Penalty for Piling On - Fifteen Yards

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.