Muni Schmuni, Part 2

First, Sascha highlighted the basic conflict in the municipal wireless debate as "liberation vs. lock-in," drawing a comparison to municipal franchising and grants of exclusivity by cities to private service providers.

Corporations such as EarthLink, AT&T and MetroFi have staked a claim over "municipal wireless," but their business model is predicated on cities granting a private franchise to these companies. Many of these corporations blame the failures of multiple networking initiatives on municipalities, claiming that the problem with their model was the onerous and greedy requirements of the cities. This is how much of the media have reported it. But there's a far deeper conflict that can be boiled down to a simple phrase: liberation versus lock-in.

What cities want is an open platform to support public use and new applications. When The Economist reported in January that open networks are necessary to support next-generation networking and the global competitiveness of the United States, it opened up debate about the wisdom of our sole reliance on free-market solutions for broadband networking. What private corporations have implemented are closed systems using proprietary hardware, software and services. Such systems may seem good on paper, but as history is teaching us, their many points of failure makes them unreliable in practice.

So Sascha set up a debate on whether a system should be open or closed. I would submit that we are still in the early stages and while we can discuss ideals, we should also be practical: any network is better than no network at all...but, the necessary requirement must be on a practical and sustainable business model.

Sascha then went on to suggest his five best practices:

As municipalities rethink their broadband strategies in 2008, they are looking to implement five best practices to support liberation and avoid lock-in:

Embrace change as the new status quo. When it comes to high-speed Internet access, municipalities should embrace the constructive disruption coming from new technologies, applications and telecommunications policies. Due diligence for municipalities does not mean a one-time review of available technologies and community needs, but rather constant research and feedback. In 2008, we will see the advent of white space devices, open platform spectrum, and distributed device-as-infrastructure networking. Pro-municipal broadband legislation in Congress and the Broadband Census Act, and the growth of initiatives like the CAIDA COMMONS Project, which is creating an alternative, cooperative Internet backbone, will continue to impact the national telecommunications debate and carry with them the potential for transforming the broadband playing field. Municipalities need adaptable infrastructure and continued vigilance to keep pace with rapidly changing conditions and technologies.

I would trumpet these best practices, which are well-thought-out and comprehensive, and I'd trumpet also the idea that we should all, both cities and private sector players, begin to pattern our industry development on what has been proven to work best. We should not continue to make the same mistakes and reinvent the wheel, rather we must improve over time - otherwise, we waste valuable energy and time. We should of course experiment and document our experience, we should of course embrace mistakes when they provide a learning opportunity and share the lessons learned. But we should avoid mistakes that are mere repetition of mistakes already made by others - what's the point of that?

I'd also invite anyone reading this blog post to visit two websites I've set up in the past to encourage information sharing and best practices. First, there's the WikiMetroNet I set up a couple of years ago for just this purpose. I'll be the first to admit that that site and project has been more or less neglected, as I've focused on my consulting business and this particular blog and website. But we should all be thinking on how we can help each other and accelerate progress, and the WikiMetroNet has a good outline to follow and is relatively easy to post to -this is an open invitation.

Second, I'd encourage the interested reader to visit Facebook, which is developing into a some kind of new shadow WWW - really quite remarkable. Go ahead and join if you're not a member, then go over to the Group Page I set up titled "Alternative Broadband."

These best practices and those of others only have value when they are followed and put into practice. In a few weeks, we'll have another example, I expect, as the City of San Marcos makes their decision on whether to go forward with their wireless broadband plan. Either way, whether the vote is up or down, we'll be diagramming that project as another example of a Best Practice on this website. Now is the time to step up and get busy in helping to define a better pathway, just as Sascha has done with his essay. Your comments are welcome here!

I'll leave the final word to Sascha and his essay...

Municipal networking proponents are not opposed to private investment in city-scale wireless networks. But they believe that municipalities have to take more responsibility and control over the broadband networks they're involved with. Regardless of who pays for the physical infrastructure, municipal networks will continue to struggle unless they provide reliable, open platforms for innovation that support diversity at the hardware, software and service-provision levels. Municipalities should choose liberation over lock-in as they continue to address growing Internet needs in 2008.