What's Municipal Wireless Good For? The Whole Enchilada

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.