What's Municipal 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.