure out how to use the digital cameras their kids gave them last Christmas and start posting videos and snapshots to You Tube and Flickr.

And thanks to an article in the Dallas newspaper, cars start to trickle in from the nearby Interstate, drawn by curiosity as much as anything else. The Local Artists Guild sponsors a Digital Art Fair. Sales of funnel cakes, lemonade, sweet popcorn, and turkey legs boom!

Wrapping Things Up

The bottom line for these three new benefits of Muni Wireless? The results may be small, but they will be cumulative. A town enjoys a positive impact when its community launches a Muni Wireless project: 1) they gain an opportunity to leverage new wireless applications; 2) they become engaged and mobilized; and 3) they enjoy incremental (and perhaps more dramatic) economic development benefits.

When Muni Wireless rolls into town, the rules change. The impact of ubiquitous and affordable broadband may be subtle, or dramatic, but it is not unlike the arrival of electricity, lights, and telephone to the small town, decades ago - or perhaps the more recent advent of cable TV is a more apt analogy - citizens find themselves less isolated and having more in common with their more cosmopolitan cousins when they are connected to the Information Superhighway, and in today's world, broadband is ever more dominant as a critical infrastructure.

And, I might add, if present trends continue, those cynics and critics may even start to be proven wrong about the potential of parties moving in to an area, because the cumulative impact of all these little changes is that the little town that could - Dimebox, Tx, in our example - begins to experience a cultural renaissance and indeed, some businesses and individuals may start to move to Dimebox, for the slower pace, the wholesome lifestyle, the cheaper real estate, the lack of traffic, the sense of community .... and the access to cheap broadband and innovative wireless applications - whether as icing on the cake, or as the meat inside the sandwich.

Broadband won't always, or even often be a panacea for most towns, but it will be an indicator of something more at work in those communities that get active. I'm sure there were plenty of raised eyebrows when the little, sleepy, isolated village of Marfa, Texas, began to take off as an enclave / redoubt for the privileged /creative elites. Stranger things have happened - and it could happen to your town too! You don't know what the future holds until you try to make a change for the better, and changing the rules of competition is a good way to achieve leverage ....

The changes that Municipal Wireless may bring will in many ways be incremental, but they can have a lasting impact on the community if the community embraces the change and more and more citizens embrace a more digital lifestyle. Small towns should benefit more than large towns, because they have less to work with, they have farther to go in living up to their digital potential, and they start with a more integrated community outlook, which gives them a better shot at developing synergies and forging a common future, like Toyota.

This is such a fun concept, I'm sure I'll be back to list more things that Municipal Wireless is Good For. I hope this helps to generate some creative dialogue.

Posted on February 26, 2007 at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

What's Municipal Wireless Good For?

Well, I don't know if its safe for me to get out on the blogs these days, because I feel compelled to comment, it seems. I just posted a long comment I made on Greg Richardson's Civitium blog (copied on my webpage here, and I also posted a comment on Richard Martin's Unstrung Insider Weekly blog, where he asked the question: "What's Municipal Wireless Good For?"

Richard Martin's challenge really got me revved up, because I believe that these networks are good for so much, depending on one's individual circumstance. As it turns out, in my hometown, they're not good for a whole lot, given all the different broadband options we are blessed to have. But in other cities, they fill a valuable role.

Richard highlighted Craig Settles' argument of a key role of Municipal Wireless that I am very much in agreement with - cities with muncipal wireless networks create an experimental stage for new technology roll outs.

Ultimately, the real value of the municipal WiFi networks spreading like algae across the land may be in their efficacy as testbeds for mobile infrastructure, applications, and services.

That's the conclusion of a new report from Oakland-based wireless consultant Craig Settles, head of Successful.com, who notes that "Government spending for mobile technology is outpacing small and medium-size enterprise (SME) spending, and this validates local governments' potential value to suppliers." In other words, who else is going to pay you to put up WiFi mesh networks of 10, 25, or 50-plus square miles?

Let's face it, those cities that really want to push out the envelope can invite in wireless application providers to use their new networks and generate lots of new and interesting information along the way - see Corpus Christi as a prime example, where PTI recently published a review of their many applications, entitled "Wi-Fi Done Right: Experiences from the Field

So, back to What's Muni Wireless Good For ...

In addition to agreeing with Richard Martin and Craig Settles on the efficacy of muni wireless projects to kick start a technology and provide good experimental feedback, I listed three things (I'll add a separate blog with more - this will make a good Top Ten List):

1. Muni Wireless provides a stimulus for national debate on broadband.
2. Muni Wireless provides us a vision in the absence of national leadership.
3. Muni Wireless gives us all a Straw Man to Consider (and one that also Embarrasses Incumbents and Powers That Be and Stimulates a Response).

Bottom Line: Muni Wireless has defined a new industry and set the tone for a new debate on broadband in America, where all of our official leadership has gone AWOL. No longer is it "When will the telecoms and cables give us broadband?" Now, we have a trend line of cities taking matters into their own hands and bringing in new broadband infrastructure alternatives.

Before Muni Wireless, they just could not do that - it was not an economically feasible option. Muni Wireless has changed the near term prospects for broadband in America, and that's pretty significant for a little underrated technology that everyone overlooked.

Here's my Comment in its entireity. I really need to find a good editor to make these blogs and comments shorter ...

I just finished reading Richard's commentary, and I had to respond, I mean, c'mon, what an invitation - "What's Muni Wireless Good For?"

Let me try to start a little list here of what Muni Wireless is good for... I'll limit the list to three items, but continue it on my website later (www.metronetiq.com). This is just too good an invitation to ignore. :)

1. Muni Wireless provides a stimulus for national debate on broadband. Without Muni Wireless, we're not having this debate (or we're having a different, less robust discussion). Quite simply, Muni Wireless has served a valuable role as a catalyst to stimulate progress in developing a vital technology infrastructure for our nation, prodding comfortable incumbents to action ahead of their - shall we say, "slow" - schedules.

Without Muni Wireless, discussion of broadband could well be limited to backroom deals in Washington between Big Telecom, Big Cable, and the FCC, the way it's always been. At a minimum, the discussion would be more limited and less colorful. And we would get whatever "they" decided we would get, on their timetable, not ours.

Starting with Philadelphia's Digital Divide discussion in 2004, and the Verizon-backed legislation ban it spawned, Muni Wireless moved the debate up to a timetable driven not by comfortable, short-term-oriented telecom and cable incumbents, but by impatient, progressive city leaders. And that's progress.

2. Muni Wireless provides us a vision in the absence of national leadership. Say what you will about the faults of Muni Wireless, it has done more with very little than could ever have been expected, and it is a visionary, if still, a flawed concept. City leaders are doing all they can with what they have to work with - it may fall short of some people's standards, but give these pioneers credit for stepping out with a leadership vision and taking action. We all know the value of beta software releases, why not look at Muni Wireless that way? It is improving over time.

We're certainly not getting much vision from our purported national leaders, whether it's the FCC, the Congress, the President and the Executive Branch, or the incumbent telcos, wireless companies, and cable companies. Why is it that we sit and watch S. Korea, Japan, Singapore, Finland, France, and who knows who else race ahead of the US with clear broadband policies elaborated by national government leaders, while we in the US settle for less, much less, where our FCC defines broadband as "over 200 Kbs" and qualifies an entire zip code as having broadband when only one household in the Zip Code has access...huh? Talk about setting a low bar for success by incumbents.... that’s not leadership in anyone's book.

We get what we get from powerful interests because they do what they want because they can, when there are no alternatives - and there was nobody to stop them - until the alternative of Muni Wireless came along. The powers-that-be set a very low bar for success, progress was just not happening, and in response, some municipal leaders stepped up and said, "We can do better," and launched municipal wireless plans. What's so wrong with that? Why are so many ready to criticize it and so slow to acknowledge progress?

3. Muni Wireless gives us all a Straw Man to Consider (and one that also Embarrasses Incumbents and Powers That Be and Stimulates a Response). Wi Fi Mesh is an adaptation of an indoor technology that leverages a tiny sliver of unlicensed spectrum to do amazing things. (Let's face it, the 2.4 GHz band is a crumb thrown to innovators by the FCC - "take it, the baby monitors and microwave ovens won't mind.") This from a group of regulators seemingly eager to squeeze every last dime out of every last Hz of spectrum in "competitive" auctions, so competitive that everyone knows at the start of the auction that one of a small group of large, mostly non-innovative service providers will win in the end. So cynical.

When it takes billions of dollars to win a slice of spectrum, only the big guys will last and win. Small muni wireless innovators have done more with a little bit of unlicensed spectrum and an "indoor" technology than big huge companies managed to do with all kinds of resources and all kinds of time: they kicked off numerous aggressive, "risky" last mile projects and stimulated progress and national debate on broadband infrastructure.

So far, not a whole lot of public funds have been spent on Municipal Wireless projects, but the industry sure has generated a lot of press and speculation given the POTENTIAL of public expenditures and activism. Recently, muni wireless attorney Jim Baller commented on the need for a national broadband policy - AMEN. Jim's been out there for a long, long time saying what needs to be said on this topic, but I bet his audience is considerably larger now that there's a national debate stimulated by Muni Wireless projects initiated by city government pioneers.

I commented on Jim's call for a National Broadband Policy on my website (www.MetroNetIQ.com), and I recollected that there once was a time in the 1960s when we had a national community pulling together on a visionary project (The Space Race). Back then, we a) engaged in a national debate on a vital strategic program; b) had visionary leadership that set a goal and pulled a nation together behind a spectacular vision - and what a stretch goal!; and c) had large companies that got behind our national goal and contributed (and benefited) - we all pulled together, we succeeded, and we went to the Moon! Sighh...we don't have that today.

Absent the Muni Wireless movement calling for more and better last mile broadband, I'm not sure we would have this current debate, this vision, or this prod to spur incumbent action.

Space and decorum limit my comments, but I could go on and on about what Municipal Wireless is good for. In the end, even if it ends up only being good to shine the light on the issue of broadband infrastructure and motivate those who should be active to get busy, then it will have served its purpose and it can fade away, to be replaced by superior technologies.

At the dawn of electric light, at the end of the 19th Century, back when Broadway earned the nickname "The Great White Way" because of the bright, bright lights from arc lights - we were easier to please back then - back then, nobody challenged the fact that arc lights weren't as soft and convenient as incandescent bulbs would ultimately be. They marveled at the light and wonder of it all, at progress. Let us marvel now, for a little while, at our progress, meager as it may seem, and then work together to improve on it.

I believe muni wireless will yet surprise us all, if we give this experiment time to play out. It will ultimately be a part of a larger solution that will also include other technologies like fiber broadband, WiMAX, 3G, 4G, etc. Now that the cat is out of the bag, there are innumerable dedicated and motivated local government officials equipped with a tool to push out the envelope and experiment and challenge the status quo, and I don't think any of us can predict where this movement will take us in five years. Thanks to billions of Wi Fi client devices, not to mention a lasting need for broadband in small towns and third world countries, Wi Fi mesh and muni wireless won't go away anytime soon.

And thanks to our Muni Wireless pioneers, and their oh-so-flawed but innovative projects, we're off on a journey. And that's a pretty good start, compared to where we were before.

Posted on February 21, 2007 at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

Penalty for Piling On - Fifteen Yards

Public broadband may be the best hope for positive change for the state of broadband in the U.S. It has already shifted huge power from the halls of the FCC and congress to City Hall, at a time when other forms of local control (e.g. cable franchising) have been moving in the other direction. But we are at risk of screwing it up through letting these discrete special interests dominate the issues. We are losing perspective on what the goal was in the first place for these projects; stimulate economic development, improve government efficiency and bridge the digital divide. San Francisco is allowing the valid goals outlined by the Mayor to be twisted into ideological debates over public ownership, consumer privacy and all manner of other issues. What was the Board doing about electronic consumer privacy in San Francisco before the EarthLink agreement was delivered to them? How much debate was happening in the Board chamber about network neutrality in 2006? Are these issues important? Yes; but only when considered in the context of the overall initiative, market, program, etc. Greg Richardson, founder of Civitium, and consultant to the City of San Francisco, wrote a long essay on his perspective on what is going wrong in San Francisco.

A political storm is brewing, where passionate social advocates are seeking to make the proposed municipal wireless network, like the US Marines, "be all that it can be." Problem is, their efforts to ensure consumer privacy and add other things, maybe with the best intentions for San Francisco, risk derailing the effort entirely.

I wrote a long comment to Greg's essay, captured below. The essence of the comment is that well intentioned though they may be, such efforts by consumer advocates to pile too much onto a municipal wireless effort do indeed pose a serious rsk. These wireless projects need to get up and running more than anything, and they can be improved after the fact. We need lots more networks, and lots more experiments, not perfect networks that cover all the bases politically. Many more networks will give us all experience, with successes to borrow from, and failures to learn from. And that experience, with its successes and its failures, will make all the networks in the future the better for it.

In a sense, these efforts to cover all the bases put the "Perfect" ahead of the "Good Enough," and risk resulting in the "Not Meant to Be."

My Comment, in all its glory, follows below. Enjoy.

I applaud Greg for stepping out with this comprehensive and constructive statement on some vital issues in our little industry of Municipal Wireless. When someone with his background and experience makes a statement like this, I think it's important to pay attention.

I have to start my comment by warning that I lack Greg's intimacy with the San Francisco situation based on Civitium's early involvement, as well as his experience with other large city network projects. My focus with MetroNetIQ has been elsewhere in the Muni Wireless supply chain, and lately with smaller cities - but whose problems are as difficult and at times, intractable, if not as newsworthy, as the larger ones.

But I do bring a dispassionate commentary here, and what I believe is an experienced eye. What I can say as an observer and commenter on municipal wireless for coming up on four years, is that there is wisdom in Greg's warning against the danger of parties hijacking municipal wireless based on their attachment to one ideology or another. Municipal Wireless is a tool in a toolbox, and an inspirational movement, but it's no cure for cancer (at least not yet).

We suffered through a major distraction in 2005, when entrenched incumbents, jealous of their privileged positions in relatively protected markets, positioned municipal wireless as some kind of ginned up indoor technology running on an unreliable unlicensed spectrum, being managed by a gang of public sector ne'er-do-well bureaucrats. I'm glad we're past that!

But as that movement finally faded into the woodwork and 2006 began, some of the more aggressive of the mobilized groups on the left side of the political spectrum, flush with victory in the Municipal Wireless Ban wars, arose and proclaimed a New Era of Free Wi Fi. "Community Wireless," a more pure version of "Municipal Wireless," became the battle cry, with its lack of a profit motive and its offer of a "free" service, free bandwidth like free air or water (neither of which is free anymore, by the way).

At its heart, municipal wireless and/or the more inclusive term, metropolitan broadband, represents an array of new business solutions to a variety of old problems. Innovative local leaders promote this solution by leveraging new technologies such as Wi Fi Mesh and fiber optics, to a lesser extent BPL, and soon, we hope, WiMAX.

But for these technologies to take hold and prosper, a whole new ecosystem of applications, providers, and consumer attitudes will be needed, and establishing that ecosystem is taking longer than any of us would like - it will take time to take hold.

One danger in the meantime is for impatient and hungry activists, as well as zealous market promoters and evangelists, to see some kind of "white knight" in Municipal Wireless, really more like a piecemeal improvement to our Last Mile Broadband Infrastructure, with great potential. Who wouldn't like a knight to carry one away from one's own personal bete noirs, after all? Or, they see the need to perfect the approach before launching, so as not to offend any party, as in Greg's discussion of consumer privacy concerns in his blog.

Don'' like the high cost of broadband access in duopoly or monopoly markets? Make Wi Fi broadband available for free. We'll be free from the shackles of the hated monopoly telecom company! Free at Last!

Frustrated at the inability to bring to heel the powerful telecom, wireless or cable company, or by the lack of choice in service providers, or by the failure of Congress to pass Net Neutrality legislation? Simply use your local government leverage to set more stringent requirements on the new Wi Fi Mesh provider, if only because you happen to have them over a barrel and can extract concessions.

Worried about offending political constituencies? Work protection provisions, like the consumer privacy restrictions, into the arrangement beforehand.

City governments even get involved in the piling on when they seek to participate too much in any profits, while avoiding any risks. Witness Metro Fi's withdrawal from Sacramento after they over-reached.

In all these arguments for social improvement, all of them quite valid by the way, there is a role for Municipal Wireless projects to play. But I'm not sure that this particular horse can carry the whole load - this desire to do good and cover all the bases puts inordinate pressure on the municipal wireless project before it's even off the ground.

These are valid social causes, and sentiments that Feel Good, but I also see the Perfect being promoted to the detriment of the Good. Sometimes, "good enough" is as good as you're gonna get, and it's a danger to overreach. I see also a fair degree of impatience in comments and suggestions about Municipal Wireless, even from supporters.

Especially here in its infancy, the development of Municipal Wireless moves along with steady, incremental growth. Its pioneers can claim many proud accomplishments over the past four years, and are due our respect. But none of the young service providers, even the relatively giant Earthlink, are anywhere near as robust or financially healthy as the larger, well-established telecom, wireless, and cable incumbents, and we should also recognize that. Collectively, municipal wireless projects represent a ray of hope and an inspiration for us all to go out and take action to make things better.

Even as we give them credit for going after solutions and taking advantage of an opportunity when they see one, we should beware of saddling these pioneer risk-taking firms with the sins of an unpopular incumbent corporation or poor government policy, shouldn't we? At best, hitting new players with tight restrictions that can't even be placed on old players under current laws is an illogical response to some very old and entrenched problems in telecommunications and society.

If the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 failed to open up a raft of new competitors and bring about ubiquitous cheap telecommunications as we hoped at the time (indeed, who even knew about broadband back then?), and if we haven't had much leadership or reform in telecommunications since - well, that stinks, but why should we expect Municipal Wireless to become some kind of panacea for such long-held societal woes?

When proponents of perfectly valid social causes saddle municipal wireless projects with overly aggressive requirements and expectations, albeit with good and noble intentions, they set themselves up for failure and dashed hopes.

Frankly, I even see the risk of "Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg," if these trends go too far. These new municipal wireless service providers should be nurtured and incubated instead, coddled like small saplings that may one day grow into a forest of mighty oaks.

And while I agree that new wireless companies should be held to high standards, I think there needs to be more realism in the market. I think that extreme positions on both sides that would hijack municipal wireless, or hack it down, should be shown for what they truly are - opportunistic grabs at solutions to address long-held pet causes. It's not uncommon to see this behavior in legislatures, where politicians seek a bill, any bill, to carry their preferred language forward to passage.

I believe in Municipal Wireless and have staked my career on it. Still, I look forward to the day when a little boredom creeps back into this field, to the day when we see less hype and media headlines, less hyperbole and grand claims, and more excitement about such humdrum concepts as ROI, IRR, conservative funding mechanisms, year-on-year improvement and incrementalism, and practical applications that solve old problems in new ways.

I think that we should all take a step back and offer more encouragement for these projects - we should build in safeguards against real risks, but we must streamline them and not let them keep a project from launch or from profitability. It's hard enough for a group of private and public supporters to get a project off the ground as it is, without unnecessary obstructions.

Posted on February 21, 2007 at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)

Thunderstruck: The Birth of Wireless and Other Industry Births

I admit, I'm a sucker for history. More times than not, when surfing the TV channels, I end up on the History Channel, to the moans and groans of my pre-teen children. And when a history lesson aligns with my area of expertise, all the better. I think that reading about the birth of an industry is a good task when trying to understand what is going on today. To better understand Metropolitan Broadband and its potential, there are a number of books that I would recommend. And it won't be wasted time either, because these are enjoyable reads - when it comes to history and reading, it's a two-fer. To raise your Network IQ and Feed your Head, I recommend you try one of these books on for size.

First, I most recently read Thunderstruck by Erik Larson, a well-written non-fiction book that nevertheless reads like fiction. I understand that historical treatments are a stock in trade for Larson, and in this novel that I consumed over the holidays, Larson skillfully weaves together two historical events from the turn of the century one hundred years ago, to great dramatic effect.

On the one hand, you have the dandy Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian-born inventor and entrepreneur who took wireless radio from a parlor trick among the English scientific elite to a practical business application, building a company to provide ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication, when nobody imagined that such a feat would be possible, and along the way, becoming known as the Father of Wireless.

On the other hand, you have the story of Dr. Hawley Crippen, a brow-beaten milk-toast of a man who murdered his wife in the most sensational murder of the day. The murder was such a sensation that it inspired no less than Alfred Hitchcock to craft his suspense thriller masterpiece Rear Window years later.

After murdering and dismembering his wife, Dr. Crippen flees England with his mistress aboard an ocean liner to the United States. Unbenownst to the couple, their whereabouts are discovered by the ship captain and thanks to the modern miracle of wireless, their progress across the Atlantic, together with their pursuit by a police detective from Scotland Yard, on a trailing ocean liner, are tracked by the press, creating a global sensation.

That drama is juxtaposed by Larkin with the business drama of the invention of wireless, which demonstrates the famous quotation of Thomas Edison regarding the invention of the lightbulb: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!" The invention of wireless, like that of the lightbulb, was characterized by numerous failures, challenges from competitors, personal tragedies, and most importantly, dogged determination on the part of its inventor, Marconi.

I'll have to tackle Larkin's other bestseller, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America next. It describes the incredible World's Fair in Chicago, which was lit up by thousands of light bulbs. Imagine. People drove for miles across farm lands, just to look at light bulbs and experience electricity! You may detect a pattern here, as Larkin's tale weaves in visits from such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison, along with the sinister Dr. Holmes, a serial killer active in the area at the time. Oh, how we love a good murder mystery to spice up our history lessons!

On that note, I also enjoyed reading about the birth of the electric industry last year Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes. It described, more from a business stand point, the competition to win the World's Fair bid, whose volume purchase of light bulbs and electricity would go a long way in providing competitive advantage to competing electric generation models.

We all take for granted the electricity that runs everything we use to enjoy our "modern" lifestyle, but it was no guaranteed outcome from the perspective of these great men. There's no doubt this story helped me to better understand the fascinating intrigue behind the creation of the modern electric industry, and there are remarkable parallels to what we see during this period of transition in the telecom and wireless industry today. For a better treatment than I can give on the parallels between the development of municpal electric utility industry and the rise of municipal wireless, see this interview with Jim Baller from 2003 captured here on Broadband Reports.

As for a background on a more modern industry, to understand the rise of our digital lifestyle, a good bet is David Kaplan's Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams, which details the rise of the great high tech digital companies that are now household names, but just one or two generations ago did not exist. You might also enjoy Tom Wolfe's turn-of-the-millenium anthology of short articles, Hooking Up, which includes a piece on the origins of Silicon Valley and HP, in a biographical sketch of the father of the silicon chip and Intel, Robert Noyce.

From Publisher's Weekly review on Amazon.com:

Fans of his character sketches will relish "Two Young Men Who Went West," a revelatory profile of Robert Noyce, a key innovator of the microchip who founded Intel in 1968, where the midwestern Congregationalist values he shared with his former mentor, William Shockley (founder of the original Silicon Valley startup, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory), grew into a business philosophy that's now so pervasive it's practically in the ether.

A long time ago, I read Daniel Yergin's The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, perhaps the granddaddy of this genre. It's hard to imagine a more fascinating tale than how we went from rendering whale oil to manufacture kerosene for lamps, to soaking up petroleum in rags from surface pools in Pennsylvania as whales began to run in short supply, to adapting water well drilling technology to drill oil wells. Then with the advent of the electric light, which threatened this new industry, along came the automobile and the need for gasoline. On the tale goes, to the creation of Standard Oil, to its division into the "Seven Sisters," to the discovery and exploitation of Middle Eastern oil fields and the creation of Aramco, and all along the way, a biographical sideline of the fascinating individuals who drove the industry and the geopolitical impacts of such a huge industry.

If you seek some historical depth and still harbor doubts on the rationale for the war in Iraq, take a look at this book and the impact of the oil industry on wars throughout our modern history.

To gain perspective on today's events, I have found it helpful and enjoyable to read history books and go deep on a subject. It's amazing how many patterns get repeated and recycled. With every new discovery and invention, there is a challenge to the old guard, and a familiar pattern unfolds, because we are indeed, all human. Sometimes, the eclipse is rapid, sometimes it's a long slow death. But progress based on human ingenuity rolls on.

From my position as a metropolitan broadband consultant in the budding Municipal Wireless industry, all I can say is "Thank goodness for change and innovation, for where would be the need for consultants to chart a path through the fog without such disruptions, eh?"

Posted on February 16, 2007 at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

Technology Forecast: A "Cloudy" Future Ahead

"There's no doubt that Apple understands that more and more ... services are going to be cloud-based and they need different devices to be able to access them," says Gartenberg. "Maybe that's what we're seeing (with) the beginning of in the iPhone. But I don't think that in five years there will be no Macintosh." Wired News: IPhone: Calling the Future

This excellent article from Wired magazine makes a critical point and raises more strategic issues surrounding the announcement by Apple of its iPhone: a new mobile platform that is at once a video iPod, cellular phone, and Wi Fi enabled PDA.

The bottom line: as computing capacity grows and size shrinks, we will be carrying more and more power in our pockets, and those devices will be connected to WAN and LAN environments.

As you might expect, I read such articles as this through a metropolitan broadband lense and I enjoy the future they predict. Clouds are such an apt metaphor for the capabilities that wireless networks bring. But in this case, clouds are a positive, not a negative.

I actually took a Meteorology course way back when in Undergrad (back in the 1970s!), and I can remember the nomenclature of clouds and what they can tell us about weather. Now we have a new set of clouds gathering on the horizon, coming our way: WANs, WLANs, MANs, PANs. Hot Spots are clouds, hovering over your corner coffee shop. Home wireless LANs are clouds, inside my house, over my couch. And metropolitan broadband networks are clouds, sitting over a city, like the cloud of fog that creeps up from Lake Austin on a cold morning like today, shrouding the highway only to dissipate with the rising sun.

So when this forecast has clouds in store, think puffy Cumulus clouds that you watch while laying on your back on a picnic blanket with your loved one. Think of those soft clouds you fly through on your way to a vacation in the Bahamas. A cloudy future generally means a future that is uncertain, full of risks and unknowns. We can't see because the clouds block the way. The vision is of storm clouds, bringing danger, destruction, death. Picture Hurricane Katrina churning in the Gulf of Mexico, about to wreak havoc on New Orleans.

But for once, the more pleasant alternative is operative in this case. From a consumer perspective, our particular "cloudy" future with regard to wireless applications is rosy, with picnics ahead, not storms.

Posted on February 16, 2007 at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)

Time for Spectrum Reform? Well Past Time, More Like

Although today's FCC is nowhere near as controlling as earlier FCCs, it still treats the radio spectrum like a scarce resource that its bureaucrats must manage for the "public good," even though the government's scarcity argument has been a joke for half a century or longer. The almost uniformly accepted modern view is that information-carrying capacity of the airwaves isn't static, that capacity is a function of technology and design architecture that inventors and entrepreneurs throw at spectrum. To paraphrase this forward-thinking 1994 paper (PDF), the old ideas about spectrum capacity are out, and new ones about spectrum efficiency are in. The case for killing the FCC and selling off spectrum - Slate Magazine

Oh, where do I begin? At the root of much of what ails this country when it comes to telecommunications is our government regulation of spectrum, a man-made device to manage a physical phenomenom: the various wavelengths of electromagnetic waves - what we refer to as radio spectrum. The facts are that we have learned much about radio and spectrum since one hundred years ago, when Marconi struggled to establish "wireless" ship-to-shore communication and laboriously determined how to tame radio signals into a useful new business.

Back in the early days of radio, we correctly believed that we needed a government agency to manage the use of the airwaves, in much the same way we have traffic cops, traffic signals, stop signs, and rules-of-the-road that regulate the flow of cars and pedestrians and ensure that we don't kill each other and get snarled up in hopeless traffic jams. Back then, we had stupid devices - whether it was radios for communications, radios for listening to broadcasts, or TVs for watching broadcasts from national networks - without regulation, we couldn't help but fall over each other.

We needed to be protected from ourselves, because it would have been bedlam if all the players weren't separated by broad bands of dead zones. Noise is the enemy of radio signals. While that may have been the case in the early days, and the FCC and its regulatory scheme may have been an improvement over market solutions, that is no longer the case, and you would be hard put to find anyone who knows anything about radio to argue differently.

As is often the case with government, it lags behind reality. Our elected leaders too often need to be led. This article makes that cogent argument very well: technology has zoomed past the traditional regulatory scheme of radio spectra and the FCC management is ham-handed, at best. But while it makes that argument well, it leaves the reader short, because it begs the question: "OK, so why does the FCC and its regulatory scheme still exist if its so patently obvious that its not needed?"

The depressing answer is that our government and our society, indeed, our culture, is not rational, even though we wish it would be. Government solutions often overstay their welcome, generally because they develop a political constituency that enjoys the protections afforded by government and works to maintain the status quo, often way past its usefulness. Farm subsidies for corporate farms, anyone? Surplus milk turned into cheese for the poor? And the bigger the incentive to maintain the status quo, the slower reform happens.

And it's hard to imagine a more cozy relationship between big business and big government than the current spectrum regulation at the FCC. Big Business likes spectrum auctions because it keeps the competition out. When it takes billions of dollars to win a spectrum auction, only the big guys win, and the little guys are left penned into their ghetto of unlicensed bands - free to innovate, but not free to grow large and threaten the established players. And Big Government gets the billions from the auctions to fill the government tills and finance the war in Iraq. Pardon me if I get a little cynical here, but I don't see this situation changing in the near term, even if it makes even more sense than it already does. Corruption favors the powerful and maintains their hold on power and this, folks, can only be described as a corrupt and inefficient system. We won't even go into the current relationship between FCC commissioners and staffers and the industry they "regulate."

Still, for the serious student of metropolitan broadband, an understanding of spectrum operations and spectrum management by the federal government is important. For a great primer on spectrum, and an inspiring treatise on the potential of unlicensed sprectrum (and a similar argument about the cure being worse than the disease), see this white paper by Kevin Werbach, a former senior staffer at the FCC and now a wireless guru Radio Revolution: The Coming Age of Unlicensed Wireless. This seminal document, at over 50 pages, inspired me to get into this field a few years back.

Want to dig deeper? See this more brief review that shares the optimism but is much shorter at 6 pages: The Coming Spectrum Explosion — A Regulatory and Business Primer.

Finally, for the municipal reader, it is worth the time to look at a particular band of spectrum focused on public safety, with good potential for favorable treatment and opportunity to leverage for your municipal network: Broadband Public Safety Data Networks in the 4.9 GHz Band: Potential, Pitfalls & Promise.

So, how to stay sane and pleasant, amidst this overwhelming corruption and inefficiency? Well, besides having a bottle of wine now and again, I recommend this advice to overcome any cynicism. Get back in your sandbox. Get an education. Investigate what you can do to push out the envelope, within the current boundaries of federal regulation, no matter how lame you may believe that regulation to be.

Let's all keep hoping for better service from our government, we have to do that, don't we? But for now, let's also focus on what we can each do to leverage what we do have to work with - Wi Fi Mesh in the unlicensed bands. These technologies offer us much potential to do good for ourselves, and each new successful project becomes one more piece of evidence to throw back at the FCC and the Congress, challenge the status quo and motivate reform.

Posted on February 16, 2007 at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)

Making Metropolitan Broadband Work

Novarum, an independent consulting company focused on Wi-Fi, WiMax and 3G cellular data, tested both types of networks and found Wi-Fi is generally faster where it's available. This finding may not be surprising, since even the slowest form of Wi-Fi has a theoretical maximum capacity several times that of 3G. But the Wi-Fi systems are also fairly widely available, Novarum found. Based on whether there is enough of a signal to do real work on a notebook PC, networks in Anaheim, Santa Clara and Mountain View, California, all were available in 70 percent or more of Novarum's test area. One network, in St. Cloud, Florida, was 100 percent available. Metro Wi Fi Rates High

One of the problems of this new industry is the lack of comparative data, so this was a welcome article, where an independent testing firm did a fairly simple test, driving around inside cellular wide area networks and municipal wireless networks and conducting a standard test of performance on laptops. What did they find? Wi Fi Mesh performs well - for many purposes, better than 3G cellular data options.

While personally, this does not surprise me, it is in marked contrast to much of the more subjective reporting one is likely to read in the press, where anecdotal evidence is cited on this new network or that, often relating consumer complaints of poor service from Wi Fi Mesh networks when compared to wired cable or DSL Internet service. The facts are that when Wi Fi Mesh is compared to mobile cellular data, its only comparable alternative, it fares well.

3G cellular based mobile data service is provided on networks that were designed first and foremost for low-bandwidth voice communication for massive numbers of consumers. They do not hold up well under either the high bandwidth demands of website downloads, much less video streaming, or the high use demands of massive numbers of consumers. Not yet - some day maybe, but not yet. Thus, we see the expensive data plans offered by cellular companies that have the effect of limiting the number of users a network may be called upon to support - mostly business travelers pony up for such service. If you are merely planning to use a 3G network to check emails while on the road, one of the primary uses for business travelers, a cellular data plan makes sense and is worth the price.

Once again, despite my approval of this particular test, I feel that when we compare 3G and Wi Fi Mesh, we engage in comparing apples to oranges - effectively, we try to make a "mobile data network" be a one-size-fits-all utility service. The fact is that Wi Fi Mesh networks are a decent relatively cheap alternative that provides better service over wider areas than Hot Spots or landline connections, adds a mobile access feature not found in either of those alternatives, and is available at a price point far more accessible to far more people than the relatively exclusive data plans of cell phone carriers.

In contrast, cell networks do provide a valuable, but different kind of service: a more-expensive by-the-drink priced service, over even wider areas, but with even less bandwidth. Some day, we will get to ubiquitous service over mobile cellular, but it is farther off than the carriers would have you believe, IMHO.

An interesting footnote is that those Wi Fi Mesh networks with added density of nodes perform the best. Better financed cellular networks have learned this reality of radio physics: many nodes fill in an area with coverage and eliminate dead spots. Less well financed pioneer Wi Fi Mesh systems risk suffering substandard performance reviews if their design of limited node coverage for economy sake results in sometimes spotty coverage.

Let's hope we see more stories like this one, that discuss these systems based on facts and their actual capacities and intended purposes and supporting business cases, and resist the facile comparisons offered up by general media outlets that try to make a complex story simple enough to grasp without any effort.

Posted on February 16, 2007 at 07:07 AM | Comments (0)

Broadband Leadership? It Starts at Home

I'm a little nostalgic tonight, as I sit here watching a DVD with my family - Apollo 13. I'm turning 50 this summer, so I was almost exactly my daughter's age (12 1/2) back in April 1970 when these events occurred. Seeing Act One of this movie, with all that good classic rock and roll in the soundtrack, and the launch scene of the Saturn V rocket, brought back memories of NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs, and I got nostalgic reminiscing about the "good old days" when our government actually charted out ambitious and visionary goals and we as a nation got behind them - and it all came together and it worked, albeit with adversity to work through. Sure, it worked, but it worked because we made it work, together.

We managed to get to the moon seven years after Pres. Kennedy, facing the challenge from the Soviets, proclaimed his challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and mobilized a nation on a truly historic path. It's still amazing. How fast we forget what we're capable of when we focus.

It wasn't a walk in the park either. We overcame the disaster of a fire on the launch pad on Apollo 1 that tragically took the lives of three astronauts, then we moved on to the success of Apollo 11, and then the program encountered this disaster on the Apollo 13 mission. The NASA team pulled together and brought the boys home, and they did it with slide rules and no PCs (and no broadband, by the way). I know that Hollywood and director Ron Howard have a way of putting a nice shine on things, and that nearly 40-odd years of hindsight help me to put the Apollo effort in perspective, and to gloss over the difficult times. Still, it seems that we had something then that we have lost...life seems at once more complicated and less clear, and our challenges greater and more numerous today than they were back then.

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with broadband, anyway? Well, it's a coincidence, I guess, that a few hours before this movie, I started reading several blogs and Internet postings about a recent essay promoting a national broadband policy. Here's the blog on Cook's Collaborative Edge that kicked off this whole train of thought. After reading and surfing around, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the way the government took a leadership role in the Space Race back then (President Kennedy's famous challenge), and the general fumbling and failure of our leadership today to develop a national broadband policy (President Bush's assuring vision statement). Back then, we understood we would all have to work together, today, we're told "Don't worry, I assure you we'll get there" and then, in predictable fashion, we don't get there. And they wonder about declining trust in politics and government leadership...

So I'm struck by the difference between what we were able to do back in the 60s and 70s, with sheer will power, perseverance, and good old American can-do attitude, compared with what we are not doing today as a nation, as we watch countries like Japan, Korea, Sweden, and France, move ahead with strong national leadership and vison, as they implement a broadband strategy to create a national communications infrastructure that befits the 21st Century. Why is that? How come, I ask myself, broadband doesn't capture the imagination of people today the way that space exploration did back then? Well, for one, we've become pretty used to techological magic in the past 40 years. For another, we lack the leadership we had back then. No leadership focus, no national mobilization.

Personally, I wore out on this whole discussion and took a voluntary hiatus from the national broadband debate sometime last summer, as I became more focused on my own activities here in Central Texas. But a recent essay by metropolitan broadband luminary Jim Baller has brought me back to this topic, and its time to weigh in. Jim's essay really demands some inspection and review, as Jim is one of a handful of true experts in this field, and his tireless efforts to promote progress deserve this attention. I respect him.

So, Jim Baller wrote this essay on a National Broadband Strategy last month (January 2007), commenting on his article in the October 2006 issue of FiberPrism journal, where he and his partner opined on the need for a national broadband policy. In his recent essay, Jim takes a stab at a point-by-point program to get to such a policy. I recommend both of these articles.

Doing a little more digging, I came up with this article cited in the essay: in Foreign Affairs magazine, Thomas Bleha comments on the need for a national broadband policy, back in Summer 2005. In a followup article, Philip J. Weiser takes a slightly different tack and we have also the commentary from Bleha. All this talk about broadband policy in the US, amidst all this action abroad (see this link for a good update on OECD broadband activities, circa June 2006).

I have to admit that I've become disenchanted with the long wait for national leadership in this area. In fact, I've structured a career that doesn't depend on national leadership - I'm putting my money on local leadership. I've met enough impressive local leaders that give me confidence. I still hope for national leadership that will mobilize the public on this issue and will focus resources to get our country moving, so that we will be competitive over time.

But I have to say, we could all grow old waiting for the powers that be to get serious about wiring up our country with fiber optics to the "last mile." It was three years ago that President Bush, in his style, laid out a vision for Ubiquitous Broadband by 2007, and then his adminsitration failed ot follow up on it. We had a couple of blogs on this topic on this site a full 18 months ago, here and here. So, its out of my control, and in Stephen Covey Seven Habits fashion, I suggest that we focus on what we can control in order to get results and make progress, and that, my friends, starts at the local level. Better, in my opinion, to get busy to get local projects underway, to start generating the lessons learned and all the little steps that need to be done to move a country forward, collectively, in this area.

I trust that real leaders like Jim Baller and others will continue to work to motivate our national political leaders, and that a National Broadband Policy Task Force will someday get organized and busy on doing the necessary heavy lifting to get the full weight of the country's resources behind this effort. But as for me, I'll keep doing my little part to move things forward, by showing that we can do something today, and that something is to get individual cities wired up, with wireless and with wired broadband networks, and where possible, to get regions to collaborate.

But part of me longs for the type of leadership and can-do spirit, the imagination and chutzpa we had a generation ago in this nation, the "right stuff" that would send men up in tin cans into space, and bring them back alive, just to show that we could. I feel better when I reflect on that - that same kind of spirit still resides in the hearts of local leaders that initiate and promote these municipal wireless projects and see them through. In our own way, here in the 21st Century, we are pushing out the envelope on technology in a myriad of ways, and forging new paths, if on a less dramatic stage than back then.

And so it goes, as I approach 50. My own dreams, like those of our nation, are a little scaled down now, in this more complex world of the 21st Century, where I find myself as an adult. But I'm now a player in the game, rather than a spectator. After all, there is undeniable progress on the digital front. I watched this movie on a DVD on my flat screen TV, whereas I watched the Apollo moon landing on a tiny black and white screen as a budding teenager. I'm active in spreading broadband connectivity at the local level, and I'm blogging on a laptop in my living room, as I watch the movie.

And .. oh yeah, as a postscript, the Apollo crew made it back down to earth, in one piece, thanks to the thousands of people on the earth that supported them. Our dreams may be more distributed today, more "down to earth," if you will, but we're still pushing out the frontiers. And the wireless networks we build are going up thanks to the thousands of people in this new industry who are helping to make it all happen.

Posted on February 10, 2007 at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)

Websites & eNewsletters

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Check out these websites, and where possible, sign up for e-newsletters - there's lots going on out there, and these sites are doing the hard work, covering the market for you and me.

Broadband Properties Magazine Seeing this site made me marvel at the content that is out there on the Internet. According to the Mission Statement: BROADBAND PROPERTIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises while keeping readers up to date on the available solutions capable of serving their practical needs. I'm curious to hear what you readers think of this site.

Broadband Reports This trade journal covers a wide swath of issues on broadband, from product and service reviews to news items, etc. I would visit this site AFTER you have developed a little bit of knowledge of broadband issues, because while it offers a tremendous amount of information, to the uninitiated it will be like drinking from a firehose.

Broadband Wireless Business Magazine On your digital magazine rack, this website magazine features news items and in-depth articles that examine wireless technologies offering alternative solutions for backhaul and last-mile access - from wireless LANs to wireless MANs, millimeter wave fixed wireless and free-space optics. A good glossary, events calendar, and other features make this site very useful. For the technologically sophisticated reader, this site is well organized and has a great amount of information.

Corante is a premier blog site that covers technology and business issues, so often it has an article of interest in re wireless broadband. As it describes itself: "The world's first blog media company, Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, science and business that's authored by highly respected thinkers, commentators and journalists; read by many of the sector's top entrepreneurs, executives, funders and followers; and is helping to lead the emergence of blogging as an influential and important form of reportage, analysis and commentary."

DailyWireless.org At first glance, the sheer amount of data on this website may appear intimidating. However, I've found it to be a rich, if quirky, source of interesting applications and developments in the world of wireless. I've set my browser to launch with this website, because it is kept up to date with the latest news, and has a tremendous set of links to other sites on the web. This is the Swiss Army Knife of wireless websites. Not to be confused with DailyWireless.com, which offers coverage of wireless industry news from more of an industry point of view.

eWeek.com this eMagazine has a section entitled Mobile and Wireless.

Google This site is the beginning and end of web searches. Search engines grew in popularity as the Internet grew by leaps and bounds - the founders of Google put together the most elegant and robust of search engines, and now, on the heels of their blockbuster IPO last year, Google is the acknowledged "King of Search." Often by typing a few key words, Google will list the website you are looking for. Websites that are the product of Google searches are listed in order of links to other sites and the presence of key words inside the sites that match your search terms, with the logic that good alignment on these parameters gives you a high probability of finding what you are looking for. And it works, 9 times out of 10! Make this a part of your web browser and get used to using it, and your effectiveness in using the Internet, and your level of enjoyment, will rise considerably.

Government Technology sponsored by Intel, is a content-rich, professional website that should be bookmarked by those interested in metropolitan broadband. This site also features a section and newsletter titled Digital Communities that will keep you informed via your email of the latest in digital communities that have MetroNets. Lots of good content - for example, I found this document through the Wireless Mesh link. The One Hundred Year Storm: Wireless Disruption in Telecommuncations, is a Deloitte & Touche whitepaper that gives good theoretical backing for why we pay attention to metropolitan broadband - because it disrupts the traditional approach to telecommunciations.

Howstuffworks.com This site is great to get started on figuring out the insides of things. Type relevant search terms and browse the results to get expert, detailed descriptions of how things work. Depending on your search, it may be hit or miss, but it is a great learning tool to get an understanding of technology terms.

Jiwire is devoted to providing info on Wi Fi Hot Spots, primarily as a resource for business travelers, with its now industry-standard Hot Spot Guide. JiWire was founded by Kevin McKenzie as a hotspot directory with an editorial component, focused on product reviews and how-tos, with contributions from Glenn Fleishman. The site has changed only slightly over its two and one-half years of existence, bringing more focus to product than it originally did.

Motorola Connections is an e-zine produced by Motorola's Canopy division. It has very relevant content for cities looking at wireless broadband as an option.

National Journal's Insider Update: The Telecom Act This website is true to its title, offering good quality, timely scoop on the goings on in Washington, DC, concerning the rewriting of the Telecom Act of 1996. Bookmark this one and follow their posts!

Search Mobile Computing's 802.11 Learning Guide Published over two years ago, this compendium of information on Wi Fi is a must read for a beginner - learn the terms here first and you will not find your time spent in vain. See the Search Mobile Computing website as well - "the Web's Best Mobile Computing Information Resource for Enterprise IT Professionals" - very tech oriented, but a good source of information.

TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology provides a comprehensive window of analysis and commentary from a free-market, corporate perspective on the changing face of technology and how it is reshaping the world to bring greater benefits and increase the size of the economic pie. This site is global in perspective and provides tremendous reach, in both depth and breadth. This site is sponsored by DCI Group, a conservative public affairs firm with reach around the globe.

TECHtionary: World's First and Largest Animated Magazine on TECHnology The first time I went to this site, I got lost about 30 minutes of consciousness as I clicked through it, searching for different terms and watching the animated slide shows - it was very similar to how you would become absorbed in a video game. This free site has over 2500 animated tutorials on technology terms. This is another tool for your toolbox on tracking and understanding the changing face of wireless broadband.

Whatis.com, the leading IT encyclopedia and learning center If your focus is technology, this guide published by TechTarget is a good source for the very technical terms you may come across in your research.

Wikipedia This on-line people's encyclopedia is a great reference guide for just about anything. Move over, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Oh yeah, that's gone now. Type in your word or phrase and up comes a reference. Wikis are a new type of Internet software that allow on-line documents to be edited by anyone, resulting in a large, open-source encyclopedia. This is an encyclopedia by the world, for the world. Move over, World Book. Check it out.

WiMAX.com This brand new site was recently established to serve as an information resource for the new technology of WiMAX, which will offer cities another solution for unwiring. The intent of the site is to open up this new technology and raise the level of awareness on the possibilities of WiMAX.

Posted on February 03, 2007 at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)