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In a National Leadership Vacuum, Local Leaders Slowly Emerge

Here's an excerpt from a February 2005 interview with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps on Why our broadband policy's still a mess (Hint: It's STILL a mess, 3 years and some change later! Copps is expressing a minority opinion - no power to change things given the current make up of the FCC).

What makes sense in terms of a national broadband policy?

I think Congress is going to have to work through that. If we are going to fix the Universal Service system, which is predicated on the idea that everybody should have access to comparable communications at comparable and reasonable prices, we have to ask, is our advanced telecommunications part of that or not? Is broadband a part of that or not? So before we start fixing every little problem with universal service I think we ought to have some kind of a philosophical or national purpose or national objective discussion about where does broadband fit in.
I think we may be probably the only industrial country on the face of God's green earth that doesn't have a national plan for broadband deployment.

And when I talk about central-infrastructure challenge, you know it seems like each generation faces an infrastructure challenge. Before the Civil War, we had infrastructure challenges and building internal improvements of highways and turnpikes and canals. After the Civil War, it was building transcontinental railroads. With the Eisenhower years, we built the national highway system. I think our (challenge) is broadband.

At the same time, the state legislature in Indiana recently shot down a bill that would impose significant restrictions on municipalities for launching their own broadband infrastructure services.

It's not an easy thing if you're the leader of a hard-pressed, cash-strapped municipality - as all of them are in this day and age - to take on additional burden of providing broadband to your people.

I think we do a grave injustice in trying to hobble municipalities. That's an entrepreneurial approach, that's an innovative approach. Why don't we encourage that instead of having bills introduced - "Oh, you can't do this because it's interfering with somebody's idea of the functioning of the marketplace." And then the marketplace is not functioning in those places.

This interview states the problem well, but there's no other way to put this, we have a de facto policy to let the duopoly cable and telecom companies provide us broadband, and we get what they give us, in essence. But that's not always enough, so we are seeing metropolitan networks emerge, ever so slowly, against great odds.

The economic opportunity cost of such policy neglect is high. This well-written, in-depth article from a year after that Copps interview (more than two years ago), Let there be Wi-Fi: broadband is the electricity of the 21st century - and much of America is being left in the dark describes the problem well.

The economic ramifications are profound. "Asians will have the first crack at developing the new commercial applications, products, services, and content of the high-speed-broadband era," writes Bleha. Already, South Korea, which leads the world in the percentage of its businesses and homes with broadband, is the number one developer of online video games - perhaps the fastest-growing industry today. What's more, societies in which broadband use is near-universal will adapt to its uses much more quickly than those where access is available only to the well-to-do few.

The countries surpassing the United States in broadband deployment did so by using a combination of public entities and private firms. The Japanese built their world-class system by ensuring "open access" to residential telephone lines, meaning competitors paid the same wholesale price to use the wires. The country is also establishing a super-fast, nationwide fiber system via a combination of tax breaks, debt guarantees and subsidies. But of particular note, the Japanese government also encouraged municipalities to build their own networks, especially in rural areas. Towns and villages willing to set up their own ultra-high-speed fiber networks received government subsidies covering approximately one-third of their costs.

Unfortunately, the United States has pursued the opposite policy. President Bush has called for "universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007," and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin claims broadband deployment is his "highest priority." But they have made no progress toward these goals; in fact, they have rewarded their corporate cronies for maintaining high prices, low speeds and lackluster innovation. Federal policies have not merely failed to correct our broadband problems, they have made them worse. Instead of encouraging competition, the FCC has allowed DSL providers and cable companies to shut out competitors by denying access to their lines. And whereas the Japanese government encourages individual towns to set up their own "Community Internet," Washington has done nothing. Fourteen states in the United States now have laws on the books restricting cities and towns from building their own high-speed Internet networks. No wonder America is falling behind its Asian competitors.

Hmm, that is a grim picture ... well, maybe it will improve in time? Not so much, I'm afraid, although there are glimmers, as noted in this article, Broadband: It's a Community Thing, written two months ago, nearly two years after the previous article. This article also focuses on FTTH, rather than Wi Fi.

Overcoming challenges

FTTH access has been mostly relegated to the larger urban and suburban communities. Looking to get a good return on their investments, service providers target communities with higher densities. Unfortunately, this leaves most rural communities without much more than a dial-up connection.

That's not saying bringing broadband into rural towns isn't fraught with challenges.

Take Minot, N.D.-based SRT Telecom. Like many independent telcos, SRT's territory spans both metro and rural areas and varied service domains (it offers everything from ADSL2+ data, voice and cable TV to wireless service).

Taking part of its name from the Souris River, one of the telco's main challenges is its diverse service territory. In its traditional metro network area, it plans to continue leveraging its existing copper plant via ADSL2+, bonding and VDSL2, while using active Ethernet-based FTTH in its rural sections.

"We have targeted FTTH in our rural areas," said Shawn Grosz, SRT's director of network technology. "I am not talking rural towns, but the very rural: out to the farmsteads where, in some cases, we have loops of 20 miles where broadband is very difficult to reach. We [serve] those customers who can't be served with fiber."

While Grosz admits carrying fiber out to these remote locations is initially expensive, SRT believes making targeted investments in both its existing copper plant and FTTH will pave a high-speed path to future services such as IPTV when ready.

Along with paving a road for future services, community-based initiatives - despite the legal challenges they face from incumbent operators who take issue with public entities providing telecom services - can become an economic attraction to local businesses.

As one of the first U.S.-based utility companies to offer FTTP services, Bristol, Va.,-based BVU Optinet was able to attract large government systems integrators such as Northrop Grumman.

What’s more, businesses with FTTP-based access are able to offer their employees more effective teleworking opportunities. Teleworking not only can reduce the amount of office space a company needs, but also cut down on automotive emissions since it reduces the amount of cars traveling on the roads. (See: Green to go for fiber)

Finally, there's this summary out today,
Cities get into the broadband business to bolster their economies, from the Wall Street Journal, reprinted in my hometown newspaper.

As a result, in most markets in the U.S. there have been only two broadband providers, one telecom and one cable company. While some countries were aggressively trying to catch up to the U.S. Internet lead, "not much changed in the U.S.," said Susan Crawford, a professor of Internet governance at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Change is finally starting to happen, as cable and telecom companies compete more aggressively in each other's traditional businesses. Bills are now making their way through Congress to remove the state barriers to municipalities offering broadband.

Verizon Communications Inc. is in the midst of a $23 billion project, called FiOS, to bring fiber to the homes of more than half of its 33 million customers in 28 states by 2010.

Comcast last month began boosting speeds on its network, and estimates 20 percent of its customers will have access to faster speeds by the end of the year.

Still, these ultrafast networks are destined only for certain parts of the country, such as major urban areas, at least for the foreseeable future. In large swaths of the U.S., providers consider deploying broadband less profitable.

In downtown Chattanooga, James Busch, a radiologist and medical-software entrepreneur, said when he opened his business, he couldn't find an Internet service that was fast enough. Comcast's plan was too slow, and AT&T said it would take three months to build a dedicated higher-speed connection to his business, Busch said. AT&T said it now offers small businesses a download speed of 6 megabits a second, and upload of 512 kilobits a second.

Busch's clinic consists of 10 radiologists who provide remote diagnoses for rural hospitals. Transmitting the high-resolution medical imagery often requires a very fast speed, which he said the power board's network provides.

"Information technology means a smaller country with fewer people can now do the same amount of work as a larger country," said Busch. "If we don't become more efficient, we lose our big-country advantage."

Last month, the power board raised $219 million through municipal bonds, which it said will primarily be used to upgrade its existing electrical system. The upgrade will involve laying a fiber network to create a so-called smart grid, which will allow the utility to remotely monitor and control how power is distributed, DePriest said.

As we can see from these four articles, the broadband theme has evolved over time, even as many aspects have remained constant. Where there was much focus on wireless four years ago, now there's more interest in Fiber, it seems. Economic development more than connectivity for social purposes has emerged as the driving factor for communities to get active. And applications drive the business case these days.

But resistance from incumbents remains a constant, as does the lack of national broadband policy and the absence of national leadership, or even, for that matter, any sense of urgency in the Congress or at the FCC.

Absent the activity we've seen at the local level, we would have little to rejoice in when it comes to progress on national broadband infrastructure, as the big boys would continue to move at their own pace and the US would fall ever more behind their global competitors. It's not too late, and I'm banking on a resurgence of interest in broadband infrastructure after the presidential election in the fall. Let's hope.

Posted on June 02, 2008 at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

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The Universe is in Synch, the Internet Connects It (and Us)

I posted the other day on Perceptions of the Future, using as an example my childhood fantasies about jet packs (see Christmas Letter VIII - Jet Pack/Hovercraft, iPod/iPhone/Prius, or "None of that Nonsense...".

In the comics in today's paper, one of my favorite strips - F-Minus (another New Year's Resolution - bookmark this site at Comics.com)

And to my surprise, in response to my post I received an email yesterday morning from Ray Li in Florida, telling me about his efforts to develop a recreational jet pack that is safe. Seems he's making progress. His website is JetLev News.

Posted on January 02, 2008 at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter VIII - Jet Pack/Hovercraft, iPod/iPhone/Prius, or "None of that Nonsense..."

When I was a child in the 1960s, reading my dad's Popular Science magazine and the Weekly Reader at school, I used to fantasize about jet packs and hovercraft in some indeterminate future, but always in my lifetime. Usually the hazy future fell somewhere between"1984" and the "21st Century." Beyond 2000 seemed beyond my imagination. I was amazed at a future that was 32 years out in 1969 when I saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey at the movie theater, at the age of 12.

Well, that future is here (and gone), but I've seen no offers for personal jet packs or hover craft - not to mention an American Airlines flight to the moon...

Yet that myth persists - I was more than a little amused a few years back when my daughter assured me that we'd all be driving in hover craft in five years, because "Lydia said so," and "it was in our Weekly Reader," or whatever the equivalent is for her generation. Good to see the family tradition carried on...

Even as we outgrow childhood childish visions of the future, while most give little time to speculating on the future, some of us adults still give the future some serious consideration. Thank God for those dreamers - I mean the ones who actually do something about it...

In reality, the future tends to look a lot like the recent past - except when you get dramatic jolts from such dreamers, like the Apple iPod

or better yet, the Apple iPhone

and the Toyota Prius...

each of which look somewhat like the recent past, but with remarkable twists, pointing to what lies ahead in the future.

Then there are those serious types who dismiss altogether the radical innovation behind Apple's iPod and iPhone and Toyota's Prius, seeing them as either a) silly notions held by those whose heads are in the clouds; or b) as trivial toys with little impact on serious aspects of society. Sensible people know that history moves slowly and the future looks a lot like the past. But these consumer products capture people's imagination, and because they like them, they drive changes in consumer behavior.

As I reviewed the month of December and my posts, the prevailing themes were imagining and managing change - how one looks at the future, how one manages change, the weight one gives to such issues, and how one's generational perspective comes into play - all these aspects of change really come into the limelight when you give some deep thought to broadband.

And such themes seem appropriate at this point, given that we all grow reflective as New Year's Eve arrives, and look forward with anticipation to new things in the New Year - that's today and tomorrow, BTW, for those without calendars.

December

Trains on Tracks v. Cars on Highways: Closed v. Open - in which I propose the analogy of railroads and highways as a model for broadband networks...

Our history of physical transportation of atoms and molecules in our rail and road networks has lessons to teach us if we will listen. When we look at information transportation of bits and bytes in our telecommunication systems, we should think about how things transpired with transportation systems.

When it came to making decisions on transporting physical material, whether in the form of raw commodities, manufactured products in boxes or real-live human beings, those deciding took advantage of multiple options that made the most sense for their priorities - choice was good. Ships and airplanes today complete the system, offering tremendous flexibility for businesses and consumers. We see this choice as a natural, and wouldn't have it any other way.

But when it comes to telecommunications, it's as if our brains have been put on hold. Information material in the form of information bits, voice bits, or video bits is still treated as if it must flow over the closed networks of the big telecom provider, on their terms and conditions. (Not to leave Big Cable and Big Football out, in a true, Open System, I don't think that I would have missed watching the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, the way I missed them this week.)

The prevailing sentiment and conventional wisdom still assumes that the large closed networks of Big Telecom and Big Wireless, often one and the same - collectively, the "railroads" of today - are the only options that matter. The bottom line for me is this:

We have a collective lack of imagination when it comes to broadband, IP applications, and digital content. We're stuck with Old World thinking in a New World.

Still, for the most part, those who trumpet Verizon, AT&T, and the rest may be right, at least for now, that is. Alternatives to conventional broadband are still so new and so small as to get little attention.

The winds of change are in the air, however, and the potential of Open Networks, like water on a stone, is having an inexorable effect on the Status Quo. Steeped in the Gospel of Open Networks that drives the Internet, Google has set its calculating eye on telecommunications, specifically, .the upcoming FCC 700 MHz spectrum auction in February.

Forget the Past and the Future, Here in the Present, Ignorance is Bliss - in which I pondered the inability of most people to imagine a future much different than the present - until they see it, that is.

As I wrote this summary, it dawned on me that when municipalities seek to bring in a third-party to operate a network according to Open Access principles, whether the city owns the network or not, they are mimicking the Google strategy that Feld described. Rather than wait on incumbent broadband providers to bring in new infrastructure or business models that better serve all the public, they're brining in the infrastructure themselves and installing the new business models that will bring about robust competition and lower rates.

I think it's interesting to note that no matter what happens in February at the auction, the incumbents are not going away. They are classics who have shown an ability to adapt when they have to. Much of the change we discuss on these pages can be seen as efforts by different parties to force change on the incumbents or to simply go around them.

But don't count them out, not just yet. They have lots of money, political connections, customers, and technology experience, and I think they will be around and influential for years to come. They just need a 2x4 to the head once in a while and would be well advised to follow both Joni's admonition about appreciating what you have while you still have it, as well as Harold's observation that most don't know the future until it bites them in the ass.

Long Tail Telecom: Why Smaller Markets Should Take a Long Hard Look at Alternate Broadband - in which I describe a different set of circumstances for mid-sized markets that supports a different approach to telecommunications

Shamalama Ding Dong - Life is a Highway - in which I suggest that the seemingly mindless play of the roadtrip is actually a journey of discovery in disguise

The Road Trip is firmly ensconced in the realm of Creativity, where things happen because they're allowed to happen, because you're out there breaking all the rules that normally keep you in line, out there in the world where nobody knows you, where its safer to take risks. Much of it proves pointless, but for some, it's what the situation demands.

Over the past four years here in the Alternate Broadband universe (what I call the various worlds of Wi Fi Mesh, WiMAX, BPL, FTTH), it's been like we've been on one long road trip. It's been an ongoing experiment, a journey of discovery, never knowing what's around the next corner, going where the spirit moves you. We've had a destination in mind, but much of the value so far has come from the exploration and the knowledge we've found along the way.

For many on the outside, it appears that we've been wasting time and money, we've been engaged in an irresponsible romp that's going nowhere. But on the inside, we see things differently - we've been enjoying a long ride of discovery. We've been trying out new things, seeing what works. When we pause to look back, we realize how far we've come and how much we've learned, and we see real value.

And a couple of posts that talk about perspective in the process of change:

- Digital Adolescents Stuck in Digital Puberty - in which I describe the transition from Analog to Digital, which is still underway

Since the Rise of the Internet a little over 10 years ago, we've been alternating through many different attitudes, but mostly we've been collectively in denial as the Internet matures and grinds away at our institutions. For many, if not most in society, these changes lie under the surface, unrecognized, subliminal. But they affect us all, nevertheless, and we see more and more evidence of change, and the need to adjust, if we just open our eyes. Once you've had this realization, it's hard not to notice the evidence all around.

In fact, getting us all to recognize the significant changes associated with transitioning from Analog to Digital, from stand-alone to connected, from fixed to mobile, is the principal goal of this website.

Adjusting to change has to be one of the hardest things to do in life, yet we all have to do it as we age, so it's one of the most universal of themes. As societies go, healthy societies adjust well to change, less healthy ones don't. The least healthy societies get stuck and close themselves off from any outside influence in order to stay the same: just think of Cuba and North Korea.

Recognizing this state of Digital Puberty that we've entered is not unlike going through the five stages of grief in the Kubler-Ross model , because such significant change involves a death and a rebirth. In the end, allowing yourself to be reborn, to reemerge from the process of change, involves accepting the death of the previous state. Until then, you're stuck.

- From Analog to Digital - A Long, Strange Trip - in which I comment on our aged leadership in federal government which stands in contrast to the dramatic changes underway in technology

- T-t-t-t-talking 'Bout My Generation - this post ties together the previous memes of digital adolescence and senesence and posits that generational perspective is valid from both sides

It's inevitable for those at the beginning of their lives to look forward to the future with anticipation, and for those at the end of their lives to look backward with nostalgia. And where we choose to place our benchmarks has a large role in determining how we perceive the present.

When older folks look back and marvel at how far they've come, it's sincere. But it's also dangerous if that nostalgia and love of the past causes them to take their eyes off of the future, wistfully reminiscing about the Good Old Days.

And when younger people look forward and pine for the future before they're ready, impatient to have it all now, it's dangerous if they act on their wishes without full awareness of consequences. They risk repeating the mistakes of the past if they neglect the lessons of history and are in too much of a hurry.

We need each other. Each generation has something to offer. We need the accumulated wisdom, maturity and caution of the older generation, and the energy, initiative and optimism of youth. We need both conservatives and progressives if we are to move forward as a society. We need the dynamic tension, the push and pull, the arguments that will help us preserve what's worth saving, and leave behind the things that keep us from moving ahead.

Processing these thoughts, I come to the inescapable conclusion that we desperately need leadership, at all levels of society, who will face the facts with honesty and courage, who will lead us into the changes we need to make as a society.

My focus in my job and on this website is on the broadband infrastructure that will take us to the future we deserve. Too many people look at how far we've come in ten years with broadband internet and mobile telephony. Too few look at how far we have to go to reach our potential.

A Public Private Partnership We Can All Do Without - this post captures current events surrounding FISA and telecom immunity, as the Senate had an important debate in mid-December, ultimately punting the issue down the road until January

Look Before You Leap - this series of posts tracks the decision-making process a city goes through as it stands on the brink of change, using the framework below

I'll close out this long post on change and the future with a couple of images from a few generations ago, when change and future speculation was primarily focused on that frontier that could never be crossed, that man should one day fly - imagine, man flying like a bird....

There's this famous image from Leonardo Da Vinci

and then here's a couple from Jules Verne - first, on personal flight

and then on flight to the Moon - really stretching out the imagination!

This has been fun - Happy Holidays all!

Be sure to drive safely (or not at all) tonight!

Posted on December 31, 2007 at 09:22 AM | Comments (1)

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Christmas Letter VII - Mad Scientists Run Amock

By the end of November, I was starting to get some clarity on this concept of Alternate Broadband. We're mad scientists, in a sense, mucking about with new technology, new business models, new concepts in community. It's been a good year for learning more about what alternatives are available to the conventional approach of cable and DSL at the wall and cellular data cards and phones through the air. At times, it helps to take a break from experimenting and document how far we've come and what we've learned. That's what I'm doing here on this site.

It's true, nobody said it would be easy (and it hasn't been) - in fact, that's a gross understatement. Most continue to say this field is a crock, just look at all the negative press in the mainstream this year. But it's also true that nobody can argue that we haven't learned a lot by trying and failing and in many cases, succeeding. I think that's the storyline that starts to emerge as I look over the past year and contemplate next year.

Trial and Error will take us a long way in the upcoming year, and the nature of experimentation means that there's always a killer app -a solution lurking in the shadows, waiting to be discovered. The rational Scientific Method builds on past failures to create a body of knowledge that moves civilization forward. That's what we're doing here, experimenting... it just looks rather ugly close up. And sometimes, things blow up.

1. For Alternate Broadband to succeed and thrive, we'll need creative solutions to at least these three issues (deals that lack a solution to any one of these three issues have a high fatality index - some may make it, but most will not):
a. Government Interaction
b. Incumbent Buy-In
c. Sustainable Business Model
2. Technology Change is moving faster than Cultural Adaptation.
3. Opportunity abounds, even as risk remains high.
a. Infrastructure Components
b. Service Providers
c. Data Devices
4. We need less hype, more reality. Alternate Broadband, from Wi Fi Mesh to WiMAX to BPL, has been neither as good as described, nor as bad as feared.
5. Four Different Story Lines are emerging, use these to connect with others when discussing Alternate Broadband
a. The Real Estate Development Model - anchor tenants lower risk in a development, pre-selling helps too.
b. The Radio/TV Broadcast Model - commercial advertising has the potential to pay for a lot of free content and services
c. The Utility Model - from electricity to gas to water, utilities provide services to entire populations over a single infrastructure, generally at commodity rates
d. The Railroad/Highway Model - my personal favorite, this story line describes two shifts: from closed to open and from service-orientation to infrastructure-orientation.
6. Four Alternate Broadband Business Models hold particular promise; combine for more benefits.
a. Smaller Ad Hoc Private (and Public) Projects
b. Smaller Municipalities
c. Regional Coordination
d. Open Access
Pearls of Wisdom make up a Broadband Necklace, November 29, 2007

November

In November, we began by finalizing our decisions concerning the written bids in the San Marcos deal, and winnowed the field from nine down to five, then heard oral presentations, ending up with two finalists.

I went out to Los Angeles in November to kick off the Orange County wireless assessment and attend a one-day seminar on wireless broadband put on by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and NetLogix.

And not sitting idle, I followed a strong web focus in October (34) with an equal effort in November - 33 posts. Here's an overview of the Best Posts of November. You'll also notice that November is the first full month I made full use of graphic images and YouTube videos. I like the change.

King Kong v. Godzilla - in which we review the upcoming battle between Big IT and Big Telecom.

Speed Matters (So Does Price) - which offers, among other things, a speed test for your broadband connection

Five posts on Southern California Association of Governments Wireless Conference (aka SCAG Wireless) - in which I reveal our plans for Orange County wireless assessment and other interesting tidbits from this one-day seminar (Scroll down to November 8 in the Archives)

Playing Roulette with Your Broadband Future - a cautionary note about putting all one's chips on Red and spinning the roulette wheel - why not get smart and play several games of chance at once? The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

The bottom line for me is as follows: In the Networked Information Age, our broadband information infrastructure has become too vital to be left in the hands of a select few, operating behind closed doors. Broadband has become too vital to place all of our chances for success on a narrow strategy defined and executed by insiders.

When Big Government Thinks Big, Big Things Get Built - in which I suggest that our nation needs broadband infrastructure, and we need a plan to get there (includes a Green Eggs and Ham riff!) ...

Whatever philosophical objections anyone may have to government involvement and leadership in broadband, there are just some things that the government does well. Building Roads is one of them. And in my mind's eye, broadband looks more and more like a road system. Why not? Let's start talking about a Big Government Program for Big Broadband...Why Not? Worked for the Interstate System 50 years ago...

On this same theme, see also the follow-up posts Time to Challenge Some Bad Thinking about the Role of Government and In Assessing Change v. MOTS, Start with Putting Consensus Ahead of Coercion.

I would argue that as we start to talk more openly and often about National Broadband Policy, we'll be forced to adopt a consensus model in order to move forward. It will take time to resolve differences and chart a path that is workable to all stakeholders - how much time will depend on the willingness of stakeholders to be open to others' viewpoints. And it must start by discrediting coercive means that exploit power positions, which are by definition inefficient, as they leave valuable contributers on the sidelines.

Then, we start to look at the diversity within the Public Sector space with Government as a Layer Cake
You're born, you take shit.
You get out in the world, you take more shit.
You climb a little higher, you take less shit.
Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like.
Welcome to the layer cake son.
Eddie Temple, top gangster in the 2004 British drug gangster movie, Layer Cake

A Wicked Wind Blows Through the Senate, The Shankill Butchers Ride Tonight - I'll close this review of November with perhaps my favorite post of the month. This post addresses the climate of fear we now see operating in our country, vividly captured in the haunting song by the Decembrists - "The Shankill Butchers Ride Tonight." This post draws comparisons to what Abraham Lincoln saw and commented upon prior to the Civil War...

And then on a lighter note, there's this:

Posted on December 30, 2007 at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter VI - House on Fire

Man, it's been a busy year .... as I write one of the last installments of my MetroNetIQ Christmas Letter, I realize how much ground I've covered on this site and in my business this year, and how far we have to go. Metropolitan Broadband, now Alternate Broadband, is one big, complex issue, one Wicked Problem, if you will.

On then, to the final quarter of the year that is almost over, this last week in December, let's start with October...where, among other things, I proposed that our national telecommunications house is on fire in a series of posts Where There's Smoke ...

October

Yo, I really cranked it up in October, with 34 posts ...

October was also the month we began to process the nine written responses to the San Marcos RFP. Nine - oh yeah...that was exciting to get so many responses...

And, the month I learned that we had been selected as the finalist for the contract with Orange County Business Council to do the wireless broadband assessment of municipalities and ISDs in the OC...

There were several critical posts this month, but given that there were so many, I'll be briefer here than I have been so far...

Phoenix MetroNets, Rising from the Ashes - in which I describe our entry into a new phase of metropolitan broadband - "Emergent Customization," pointing a direction beyond Municipal Wireless

Rock of Ages v. Water of Life - in which I describe the eternal paradox of change - balancing the need to preserve the past while adapting for the future (see also the follow-up Conservatives and Innovators - Wrestling for the Remote).

Where There's Smoke, Parts I-VI - a six-part series on big telecom and big government ...

When it comes to broadband policy and strategy, I don't think we can even begin to talk about these complex issues as a national community without including in the conversation those same government regulators, lawmakers, and large cable and telecom companies who some consider the Root of All Evil. I'm not one of those types, but I do believe in calling things like I see them. We need to start by bringing all this dirty linen out into the open. I'll try to be dispassionate, so bear with me.

If you're part of the Reality-based community, you don't say "What Smoke?" or "That's just Smog." You don't deny what your eyes see and what your brain tells you.

We must at least acknowledge that we have an underlying problem with our system. Before we can have an Open discussion on our collective broadband future, or even begin to craft solutions and a policy and a strategy that serve all interests, we first have to have Trust. We have to have Truth as the foundation for our discussion and we have to be Inclusive and engage all the parties. We have to be Honest.

Pure Play MuniFi Morphing Into Intelligent Communities? - in which I suggest a new more holistic focus for Alternate Broadband

Tangled Webs, Wicked Ways - perhaps the best of several posts about telecom immunity and FISA

And Now for Something Completely Different - and two more, about OPLAN - in which I describe a new way of looking at telecom from Great Britain, where the model is less the railroad (ATT) and more the highway (Alternate Broadband).

The Old Telecom Business Model - a scarcity-based business model, where a vertically integrated professional network operator manages a closed network and charge retail service fees to retail consumers in exchange for providing access to a limited commodity - Internet Access (and in many cases, bundled content and applications). In today's case, broadband bandwidth is but one more service to mete out to a starving consumer class, who should be grateful for the services the telecom provides over its proprietary network in a low-competition business environment. This service is more akin to buying a ticket on a railroad line to go from point A to point B.

The New Telecom Business Model - an abundance-based business model, where a neutral network owner (city, pension fund, etc.) manages an open network and charges wholesale service fees to service providers in exchange for providing access to an abundant commodity, local network access on which to run services and applications for resale to retail consumers. In this new case, the provisioning of broadband bandwidth is separated from the retail services, content, and applications. The Open Network brings an abundance of retail service providers and the benefits of bounteous competition, turning bandwidth into a basic commodity and letting consumers pay instead for retail value-added services. This service is more akin to driving a car on a road or highway, to go wherever you damn well please.

October was one busy month, but we went down paths that demanded attention. We have to come to grips with where our devotion to conventional broadband is taking us...so, while I still think its a wonderful life, I have a little more bile in my stomach when I contemplate what's going on...

Posted on December 28, 2007 at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter V - A Broadband Declaration of Indpendence

When do we know that we are living in history? It's hard to see the forest when you're down among all the trees, after all. Starting with July 4 last year, I began to see that there are parallels between what we are doing in taking on powerful government and business interests, in offering an alternative approach and in challenging a flawed status quo...not unlike the challenge our forefathers took on 230 years ago...

It's a daunting task, taking on the rich, powerful, established status quo. And sometimes I wonder if we are up to it. But then, when I think of it, I don't see another way around it.

The second half of 2007 proved to be just as eventful as the first half.

- MetroNetIQ finally launched its RFP for City of San Marcos in July to widespread industry interest. Over the next several months, we worked the process, narrowing the list down to two final contenders by December.
- MetroNetIQ expanded its focus beyond Central Texas and landed a new client in Southern California: the Orange County Business Council subcontracted to Viejo Technology and MetroNetIQ the task of conducting a county-wide wireless broadband assessment.
- Finally, we gained further insight in our web commentary as we worked to understand and explain the changes in the industry exemplified by the withdrawal of EarthLink and cancellation of several big city network plans from August to October (See August 27 onward).

In web commentary, we also advanced somewhat in the second half of 2007.
- We took a stand by going political (took a more active interest in federal telecom policy, objecting to large telecom/big government corruption and the Bush administration's initiative to provide telecom companies with immunity from lawsuits as part of the FISA legislation). And we sought to improve the look of the website and jazz up the content, by adding graphic images and YouTube videos. We're multimedia now!

After attending a Broadband Properties summit in September, I came back thinking and talking more about Alternate Broadband, with a much expanded view of the potential of broadband. I realized I'd been too focused on mobility to the exclusion of capacity, as much as I had acknowledged multiple technologies when I launched this site nearly two years ago to track and explain Metropolitan Broadband, as opposed to Municipal Wireless.

I'm ever more convinced that there is too narrow a focus among the different, narrowly-oriented interest groups (wireless mesh, municipal wireless, WiMAX, BPL, and FTTH) who share a common perspective as they offer alternatives to conventional broadband, aka Cable BB and DSL. A name is important, I realize now, in so much as it defines either narrowly or broadly the interest area - how one defines one's industry determines where one spends their energies, what info they track, and who they hang out with.

July

In looking at this very short list of blogs, I only count three in July...guess I was busy, between dealing with the San Marcos activities and my upcoming 50th birthday, as well as a two-week car trip to Washington DC.

I reprinted one of my favorite blogs, A Declaration of Independence for Broadband Connectivity, originally composed on July 4, 2006. And then, there was this treatment of broadband as a utility...

Under a utility paradigm, we accept that it is the role of all society, not just its telecom and cable providers, to finance and build the infrastructure necessary to provide broadband service to all consumers at an affordable rate. That approach drove the penetration of electricity and later, telephone service, and such a universal service model brought about dramatic economic development benefits.

And by accepting diverse methods and technologies to provide such ubiquitous service, as a society we can harness the power of a portfolio and iterative feedback loops to manage risk and exploit innovations.

Broadband at the last mile around the globe has been most successful so far in tightly knit societies with dense populations and where there is strong national government guidance and leadership. An American approach could be, must be different. We're too big a country, and we don't like heavy central control at the federal government level anyway. We do have an independent streak, though, which we should tap into.

Extending broadband on such a scale to cover the nation would mirror the extension of early electric and telephone networks, which were seen as utilities to be provided to all citizens and businesses at affordable rates, because they were essential to society. So is broadband.

I would urge this debate to be joined far and wide. Where broadband infrastructure is slow to build out, why not try a utility approach? It's worked before. Broadband at the Edge: Now a Public Utility?

August

I took a much anticipated family vacation in the first half of August, and got re-engaged on my return for the final 10 days of the month. My rate of posting began to pick up a bit - 8 posts, most of which focused on the demise of EarthLink's erstwhile interest in municipal wireless. I tied the spectacle to the Gartner Hype Cycle, feeling deep down that I too was stuck in the Trough of Disillusionment (a truly sucky place to be).

I'd especially point out my last post of the month - Electric Utilities and Metropolitan Broadband - a Relatively Untested Opportunity, in Critical Need of Attention. When, oh when, will the electric utilities wake up and embrace Alternate Broadband??

Cities that own an electric utility are in a great position to take advantage of new broadband communications technologies, as are larger electric utilities. They produce significant revenue, they manage a critical distributed infrastructure, and they have a critical task to manage in the event of an outage.

September

In looking over the September archive, I counted 17 posts, so clearly, there was something to write about. I was also waiting on the submission of the written bids in the San Marcos RFP, due on Sept 27, so I had a little more time on my hands than usual...it helped to bring me some clarity.

1) I began to formulate this meme about broadband as infratructure...

Let's Talk More about Broadband Infrastructure, Less about Individual Technologies

One aspect of the events of this past week, I hope, will be an opening up of attitudes to a more technology neutral perspective when it comes to broadband communication. With an open mind, I hope we can begin to experiment with different combinations of technologies that provide custom solutions to different communities, and get away from arguments that pit one technology against another, and that seek to promote a one-size-fits-all model for the sake of mass consumption.

Over the past few years, discussion on wireless and wired broadband has tended to fall in various camps that support one technology over another, Wi Fi Mesh v. WiMAX, cellular 3G v. Wi Fi Mesh, DSL v. Fiber, Fiber v. WiMAX. The problem with structuring the debate in such dualistic terms is that it starts with a biased argument that proceeds to create camps and promote divergence. In contrast, in the face of such a large challenge as national broadband infrastructure, what we all need is more cooperation and convergence, and more experimentation. For a Change, How about Trying Cooperation and Convergence

2) and I began to talk about an alternative to conventional broadband...

It should, and it does. This is where leadership comes in, or rather, where it is absent. Our leaders should be taking the reins and correcting this situation. It's not happening at the federal level. I still hold out hope at the local level. Robert Cringely, writing his column on PBS.com, is less optimistic. This summer he had a good series on broadband infrastructure, and one month ago he presented a rather bleak outlook, concluding Game Over. He concludes that DSL and Cable won't get us there, dismisses cellular as technologically inadequate, and sweeps right by Wi Fi Mesh and WiMAX.

That's where we differ. For if we are to ever get back to a leading position in broadband, or at least an adequate position to support a 21st Century economy, we must place some hope on local government innovation.

I may share Cringely's lack of faith when it comes to national policy, the FCC, and the large cable and telecom providers, but I still have faith in small-town America to come through for us. There's enough innovation, money, and most importantly, incentive in our nation's smaller towns to craft solutions that can be adapted to the more dense urban areas.

I remain optimistic, if only because the alternative is too grim. Broadband Infrastructure has become too important an issue to leave to the "professionals" anymore. It's time we had some competing alternatives working out in the hinterlands. It's time we took back some of the control over our broadband communication destinies. And the technology is available now for getting started. How Important is Broadband? Why Should We Care Enough to Change our Current Thinking, Anyway?

3) I summarized my views on EarthLink et al and put that whole issue to bed...

1. The demise of Big City Free Wi Fi was a market correction that was long overdue.
a. Big Cities were the wrong place to start to prove out unlicensed spectrum wireless.
b. Free never made sense - someone has to pay because there are unavoidable capital and operating costs in any network project.
c. The base of the industry was too narrow to meet the demands.
2. Public Sector Applications still need a wireless network.
a. Mobility is still king - more and more applications need to be available out in the field.
b. Infrastructure demands support and more efficient management.
c. The march of Digital Applications goes on and business process improvement offers tremendous cost savings, but it will take work to make changes.
d. Public Safety Applications in particular deserve attention because lower crime and saved lives are two key reasons for city government.
e. The Internet will continue to disrupt the status quo for years to come.
3. Rural Broadband is the biggest potential beneficiary of unlicensed wireless.
4. The Digital Divide demands creative, cost-efficient solutions and it will continue to get the attention of politicians. Reader's Digest Condensed Version of What Recent Events Mean and Why Muni Fi is Here to Stay

4) I had an AHA moment regarding mobility and capacity after attending the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas ...

My AHA is that it's Not EITHER FTTH OR Wireless Broadband. That's a false choice. It's BOTH FTTH AND Wireless Broadband.

FTTH can lead, if the community is ready to make the leap to a 21st Century Future-Proof Broadband Network, if community and economic development are front and center, and if more competitive broadband market rates are needed. Wireless Broadband will be important as well for mobility, and that can come initially with Hot Spots, Hot Zones, or more ubiquitous coverage.

Wireless Broadband can lead, if it's mobility that's most crucial, but a fiber loop will be needed for back haul initially, and the network will need to grow into a full FTTH network over time to provide necessary capacity to meet future capacity requirements.

I've been moving in this direction for quite some time, even writing an RFP this summer that promoted a converged wired and wireless network, leveraging the best of current broadband technology (see City of San Marcos RFP). But this conference really gave me an opportunity to shine a light on what a converged wire line/wireless broadband network would look like. On the Cutting Edge - Citywide Broadband on Steroids

5) Finally, I began to be oriented on National Broadband Policy in the last two blogs, which crystallize my thinking on where we are in this nation when it comes to broadband ...

A Second Opinion is needed to provide policy makers with background facts on how the rising broadband Internet is changing the rules of the telecommunications industry. We need an examination of new digital and radio technologies that challenge the current method of regulating spectrum, for instance. We need a fresh look at what is currently happening out in the laboratories of innovation across the United States.

We need to listen more to those who are actively working to make a difference for our broadband future, if on a small scale at present. These innovators are the voices of the future. If we truly desire to compete in the global market, we cannot continue to hold up the industries of the past at the expense of the industries of the future. That path is a recipe for mediocrity and gradual decline, and the preliminary results are already in on that strategy. Let's recognize that fact, leverage our considerable advantages (including both the incumbent strengths and the diversity of innovation) and mobilize to do something about it. Like I've said before, anything interesting starts with a conversation. Way Past Time for a National Broadband Policy

and

Before you get discouraged, let's just acknowledge that there will be no EASY way out of this broadband infrastructure conundrum - this taxation discussion only serves to highlight that we are indeed in a crisis, and we should acknowledge that. I would argue further that progress outside the US and the steady march of technology already combine to create a figurative GUN TO OUR HEAD, leaving for a minute the issue of tax policy at various levels of government and in various geographies. In the issue of what Broadband means to us as a national government and as a national community, we have a sense of urgency that is there for the taking, if it is as yet unacknowledged by our political leaders. But let's probe further on the problem we face.

I would argue that these and other questions regarding broadband infrastructure are characteristic of a phenomenon that social theorists call "Wicked Problems." We have to work together to solve such problems, or else we punt them down the road and they get worse. (See also my recommendation earlier today for a national dialogue that can lead us to a National Broadband Policy here).

The concept of "wicked problems" was originally proposed by Horst Rittel (a pioneering theorist of design and planning, and late professor at the University of California, Berkeley) and M. Webber in a seminal treatise for social planning. Rittel expounded on the nature of ill-defined design and planning problems which he termed "wicked" (ie. messy, circular, aggressive) to contrast against the relatively "tame" problems of mathematics, chess, or puzzle solving. Wicked problem - Wikipedia Broadband in America: a "Wicked Game We Play"

Ah, clarity ... and the courage it brings, courage that led me to make changes and to take sacred cows to task, because that's what it seems I became more focused on at the end of the year, once I began to go down the path of Alternate Broadband and where it should fit in a National Broadband Policy...

Posted on December 28, 2007 at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter IV - A Road Less Traveled

Well, Christmas Day has come and gone, yet the holiday season lives on. It's still an exhausting day in our household, little sleep with lots of activity to follow. Still, very special day and I feel very appreciative.

As usual, I was rather ambitious in undertaking a task. Choosing to start a Christmas Letter in the middle of all the holiday rush by filling in the gaps of time with sporadic posts was a leap, but it seems to be working, so I'll plow on ahead.

So, on to May, which was yet another eventful month for MetroNetiQ this year.

The key thought as I look over this month and the blog posts is that we are really talking about taking a road less traveled. Those involved in this industry, and those cities that choose to go down this path, find themselves at the proverbial Fork in the Road and make the decision to take the Road Less Traveled.

May

In May, I sold an old car and bought a new one, all in the space of three days, using a variety of broadband tools, which I blogged about in Making Change Happen with Broadband I & II. It was a big event for me, because I hadn't done such transactions in quite a while and was a little surprised how simple the process proved to be, with all the new broadband applications and websites at hand.

On that blog, I cataloged my purchase process, which I believe is near universal in any serious purchase, and which we should keep in mind as we go about making such decisions.

1. Personal Inventory.
2. Assessment of Market Options.
3. Demonstration Trial.
4. Information Organization.
5. Vendor Engagement.
6. Narrow the purchase to a limited set of options.
7. Close the sale.

By May, we realized that we had won the City of Longview deal, but then as I was heading up there to go to the city council meeting for final approval, their political leadership made a last minute decision to postpone the long-planned network until the new city manager was installed - OUCH, that hurt, for me for sure, but also for the internal team inside City of Longview. As it turned out, that was enough to snuff the momentum built up over 18 months in this city. This was a lesson in many ways - I hate these kinds of lessons, but nevertheless, life keeps on doling them out. There clearly was nothing we could have done differently, for Pete's Sake - we won the bid, closed the deal and negotiated a good contract.

But this event reminded me that any city is a complex organization, with diffuse leadership in a highly political environment. Many leaders are still very nervous about telecommunications infrastructure at this early stage, many unaware of new possibilities and paradigms, and they do not share the same priorities we see inside this industry. There remain so many ways that a deal can go south, so many competing options for city officials, and so much misinformation and ignorance, which all combine to complicate decision-making and confuse the issues.

May, however, was the month we really got down to business in San Marcos, writing a new and different kind of RFP, one that would accommodate the changes we were seeing in the industry. We took several steps to match what we saw unfurling in the industry:
1) include both a Public Private Partnership (city as anchor tenant) option and an Alternate Business Model option (city owns part or all of network)
2) make it technology neutral, not Wi Fi only
3) exclude the use of the word "free"
4) provide reams of data, especially regarding city applications

I think this is some of the best of the blog postings from May:

In contrast to this status quo, imagine a solution that is Small, Simple, Cheap, and Fast. (and keep repeating that mantra). Small, because that keeps costs low and provides lots of choices, allows more focus on niche solutions, and lowers barriers to entry. Simple, because there are fewer moving parts (see above) and that means the solution is more likely to work/less likely to fail. Cheap, because the costs of these new solutions are quite a bit cheaper - going over the air without paying for spectrum rights avoids such massive capital expenditures as trenching and spectrum rights acquisition through auctions. Fast, because its fairly simple to hang up these nodes on light poles or mount them on rooftops.

We're now living in a world that is undergoing near constant change, on a rapid basis. When you have such dramatic change so consistently, doesn't it make sense to approach things differently than you have in the past? Doesn't it make sense to experiment with new models and try on new ways of doing things? Doesn't it make sense to take some risks? That's yet one more benefit of using new business models enabled by these new technologies - they allow rapid feedback cycles, which enable rapid improvement cycles. It's just like Open Source Software. Lots of experiments, lots of innovation, lots of improvements.

That is what I believe is the bottom line on the need for different approaches to broadband provisioning:

A divergence from the status quo is called for, and an opportunity presents itself to model the success of Open Source software development. This is what we will see more and more of in the coming year - more experimentation, more innovation, more change. As consumers, we should open ourselves up to new ways of doing things, exploring what we value and what we can do without. There are multiple lessons to be learned if we will set off on this path. Small, Simple, Cheap, and Fast - OHMMMMMMMM

June

We put the finishing touches on the San Marcos RFP in June, and I began an extensive pre-sell and communication effort to promote the opportunity to the vendor community. This blog, A Fresh Approach in San Marcos, provides a good overview of where we were at the end of June.

For a review of June blogs, see here.

Posted on December 25, 2007 at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter III - Building a House with a Firm Foundation

Well, we did manage to sleep a couple of hours last night. My kids are 11 and 13, so they managed to sleep in to a decent hour this morning, and we had time to light a fire and make some eggnog latte before they got up.

It was a very pleasant session of opening presents this year, finishing about 11:00. We've broken in the new ping pong table, Wesley is all over the Wii games he rec'd (my wife, Barbette: "are you kidding, he's being chased by police in a stolen car??!!??"), Blake is snapping pics with her new pink Casio digital camera, and I'm listening to tunes on my new iPod Nano (my first, we're late adopters)...Barbette eschews digital gifts...

If we're at all typical, there are a lot of digital gifts being opened this morning across America. Many of those gifts have Wi Fi capability (Wesley's Wii console does). Let's see how the impact of another wave of Wi Fi-equipped handsets impacts this new industry this year...

I've got a little time to blog before we sit down to our roast lamb chops and a nice Syrah ... Christmas really is one of my favorite holidays.

Back to the Year in Review...where one of the key lessons of April is that in forming a community with the help of technology, we're building a house and need a strong foundation of planning and strategy development.

April

In April, we finally figured out that the Dubai deal wasn't going to go. But soon after that, in another partnership, MetroNetIQ was down selected for the City of Longview and entered into negotiations. We attended the Texas Association of Government IT Managers (TAGITM) conference in South Padre Island. And we launched the San Marcos project, with project orientation and community mobilization activities.

On the website, you can see from the April archive that we had a heavy month of blogging (15) and covered a wide variety of topics. Perhaps my favorite quote comes from a blog titled Chasing the Key Demographic for a Sustainable Future, in which I talked about community formation and sustainable growth. Here are the lessons I pulled from a personal experience of community building...

Lesson One: The beginning of a solution is an honest assessment of the problem and a willingness to take action to pursue the solution.

Lesson Two: Time spent in crafting the strategy that fits best is not wasted time, but an investment in bettering the odds for success.

Lesson Three: Start simple and focus on making important, often simple changes to make a more welcoming environment to generate success and build momentum that will energize your community to take on more change.

Lesson Four: Community formation is a conscious activity that requires a deliberate strategy and focus, but once started, community activity is contagious and generates energy.

Lesson Five: To attract a targeted demographic, spend time to understand their needs and then create the conditions that will attract or retain them - the underlying infrastructure is a good place to start.

Lesson Six: Keep it Simple and focus on opportunities to create synergy and socially reinforcing behavior patterns, and work together as a community.

Lesson Seven: To stand out and enjoy sustainable growth in the highly competitive 21st Century, a community needs leadership, initiative, a business plan and strategy, commitment, and mobilization of all the resources in the community.

Posted on December 25, 2007 at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter II - It's a Wonderful Life

Well, it's 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve, I just stepped out to smuggle a Ping Pong table from my neighbor's garage into my backyard (success!), and the family is watching It's a Wonderful Life...that George Bailey just told off that SOB Potter one more time. He really is a creep...

I'm resisting making comparisons between Old Man Potter and recalcitrant Incumbents, Bailey Building and Loan and an enterprising community-based WISP ...

Back to the Year in Review.

March

In March the big, big event was that we launched the San Marcos deal. Getting busy on the San Marcos project pushed away much of the business development activities - that's how it works with focus in a small company. But we also continued with the Longview deal ... we went up to present and hit the ball out of the park.

As for the blog, there are some good posts in the March archive here, but I think the highlight of my writing for this month is the MuniWireless conference I attended in Dallas in March and the several blogs that provide the details. This particular blog Industry Snapshot - Final Thoughts on MuniWireless Texas 07 provides the best overview...

1. The industry supply chain looks increasingly like a barbell to me, with more growth at the ends than in the middle.
2. Cities' interest in the details of mesh equipment may be waning, challenging the continued dominance of trade show presence by manufacturers of these foundational technologies.
3. The lack of service provider availability may lead the smaller cities to take a serious look at alternatives to the Public Private Partnership model.
4. New consultants will take time before they will be able to offer significant value to the market.
5. More and more cities can be expected to get funding and start projects in the next 6-9 months.
6. Cities may opt to avoid an RFP and go with a single source provider with a well-documented business case.
7. Applications will become more and more the buzz in this industry.

We will also get more field data this year, which should prove revealing on how well these networks stand up to the tasks of providing the transport function for critical municipal digital applications - some good, some bad. The good data will be a press agent's dream and will be hawked to encourage more cities to enter, while the bad data will have the dual role of teaching the market what works and what doesn't, but also of providing a damper, slowing things down and driving a lot of the hype out. Thank Goodness. The hype is one thing that is growing tiresome for me, as it raises unrealistic expectations!

The bottom line comment? I'm bullish on industry growth and predict stronger than average growth of municipal wireless projects in
- smaller cities
- more isolated cities
- cities in proximity to a current muni wireless project
- cities with a well-focused application / solution
- cities that own an electric utility
- and cities that host a college or university

While some of my predictions and conclusions seem naive in hindsight, I'm glad I called two things early: first, the waning of the Public Private Partnership model, and second, exposing the Hype Cycle early on.

[So, on the TV as I write, Donna Reed just welcomed George back, and now the townsfolk are streaming into the Bailey household ... everyone is giving George money ....they all really do love him and his life is worth it after all! Man, I'm a sap for this movie. Don't we all wish deep down that we lived in a community like Bedford Falls?....Frank Capra sure knew what he was doing, is all I can say....finally, the kids are going to bed now and we can get down to business.]

Looks like I need to sign off and play Santa Claus...I hope no kids are reading this blog...

Merry Christmas to all!

Looks like I'll have to finish this letter after Christmas.

Posted on December 24, 2007 at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

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Christmas Letter I - A Long and Winding Road

I wrote our first family Christmas Letter this week, and let me tell you, it's hard not to fall into the trite, all-good-news, bragging kind of letter that people make fun of. That's just how these letters turn out when you start to write 'em. You tend to want to share the good stuff, and not talk so much about the less-than-good stuff.

The surprise for me was how enjoyable the task was - it was helpful for me personally to write a letter like that, to realize what's important to me - so much good news about the kids and family. You realize how good your life is when you write a letter like that.

So, I thought I'd try something of the same for you all on this blog, my website extended family.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, for my Christian readers! It's been a long and winding road this year, and I'm glad this website and you readers are along for the ride.

Happy Holidays for everyone else, whatever your beliefs - this is a time of year to celebrate joy, family, community and being connected, particularly a propos on this website!

January

What a difference a year makes! Back in January, I was doing a lot of business development, especially exploring new business relationships.

I was busy with an ongoing contract to move a medical practice into a new office building, in partnership with Randy Baker at Tuanis Technology here in Austin. Randy is the founder of the Austin Wireless Alliance and has great experience and skills in broadband, both the wired and wireless varieties. Getting to work with Randy was enjoyable.

I brought Tuanis in on another potential opportunity in Dubai early this year, one of those deals that looked good at first, but failed to develop. It was interesting to investigate business affairs in that part of the world together with Randy and a Middle East technology consultant from Bahrain.

And speaking of good deals, in January I was busy developing a written proposal for the City of Longview, together with Karl Edwards at Excelsio Communications. That was yet another highlight of the year, to get to work with Karl and get to know him better.

And I was busy putting a report together for the City of San Marcos - I had a small contract from Nov-Jan, where I interviewed over 50 city leaders to get their impressions on the potential wireless plans of the city government. I had also submitted a bid for a bigger wireless project in San Marcos, waiting in January to hear back on how that was progressing.

With regard to the MetroNetIQ blog, it's pretty easy - not much blogging in January - a quick look at the Archives shows only one blog, but it's a good one. See Cities as Complex Ecosystems: Mother Nature Knows Best.

In Pulse, Frenay takes a view that nature has far more experience at organizing complexity than does man, as sophisticated as we think we are. It's hard to imagine more complex ecosystems than what we see outside our window. Whether we refer to weather, the interactions of predators and prey, symbiosis between animals and plants, the work of insects (most notably, ants), the tropical rain forest ecology, polar bears/seals/fish/icebergs - pick it, these are all complex systems that have figured out how to get along in balanced, closed ecosystems in harmony, without the help of man and his/her big brains.

So, Frenay proposes that man's organizational efforts, while they've come a long way since the first plows moved dirt around in Mesopotamia 20,000 years ago, have a lot to learn from nature's organizational methods. Frenay argues that linear "machine age" thinking has served us well since the dawn of the Industrial Age a short 200 years ago, and that the corporation has accomplished wonders in a short 100 years, but our world systems are flawed because they do not adequately account for externalities like pollution and negative environmental impact.

We're now reaching the limits of where we can go as a civilization with those tried and true models. He uses the metaphor of an animal species reaching the limits of its habitat and the consequences that nature imposes. To suspect that man is somehow immune to consequences is naive when you look at what happens to other species that outgrow their habitat's ability to support them. Frenay highlights how we're hitting limits, from the permanent damages man is causing to his island home by pumping waste into the air (CO2), to stripping away forests that take centuries to regenerate for short-term gains, to eliminating species from overconsumption. Connecting the dots is illuminating. Wheww. Nothing like a cold dose of reality.

February

February saw some important activity for MetroNetIQ. I started down a very interesting trail on broadband policy, for one. See the blog archive here for blog posts in February.

There were some good posts in Feb -

Broadband Leadership? It Starts at Home 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.

Making Metropolitan Broadband Work 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.

Time for Spectrum Reform? Well Past Time, More Like 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."

Penalty for Piling On - Fifteen Yards 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.

What's Municipal Wireless Good For? 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.

Finally, I wrote at length on National Broadband Policy in my last two posts of the month - I urge you to read those fully. See both What's Municipal Wireless Good For? The Whole Enchilada and Lead, Follow, or Get out of the Way. The gist of those two posts was that we lack leadership in broadband, but we can get there and Municipal Wireless points the way:

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.

And February wasn't a slouch away from the website. While I continued to work on the Dubai deal with Randy and Suleiman, and was short-listed on the Longview deal with Karl, we were down-selected as the finalist in the San Marcos Wireless Project bid (the big one) and negotiated the contract in February. We were thus set on the path to our most interesting project to date. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, hard to believe it was only 10 months ago.

This is running long, so I'll pick up on March in the next post.

Posted on December 24, 2007 at 09:04 PM | Comments (0)

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Something in Common

Everyone ought to study and learn a foreign language at some point in their lives, preferably sooner than later. The sooner you set your brain to that task, the better off it will be for the effort. Some lucky kids start out their lives by learning second and third languages as children, when their brains are very plastic and can easily adapt to such changes. Later in life, it becomes more of an academic exercise, not as natural but still highly beneficial.

I'm so happy I took that first French class in the eighth grade some 37 years ago and went on to study Latin in high school, then dabbled in Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and learned Swedish that year I lived in Sweden, 25 years ago.

My daughter is now in her third year of Latin in the eighth grade and just received high honors on her report card, and my son is following in her footsteps in his first year in Latin in the sixth grade. They're doing it right. Seeing them studying Latin last night at the kitchen table brought to mind all the time I spent learning grammar and vocabulary so long ago. In fact, there's an OpEd in the NY Times today, extolling the virtues of an education that includes Latin (see A Vote for Latin).

Little did I realize the fringe benefits I'd enjoy from that early hard work - first and foremost, beyond being able to communicate in other languages, all that study of language gave me added perspective, as well as vocabulary and grammar skills in my own language - I love English, and as you can tell, enjoy writing.

What's more, learning foreign languages changed the way I look at the world and encouraged a desire to travel and get out and see the world, which I did in abundance in my twenties. When you experience the common elements of all these different languages, societies and cultures, through one-on-one interaction with other people, the point is driven home. How much we have in common with people all around the globe. As different as we all are, we have so much in common.

And the proof is there in the pudding. You can tell when you look at the words, really look at them, that they have something in "common." Dictionary.com shows us that Community shares a stem in the Latin word for "common" - communis, with Communication. What both those words have in common, is the stem "common."

And then there is the Latin word for "with" -"cum," which in English becomes the stem "co-" "com-" or "con-".

Just think of all those words that begin with those three stems ...what they have in common is they all involve bringing together things, people, efforts, actions, studies, etc.

Cooperate
Communicate
Collaborate
Community
College
Conference
Connect
Common
Contract

The list could go on and on.

Having something in common is the basis for all friendship, the connections we form with others. From those connections we gain the experience we need to establish trust. From trust, we get the courage to accomplish things by working together, to share risks and reap greater rewards. Our joint actions involve bringing things together. All those things we really enjoy in life, those things that make it worthwhile, come from connecting with others and finding a way to live and work together.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to wonder at all the Christmas cards that would come in the mail from people I'd never met. Little did I realize that for my parents, the ritual of sending and receiving Christmas cards was the one sure way that they'd be able to stay in touch, to maintain a common bond that they'd established with friends and loved ones from the earlier stages of their lives. For a military family that had to relocate often, staying in touch took on an added importance and meaning.

So today, I'm tasked with putting together the Christmas mailing list, which will be a tweaking of last year's list. That won't be that big an effort. The bigger effort will be in writing the Christmas letter, taking the family picture, and sending the cards out. All that effort has a meaning though. It communicates to those friends and family the closeness we still feel. It says to them that at one point and still, we had and still have something in common with them, we were and still are a part of a community, and so we communicate.

I find it hard to fathom sometimes, but even I still write letters and send cards, especially at Christmas time. But we communicate with more variety now than we used to; our need to communicate has in no way diminished, and we have more tools at our disposal. It's far easier to pick up the phone and make a call, in fact, long distance is beginning to fade away as a communications term. And then there's email. Now there's too much of a good thing. And while we may send fewer letters, we actually end up writing more, I would argue, by using these new electronic media. An essential element to make all this communication work is broadband infrastructure - "always on" makes writing that much easier.

Broadband technology is making it ever easier to communicate and stay in touch, to form and keep communities. In a world where events and activities seem to conspire to pull us apart, broadband has become one of our most potent and vital tools. We will never stop talking, never stop connecting. Our need to stay connected will not diminish. Broadband, in that light, is not that exotic, but rather one more step in an evolutionary path to find easier, better, and cheaper means of staying in touch with the many communities that we have become part of.

Posted on December 03, 2007 at 08:13 AM | Comments (0)

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On the Cutting Edge - Citywide Broadband on Steroids

The major AHA moment for me at the Broadband Properties Summit 2007 in Dallas last week occurred on the second day, during this great panel discussion featuring pioneering, award-winning city officials and organization leaders who are pushing out the envelope on what the definition of "community broadband" can be.

So much of my time in the metropolitan broadband industry over the past four years has focused on wireless broadband - even defined by the more common term "Municipal Wireless," where we often talk about duplicating current broadband speeds (about 1.5 Mbs) through the air, to support mobile applications, but also to provide an alternative to DSL and Cable broadband services. If you've been reading my previous three posts on Open Access FTTH, Broadband Applications Convergence, and the Coming ExaFlood, then you realize there's a more complete broadband picture than that described by the term "Municipal Wireless," and you know that future networks will need to pull together both wired and wireless broadband, and the faster, the better.

My AHA is that it's Not EITHER FTTH OR Wireless Broadband. That's a false choice. It's BOTH FTTH AND Wireless Broadband.

FTTH can lead, if the community is ready to make the leap to a 21st Century Future-Proof Broadband Network, if community and economic development are front and center, and if more competitive broadband market rates are needed. Wireless Broadband will be important as well for mobility, and that can come initially with Hot Spots, Hot Zones, or more ubiquitous coverage.

Wireless Broadband can lead, if it's mobility that's most crucial, but a fiber loop will be needed for back haul initially, and the network will need to grow into a full FTTH network over time to provide necessary capacity to meet future capacity requirements.

I've been moving in this direction for quite some time, even writing an RFP this summer that promoted a converged wired and wireless network, leveraging the best of current broadband technology (see City of San Marcos RFP). But this conference really gave me an opportunity to shine a light on what a converged wire line/wireless broadband network would look like.

This has to be one of the best aspects of a conference like this, getting to meet and talk to world-class city officials and private sector movers and shakers who have successfully pioneered projects that addressed real-world problems with solutions that are available today - none of that pie-in-the-sky policy or technology discussion here - this is the future, real, here and now.

Note: Be sure to see also this link to the Agenda for the conference as a reference on presentations and speakers.

Details on the panel, after the jump.

This particular panel on Tuesday afternoon featured Bjorn Sernhed - CTO, Affarsverken Municipal Utility, City of Karlskrona, Sweden; Joseph Franell - Director of IT at the City of Ashland, Oregon (and manager of the Ashland Fiber Network); Bill Hutchison - Chairman, i-Waterfront Advisory Council, Waterfront Toronto; and Tim Scott - Vice President, Marketing, PacketFront.

Karlskrona, Sweden

First up was Bjorn Sernhed - CTO, Affarsverken Municipal Utility at the City of Karlskrona, Sweden (For his pioneering work at Karlskrona, Bjorn won a Broadband Properties Cornerstone Award).

Bjorn described the unique situation of Karlskrona, an archipelago city at the tail end of Sweden, on the North Sea. A city of 62,000, Karlskrona is off-the-beaten-track when it comes to Internet backbone in Sweden. Faced with a need for better connectivity, Karlskrona was able to lean on its city-owned multi-utility authority, the Affarsverken Municipal Utility, to get the ball rolling. Acting as the lead anchor tenant, Affarsverken worked with PacketFront and leaders from the broader community, including a regional group, the Swedish Urban Network Association.

From the outset, these community leaders determined that they wanted a "future-proof" technology, so they choose an Open Access network approach, where they incubated a market of smaller service providers after the network was put in place. They attribute their success to three factors: 1) One unified network; 2) detailed, documented process and procedures; and 3) focus on quality network management.

Ashland, Oregon, USA

Next, Joseph Franell - Director of IT at the City of Ashland, Oregon (and manager of the Ashland Fiber Network) told a very compelling story. You'll remember, back in 2005, opponents of municipal wireless would cite the city-owned fiber network in Ashland as an example of a "failed city-owned network." Fact is, things were very rough to begin with, and the city officials and leaders working the network made many mistakes. But this is a story of persistence. An expensive story of persistence, but that's also life on the cutting edge, when there are no models for success - it's trial and error on the path to success.

Joe was brought in after many mistakes were made, and he's had the pleasure of helping to set the ship on an even keel, documenting the lessons learned. Now, in contrast to the municipal broadband opponents case studies from two years ago, Ashland represents a FTTH success story, recognized as a Smart 21 Community by the Intelligent Community Forum.

Among the Mistakes Made / Lessons Learned:
1. No Documentation of community buy-in
2. A Rush to Build Out the network, which resulted in very expensive construction costs
3. A Market Focus on Price - low-cost broadband pegged to 20% below market rates (instead of community development, economic development, etc.)
4. Rampant Optimism, which blinded the community to potential pitfalls and raised expectations
5. Underestimation of the Competition - cable and telco providers had many tricks up their collective sleeves

In particular, Joe stressed the Open Carrier Model as a key to success, highlighting the need to make room for smaller niche service providers, while acknowledging a downside of this model: the inherent conflict between the needs of citizens (best-in-class network over the long-term) and the needs of the smaller service providers (need to maximize profits in the short-term). It takes work to balance this inherent conflict, but the benefits are worth the trouble.

Joe's bottom line summary for Ashland Fiber Network:
Since the network has been in place, the city has documented a 30% annual net growth in licensed businesses - Ashland enjoys a more diverse local economy and better lifestyle because of the digital FTTH network. Joe believes that such quantifiable economic benefits should spur other cities to adopt this approach.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bill Hutchison - Chairman, i-Waterfront Advisory Council, Waterfront Toronto stressed the difference between a "redevelopment" project and a "revitalization" project - it's about a lot more than property development - it's about changing the lifestyle potential for a major world city. This world-class project, when completed, will represent the world's largest revitalization project. An RFP is anticipated for Fall 2007. (For their pioneering work in Toronto, Bill also accepted a Broadband Properties Cornerstone Award).

In this unique project, the national, provincial, and city governments came together to form a management corporation. In addition, a community advisory council has ensured that local stakeholder viewpoints are represented. The project will reclaim land and create substantial waterfront parkland.

My own AHA moment was underscored when Bill stressed that the project would feature BOTH a FTTH network AND ubiquitous wireless. After all, we need access to high-bandwidth applications not only when in the office or home, but also when mobile. The system must work together.

Key elements of their plan include
* Community Collaboration
* Integrated Economic Development, Marketing, and Inbound Investment
* Cooperative Leadership

Featured eApplications will include
* Digitized Museum
* eHealth Innovation
* eLearning

The Winning Approach of Waterfront Toronto, according to Bill, included these features
* Community Leadership
* Collaboration
* Digital Democracy
* Marketing
* Sustainability
* Broadband Infrastructure

PacketFront and the Open Access Model

Tim Scott - Vice President, Marketing, at PacketFront summarized the common threads of these three projects. They all have Vision, they all feature Partnerships, and they all rely on the Community as Facilitator.

Ashland's city leaders finally determined that the Open Network is the right approach, and realized that the network is not about retail rates and revenue. A Community Broadband network requires both FTTH to ensure access for residential and commercial consumers and Wireless Broadband for access to mobile applications, the Internet, and the LAN.

Toronto's leaders have had success by stressing planning and marketing. And like Ashland, they figured out that broadband access requires fiber for sufficient capacity and future-proofing as well as wireless for mobile access.

Posted on September 16, 2007 at 09:33 PM | Comments (4)

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Cities as Complex Ecosystems: Mother Nature Knows Best

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." and
"Perspective is worth 80 points of IQ."

Alan Kay, American computer scientist, researcher and visionary, considered by some as the architect of the modern windowing graphical user interfac (GUI).

How one looks at the world can be a competitive differentiator. How do you look at your city? How about considering it as a complex ecosystem like a natural habitat, say the ecosystem of a wetlands or the cycle of water that my 10-year old son made a chart of the other day? A different perspective can separate one leader from the next, and open up new possibilities, providing advantages. And what better time than the New Year to get a new perspective!

One of the books I read this year captured a direction my thinking has taken me and demonstrates the way that the Internet is changing the face of both publishing and consumption of media.

As a blogger, I'm officially in the publishing industry, if only on the fringes. I'm not altogether sure how many of you read my little blog, but nevertheless, I consider myself a journalist and every time I hit the Publish button on this software, I've published a work, incrementally, one thought piece at a time, and delivered it for consumption. Such is the incremental influence of the Internet that I tend to forget that a mere five years ago (?), the word blog wasn't even in my vocabulary, much less a part of my daily routine.

I also am a daily consumer of blog posts, and inevitably, when reading a blog, I will click on a hyperlink, which may well take me in a new and altogether unplanned direction. Its the unplanned and spontaneous part that makes this new medium so exciting and different. So it was one day when I stumbled upon this particular website: Pulse The Book by Robert Frenay, also a book of the same name, see it here on Amazon.

I'll get to the contents in a second. What's notable for me in hindsight is that this is the first book I sampled using RSS ("Really Simple Syndication"), a new tool that allows an on-line publisher to push his works out to the reader automatically, or from the reader's perspective, allows a reader of on-line material to receive updates by email so that one does not have to go out to the website and/or check it routinely.

Well, it worked, and after receiving 70 or so emails at one page each, I bought the book. I was hooked by a new 21st Century marketing ploy. It is a stimulating work, one person's view of how all these changes we see around us are coming together.

In Pulse, Frenay takes a view that nature has far more experience at organizing complexity than does man, as sophisticated as we think we are. It's hard to imagine more complex ecosystems than what we see outside our window. Whether we refer to weather, the interactions of predators and prey, symbiosis between animals and plants, the work of insects (most notably, ants), the tropical rain forest ecology, polar bears/seals/fish/icebergs - pick it, these are all complex systems that have figured out how to get along in balanced, closed ecosystems in harmony, without the help of man and his/her big brains.

So, Frenay proposes that man's organizational efforts, while they've come a long way since the first plows moved dirt around in Mesopotamia 20,000 years ago, have a lot to learn from nature's organizational methods. Frenay argues that linear "machine age" thinking has served us well since the dawn of the Industrial Age a short 200 years ago, and that the corporation has accomplished wonders in a short 100 years, but our world systems are flawed because they do not adequately account for externalities like pollution and negative environmental impact.

We're now reaching the limits of where we can go as a civilization with those tried and true models. He uses the metaphor of an animal species reaching the limits of its habitat and the consequences that nature imposes. To suspect that man is somehow immune to consequences is naive when you look at what happens to other species that outgrow their habitat's ability to support them. Frenay highlights how we're hitting limits, from the permanent damages man is causing to his island home by pumping waste into the air (CO2), to stripping away forests that take centuries to regenerate for short-term gains, to eliminating species from overconsumption. Connecting the dots is illuminating. Wheww. Nothing like a cold dose of reality.

If it's a glum worldview Frenay presents, it's not without hope. Frenay offers us hope in technological innovation, which changes the rules of the game and reshuffles the pieces on the gameboard, even enables a new paradigm. We're seeing convergence of different technological platforms, from IT to telecom to entertainment. The changes of digital technology and the Internet, combined with globalization and environmental impacts like global warming beg the question - is it time to consider a new paradigm to replace our "machine age" model?

Frenay thinks so and makes a credible argument. I would urge anyone in the city management business to take a look at this perspective. If anything, I believe that cities are complex ecosystems and they're best managed wholistically, by thinking with a nature paradigm about how all the parts work together in harmony.

Change is more easily accomplished at the local level, which gives relevance to this train of thought. Thinking about the future of your city wholistically, you are bound to consider a network project at some point, because any complex ecosystem needs a communication medium, and metropolitan broadband offers that medium.

So, start the new year off by opening up to a new perspective. Subscribe to the RSS feed by going to Frenay's website: Pulse The Book by Robert Frenay and read the emails for a week or two.

With this potential facing you, I see three primary outcomes: 1) You subscribe, enjoy the notes, read them, and it opens your mind to new perspectives; 2) You subscribe, read some, but are too busy / not interested enough to continue, and they fade away; or 3) You're not moved to subscribe, and continue down your current path. The new year offers us an annual opportunity to re-examine our paths, adjust and realign, and /or try on new paths. I urge you to add this RSS feed to your daily email routine - well written notes that will offer you a break from your routine, and just may open you up to new perspectives.

Gaining 80 points of IQ? Not a bad way to start off the new year!

Posted on January 08, 2007 at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

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So this is Christmas, and What Have You Done?

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

John Lennon, Happy Xmas (War Is Over), 1971

This may be one of my favorite Christmas carols, among many. I love this time of year, and even though the time pressures can be a pain in the ***, it's still fun to hear the songs, follow the rituals, watch the kids' excitement grow, and count the days until Christmas comes - and don't forget its partner holiday, the New Year, which is soon to follow. I think a principal reason I like this song so much, besides the art and soulfulness that John Lennon always brought to his work, is the lyrics themselves. In this beautiful poem, Lennon is his most optimistic and dreamy self, as he skillfully ties together the spirit of the season not only with warm wishes to loved ones and for peace on earth, but also highlights the cycles of time and the close of one year and the birth of a new one that we all experience.

So, do you take stock at the end of the year? I like to pause and reflect at this time of year, but I also find myself getting pensive on my own personal major anniversaries, my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my children's birthdays. But this particular season of year end and Christmas remembrances is just over-the-top sentimental, the classic time to look back and then, to look forward, as the old calendar comes down and a new one goes up.

So what have I done? Speaking for this industry, I'd have to say we've done quite a bit. More narrowly, speaking for my own company, I know MetroNetIQ certainly has. We've come a long way in 2006. This website was just launched a little over 10 months ago, for one thing, and I also launched WikiMetroNet. We evolved our identity and purpose to land firmly in the camp of filling an unmet need by acting as an early stage procurement consultant for cities - I wouldn't have guessed that destination back in January 2006. But I'll wait and make a more complete answer to this question the focus of another blog - my "end-of-year" pensive piece. I'd like to keep this blog focused on you.

So what have you done? What has your city done? Are you moving forward with new technologies, or are you treading water doing things "the way we have always done them?" Or are you avoiding making waves by not bringing up anything controversial? Have you moved beyond the "let's go to a conference" stage? Have you spread the discussion beyond the users (Police Chief, IT Director, etc) to involve the City Manager, the Mayor, and the Council? Have you engaged the non-governmental leaders and stakeholders in your community?

Until you can spread the discussion far and wide, until you have seriously contemplated your next steps, until you have "tried on" a metropolitan broadband network and looked at yourself in the dressing room mirror as a new kind of city - until you've done these things, can you seriously say that you're progressing? So, what have you done?

I hope that more and more cities will add these serious, concrete steps to their New Year's Resolutions list and get serious about taking control of their destinies. I hope that this time next year, you will all be able to hum this John Lennon tune and reflect back on 2007 as the year when your city started to get busy, started to take concrete steps to bring positive change and innovation in, started by using a metropolitan broadband network as a catalyst. That will be a fine recollection next year, if you can point to all that you did to move your city along and bring a network in.

Posted on December 09, 2006 at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

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What's Inside? The MetroNet Unwrapped

Here's one from back in February, but is good and worth sharing again.

In What's In a Municipal Network, Glenn Fleishman (Wi Fi Net News) does a good job of unwrapping a typical municpal network to look inside, and we can see that its about a lot more than Wireless Mesh.

Posted on August 04, 2006 at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)

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Sacramento Follows a Familiar Pattern

Unstrung - Sacramento to Set Up Muni WiFi - Wireless Networking News Analysis Check out this clip - it describes the process Sacramento followed to get a network, whcih is starting to look like a text book.

Speaking of which, take a sneak peek at my new site, which allows you the Reader and Network Student to build an on-line MetroNet Users Manual - see the WikiMetroNet here and play around on this newest member of the Wiki club.

Posted on March 24, 2006 at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

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Glocalization? On Neighborhoods, Communities, and Cities

Back from a week's R&R with the family (oxymoron?), I'm chomping at the bit to get back into the swing of things. What better way than to start blogging? While on vacaiton in Palm Dessert (golf and beautiful weather) and LA (swimming pools, movie stars), I thought a lot about neighborhoods, communities, and cities, and how they all work together.

I especially got busy on my thinking in the still of the early morning, while my family slept and I drank coffee in the lobby. All these terms we use in our discussions about metropolitan broadband tend to get used interchangeably, although they are distinct, if subjective. Do you relate more with your neighborhood, your community (which one?) or with your city? Is that a fair question? I think it depends on the size of your city, and how long you've been in your neighborhood, and the strength of the bonds you have made with different communities, both on-line and in the real world. It's easier to have an affinity for a smaller town, for instance, and it's easier to consider your neighborhood your community if you've been there a while and know lots of people. When out of town, I claim Austin as my home, but day-to-day, I reference Westlake Hills, and my neighborhood of Davenport Ranch, sometimes referring to the local elementary school, Bridgepoint. It depends on context, but I veer towards more local interests when I consider how I spend my energies.

So, let's fast forward to a year from now - its March 2007 - and let's assume that we have all been wildly successful at what we work at - deploying wireless municipal networks to get more people access to high-speed broadband. What will the world look like? How will the networks have been deployed? How will we get people to use them? Have incumbent providers countered this new competition by dropping their access fees to the floor? (they can do that, and they will).

I would propose that it is inevitable that we all begin to pursue a neighborhood / community development strategy if metropolitan broadband is to succeed in its lofty goals of ubiquitous connectivity. The ROI business cases for these networks involve getting either retail or wholesale customers to sign on to brng in subscriber revenues, and the greater the ratio of subscribers to homes passed by the network, the more successful the network is. With such goals, it makes sense to go local and go native - find out what makes a community tick and use local knowledge of those issues to sell the new network approach and optimize network traffic. It's a guerrilla warfare, where local knowledge trumps aerial bombardment (mass marketing and low prices).

For just that reason - the need for community adoption - I have long promoted community involvement up-front, so that there is widespread buy-in on such a dramatic project as a community network. That requires education, promotion, in short, an all out effort to open people's eyes to the possibilities of Last Mile Connectivity. For planning purposes, I believe it starts at the metropolitan level - thus, the Metro part of MetroNetIQ.

For deployment purposes, however, I think it will be best to go down to the neighborhood level, to give priority in building out networks to those areas where penetration will be the highest, and to where the needs for network connectivity are the greatest. Such discernment only comes from on-the-ground intelligence that is best derived from local community relationships.

For more on this concept that some have labelled G/localization, I recommend Danah Boyd's excellent speech at the recent ETech Conference in CA. See also Danah's wonderful blog apophenia for more such musings on community, culture, and social networking.

Posted on March 20, 2006 at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

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Places and Spaces

Back at SXSW, I went to a panel on physical and on-line experiences and marrying ithe two. Founders of MeetUp, Socialight, Dodgeball discussed and profiled their efforts to tie together place and space. History of places will soon be available, as all this new data gets loaded on-line and tagged by its creators - once these images are geo-tagged, we will have a growing database of places that can be compared over time - this is truly exciting and paradigm shifting. Changes are afoot.

Check out some of these sites:

It was good to see Dennis Crowley, founder of Dodgeball and now sporting a Google business card. Good to see creativity rewarded liike this.

Socialight is by a South African company that is tagging sites.

Platial- by Diane Eisner, where users share their favorite spots with other users.

NYSongsOnline, which maps the street grid of Manhattan, geographically and textually.

PropertyShark - New York again - type in your physical address and it will give you a history of your building.

MeetUp - organizers and voting to determine meeting sites: seeing more homes listed by organizers as meet up locations. more application specific databases that deal with locations...meetup database is rich in space information.

The point here is clear - the Internet is moving out into the streets and alleyways of our cities, and it will be about a whole lot more than getting on-line to check your emails. Hold on to your hats.

Posted on March 11, 2006 at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

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Juggling in Austin

I've got a press pass for South by Southwest Media Conferencein Austin, but the irony is that there is another event, scheduled right on top of SXSW - Barcamp is a guerrilla open source developers "unconference" going on today at the Thistle Restaurant in Austin, down the street from the Convention Center and the SXSW conference.

It's been irresitable to attend this event, even though the SXSW panels have begun today - I have to think that this is the ironic week in my life, because on Monday I'm leaving on vacation with my family, so I"ll miss a lot of the action in Austin this next week. Too many events, so little time. Oh well, my friends will fill me in when I get back. But, for now, I'm heading out after this session to SXSW to see James Surowecki talk about the Wisdom of the Crowds (see Books & Whitepapers section to read about Surowecki. SXSW really gets some good speakers).

Back to Barcamp - the first session has started - Getting Shit and Gettng Shit Done with Blogs. Its about using blogs to communicate in the workplace. Wikis are another alternative and this strategy works - set one up and let the communication start.

I'm making my presentation at 5:30 today to talk about the wireless network I'm deploying with Cellnet in Austin this spring, and seeking developers to contribute to the Community Internet interface.

Posted on March 11, 2006 at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

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Red v. Blue at South by Southwest

The big to-do n Austin this week is the South by Southwest Media Conference. It has three tracks that include both industry seminars and panels, events, and most important for networking - Happy Hours and After Event Parties.

The Music track is the most famous and what started it all. Music company executives come and meet with musicians, and bands get out and play in nearly 100 bars - its huge, and people fight to get the wrist bands. Austin as Live Music Capital of the World.

The Film track came along and you could go to films - another independent film festival, but with panels to discuss the business of film.

The Interactive track is my main interest, and this looks at all things Internet and someone told me that attendance was up 300% this year for this track.

I'm at the very first of a series of panels, here i'm sitting on the front row listening to the creators of Red v. Blue, one of the most creative things I've seen out there on the Internet in the new field of Machinima - using gaming software to produce animated film shorts - NEAR PIxar-like quality, but much cheaper to produce - check this out! They are pioneers, breaking new ground, and they have an audience - how about ONE MILLION DOWNLOADS A WEEK! Try that on!!

The team uses the game Halo, owned by Microsoft, and its characters, to produce creative new animation. They will do the Keynote address on Tuesday, but I'll be on Spring Break with my family in California. Oh well. Hollywood is starting to use Machinima and it is starting to be used on TV a little. It's a valuable tool for storyboarding for movie making, but I like it as a creative, raw new medium.

I enjoy their product, but I'm more wowed by their creativity and social commentary than I am about the technology. They are creative and irreverant, which I think is a big part of why they've developed such an audience.

Posted on March 10, 2006 at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

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Harnessing the Latent Energy in a Community

seekers of the larger view

Seven Steps to Trilogy of Action
* discover unity
* draw together pieces of science and technology to create a system
* find the economic feasibility for a new technology by virtue of a wide grasp of the worlds of man and matter
* reach harmony through intuition, by meditating on the base of a wide and deep knowledge of the field so as to arrive at a new result
* build a model, a simplified representation of the problem at issue, subject to experimental and calculational analysis
* serve as a science-technologist generalist who, not once or twice his life, but many times in a year, and generally in the service of others, extracts the single, simple missing point out of a complicated situation
* make decisions or help others make decisions, by imaginative interaction with alternative scenarios calculated as consequent on those decisions

-- John Archibald Wheeler

I drew this quotation from a presentation entitled "Top Problems of the Internet
and How to Help Solve Them," by KC Claffy. I was browsing Martin Geddes' blog, Telepocalypse when I found this gem. I'm going to add Martin's blog to my list - great stuff on rethinking the whole communications paradigm. Who says we have to keep doing things like we always have, especialy with all the new tools we have? We have a crisis of imagination in our new industry.

So who is this Wheeler guy, and what does this quotation have to do with MetroNets?

According to Wikipedia, John Archibald Wheeler was a nuclear fission pioneer and a late collaborator of Einstein's. Very smart guy, and a lover of thinking and problem-solving. He divided his academic time between Princeton and UT Austin (how's that for serendipity!). History will show us if his pioneering work in physics compensates for his work with developing nuclear weapons. I believe he came to realize that progress with technology can be a double-edged sword (now there's an understatement). But leaving that aside for now, I'm grateful for this quotation.

When I read that quotation, I was struck with how well those thoughts aligned with the way I think about accelerating broadband penetration by way of metropolitan broadband networks. I'm searching for ways around the Municpal Broadband Policy Debate that divides us, keeps us apart, distracts us and slows us down.

After putting a fair amount of effort that way last year, I've chosen to mostly ignore that political route - luckily, many good people are holding down that fort already. Instead, I hope to do more good and be more effective by focusing my energies on two principal problems with the current approach to "Municipal Wireless."

1) We're not working together well to accomplish the changes we seek. We have tremendous potential to bring our efforts together in a more rational approach, both in individual metropolitan areas, and in how we grow this industry - it's time to start looking at how we can cooperate and collaborate.

2) Our underlying assumption about metropolitan broadband is not supported by our experience to date, but we keep doing the same thing. To wit, is the best way to move forward and create a ubiquitous broadband infrastructure really to have municipalites lead the process with RFPs?

Instead of making the RFP process work better, what if we could look at the process differently? What if we could find a way to put Private Sector leaders in the lead in this new space, to entice them in by lowering their risk, but still work with public sector partners in unity, playing to their strengths? My comments on Glenn Fleishman's blog yesterday highlight the merits of Glenn's analysis and the good approach of Chicago municipal leaders, suggesting that there's a new way to do this that may well be more effective than what we've been doing:

Glenn, you hit the nail on the head with this insight about the difference in a name. I think there is a significant difference in a "city" (an urban area), a "municipality" (an urban area under a single government - or, the government itself), and a "metropolitan area" (a larger contiguous urban area). That's why I call them MetroNets - no government, no city. But there's more to the lack of objections by the Heartland Institute and the CTIA.

When the municipal government forswears any capital or operating expense, they're removing much of the objection from arguments made by the Titches of the world. You have to wonder what would be left to object to - Chicago's CIO is prudently seeking to bring more value into his city by taking this initiative, thereby creating opportunity for the private sector at next to no risk for the taxpayers. Ironically, by taking "the pledge" to spend no money on the network, city planners can actually make it more attractive to a private sector partner to jump in. Reminds me of how TXU split the bill with Current Communications, leaving the network to Current, but granting them a long-term service contract to lower their risk. I hope we see more of this model. How about a "NextGen MetroNet?" Works for me.

My plans for Austin and Central Texas are to test that new paradigm, moving forward with a private sector initiative and inviting the municipality as well as the community to come along as partners to develop something new. I also plan to open up the concept of a metropolitan broadband network beyond providing Internet access and solving the business problems of municpalities, which, while having merit in their own right, only begin to scratch the surface of where this new technology will take us. I want to explore how these networks can transform our lives and the way we look at cities.

I love Austin and think its the right place to test this model. Austin is a creative city, home of start ups, digital media geniuses, the University of Texas, and an attitude that somehow we're different. Keep Austin Wierd is the slogan on local T-shirts. I'm convinced that a metropolitan broadband network offered up as a tool for community collaboration will take us in new directions that we would find hard to imagine in today's world. Consider what we will do here in Austin as a model to test a new approach to metropolitan broadband networks and how communities harness their latent energy and creativity.

Posted on February 18, 2006 at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

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The Wisdom of Crowds, the Safety of Numbers

The more open you can make your planning process, the better. The more involvement you can get from your community, the more support your network will have. By being open and getting all segments of your local community involved from the get-go, you will find that the process goes smoother, any bumps in the road are overcome more easily, and when it comes around to signing up subscribers, you will have more support and a quicker road to solvency.

There are several means to generate community involvement, but one of the first I would recommend is to create a community blog (see the definition of blog I added to the Glossary). There are over 4 million of these websites out on the web, since the first was launched about five years ago. I added a book review to the Books section on Orientation - a recent book by Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation that's Changing Your World. I strongly recommend you buy and read this book - it's well written, full of useful information, and an enjoyable experience. I read it cover to cover on a three-hour plane ride.

Perhaps my experience with my two blogs - UnwireMyCity.com and now, MetroNetIQ.com - will offer you some encouragement. It's been nearly nine months since I began blogging, and I started from scratch. Follow these steps to get started on your own blog.

Creating a Community Blog in Eight Easy Steps

1. Start with a URL. That's the web address, www.metronetiq.com for this website. I recommend GoDaddy.com, as having the best value for URL purchase. You can get a website URL for under $10. Something catchy helps in branding, but I don't think it's all that important - better to get started than to spend considerable time picking a URL.

2. Get some web logging software. I chose the most popular software for blogging, Movable Type by Six Apart. I paid $99 for a software license.

3. Make arrangements for website hosting. Websites are really just files on a web server, a specialized computer hooked up to the Internet. So you need to either have your own server, or pay some other company to do that for you. Typically, hosting companies charge a small fee and then move up the fees if there is considerable traffic on your site. I took the easy route and chose hosting by AQHost, one of the recommended hosting sites on the Six Apart website. I can no longer recommend AQHost, however, due to poor customer service. In launching MetroNetIQ.com, I switched to LivingDot, which will cost me about $150/year - including the cost for software - a small price to pay for a company that specializes in hosting Movable Type blog sites.

4. Start posting content. the rule for a successful blog is to write, write some, and then, write some more again. Like the shampoo bottle instructions, let's add a final step: Repeat. Short and punchy is best. As Hewitt stresses in his book, blog sites are about relevant content, an easy writing style, and current information. The key is to keep it simple to start, and get into the habit of posting regularly. It's OK to be candid, in fact, that's the expected tone in the blogosphere. It's important to be accurate, but even more important to be timely. Because the medium is so current, small errors and/or omissions can be corrected as soon as you catch them, but gross errors run the risk of being picked up and spread widely, so caution and prudence are in order. Good to follow the Dale Carnegie guidelines and stick to positive statements in your comments (say nice things about people, or remain mostly silent).

5. Learn to use the software. Early on, I went to the bookstore and bought a helpful book, Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition) to help me with the basics. I was able to get quite far in understanding the tools and functionality of the software with this aide. But, I wanted to go further, so I went to the next step ...

6. Hire a professional. I took an additional step and hired a web design expert to dress up the site and add more functionality. Steve Zilko at Zilko Web Solutions has been very helpful to me in adding functionality and giving the site a more professional look. I recommend you drop Steve a line, or hire somebody local, or work within your own staff to dress up the site and add further functionality.

7. Start interacting with your community. By using a blog to focus debate and update your community, you are helping to generate trust in advance of this next step, bringing broadband access to your town. The great thing about the blog and blog software is that you are able to reach your constiuents cheaply and effectively, gather input, and incorporate sound suggestions that will make your final project better reflect the wants and needs of the community.

8. Incorporate the blog into your new network website. By starting early on, you are also creating an archive that will reflect the steps you took to create your network, which will be helpful to you and to others whom you may want to coach after you have your network.

Posted on February 05, 2006 at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

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Community Internet Sites Weigh In on Debate

hearusnow.org: Connected With this website, Consumers Union provides a good resource for those who would seek to motivate a community effort to bring in broadband. I recommend you check this one out and bookmark it. Good tools and lots of good information.

Free Press : Community Internet provides a valuable tool in a map that shows all the different community network sites around the US, as well as a variety of other resources.

And ConnectMyCity.com provides numerous resources for those who would seek to do more than just read about the debate.

Surf these sites today and see how you can get involved, and let your voice be heard in your local community, in your state capital, and in Washington, DC. This is a democracy, you know!

Posted on October 06, 2005 at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

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On Community and Communications - We Need Both, Now More Than Ever

I feel a little like a broken record, but it has been hard for me to maintain a sense of normalcy in this blog, as I witness events unfolding in New Orleans, Louisiana, and MIssissippi over the past week. I know I will get back to blogging on more "normal" issues - I have queued up an article on video streaming and another one on VOIP. But for now, New Orleans and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina keep pushing me back to this subject. The role of communications and community in our lives is being highlighted as never before, as we witness what is now being described as "the worst natural disaster in our nation's history."

Never before have we been eyewitnesses to the destruction of a major US city - for shock effect, you could count the outrageous NYC Twin Towers and Pentagon terrorist tragedy (9/11), the mind-numbing Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad two years ago, or the terrible Tsunami, but this time it was somehow different, it was an entire US city populated with our relatives, friends, and fellow citizens, stretched out in agony, in front of our very eyes with first the awesome storm followed by the slow creep of an inevitable flooding of the bowl city of New Orleans, OUR community, with its French Quarter, its Mardi Gras, its Jazz Festival, its wonderful restaurants, and its marvelous diversity and multi-cultural traditions - we came together in this place, with a myriad of personal memories, mostly pleasant. Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how much we loved our cities, and included The Big Easy as one of those next in line to get a wireless network. These are our fellow Americans who are suffering (more than they should have to, which we will get to in a minute) and we all feel a horrible sense of loss and helplessness. As we work through this tragedy, as we are bound to do, that sense of loss will get refocused into outrage at what did not work as it was supposed, and where we feel we were let down as a nation - pick your public servant based on your perspective.

Nobody is alive today who was old enough to read about the destruction wrought by the great earthquake and fire in San Francisco one century ago, which has eery parallels in its destruction and death toll. But we saw this one coming in ways that we couldn't one hundred years ago. Since the video age began in the sixties, we have not seen the likes of this in the US. There is something personal at work here - and I believe that that visceral feeling is a reflection of community - which embodies our notions of empathy, togetheness, mutual responsibility, and caring. Feelings just run deeper when it is "your own" who are suffering. As we extend the notion of "our own" to strangers in a city far away, let us hope that we make that a permanent feeling, and nurture it to the point where we can extend that feeling beyond our nation's borders to tragedies abroad. But for now, let us simply hope that we will continue to act as a naitonal community, taking care of each other.

And what of the role of communications within our community?

While a hurricane may be an Act of God, communications and technolgy are seen as something we have some control over. We had warning aplenty with today's technologies. And if communications is vital for early warning, it is no surprise to observers that good communication is especially vital to recovery from a disaster like this. Modern communication tools like the Internet are being brought to bear on this tragedy, as covered in my last blog. The point is driven home in this article from Saturday The Desperate Cry Out for Loved Ones Still Lost - New York Times.

So desperate are people to communicate that when a T-Mobile office in Gulfport put out a sign that said "free calls," 1,500 people lined up over two days, the managers said. There was tearful call after tearful call, with one relieved mother even insisting that her daughter pass the phone to a T-Mobile employee so she could thank him. But by Friday, the office had run out of fuel for the generator that powered its signal tower.

So we witnessed the stages of communications in a disaster, something like this: evacuate, then get help to survivors, then call relatives, then look for relatives, then mobilize first responders for power recovery, then telecom recovery, then for rebuilding and allocating supplies,with the phases overlapping. And as normalcy returns in stages, the telecommunications tools employed can get more and more sophisticated.

Pre Disaster: Communicate with population to warn of the coming storm and issue evacuation recommendations and orders, use full array of modern communications to line up and pre-position resources
Disaster: TV crews show images of disaster up close and personal to those outside the area, first respoinders prepare using modern comunications infrastructure outside the disaster area
Post Disaster Day One: Those outside can see everything on extensive coverage on TV, but those inside are deaf, dumb, and blind. All the communications and power infrastructures are gone or disabled. Communications is largely in person at first.
Post Disaster Week One: Crews work to restore cell towers and power to the damaged area, and phones are provided for immediate communication with relatives. Computers and the Internet are brought in to refugee centers to help with the search for loved ones.
Post Disaster Month One: self-powered cell tower equipment is brought in to restore mobile phone service, and as power is restored, traditional tower and land line service is restored as well.

When Everything Falls Apart, Communication is the First Step on the Road Back

One observer at the Superdome said words to this effect: "Please don't send us National Guard troops with guns to restore order, send us a man with a bullhorn to tell us what is going on - that will help to calm people down." Information is ranked right up there with food and water. Communications are vital not only to help move evacuees out and restore calm, but also to coordinate the large rescue and recovery effort itself. Infrastructure, tools, and willingness to cooperate are vital to communication, which is one part technology and one part cooperative human behavior. Lack of either will stymie the best intentions for communication.

Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood. "What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said. But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly. "They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises."

from After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game - New York Times

When the dust settles and everyone gets tired of pointing their fingers at everyone else, I believe that one of the major things that we will conclude went wrong this past week will be extremely poor communciation among responders, but more of the cooperative human behavior kind than the infrastructure kind. From what I can tell so far, it seems that the states and local governments expected FEMA to take charge as they have in the past, and FEMA was waiting on the states and local governments to tell them what to do, perhaps under new Homeland Security guidelines. Sheeesh, what a mess! Compounding such human shortcomings was a lack of infrastructure inside the disaster area and the horrible flooding. So while greater minds than my own tackle the thorny political issues and repercussions, I'd prefer to focus on the infrastructure.

This pulls me back to the potential of prepositioned wireless mesh equipment to provide immediate broadband communications infrastructure in the wake of a disaster, to foster better coordination of relief efforts. When mobile nodes are positioned on first responder and power utility vehicles, and are complemented with fixed mesh nodes and backhaul radios on self-powered trailers, as I wrote about last week, the Phase One infrastructure situation is entirely different than it is today one week after this disaster began to unfold. In the future, such a prepositioned network will enable first responders from the four corners of the world to come in and have a shared high-speed link that lets them communicate with each other and the outside world. The principal values of low cost, high bandwidth, and a universal language make Wi Fi networks potent new tools to empower those who would quickly save lives and restore public safety in the wake of a disaster. Look for Wi Fi networks to make a name for themselves in the coming weeks as the world is able to witness the utility they bring to disaster recovery.

As a national community, we must pull together to overcome this disaster and restore our local communities. We must take advantage of the best technology tools and communication options that are currently available, but we must also ensure that we are doing the best we can do to communicate with each other as human beings who are on the same team - Team USA. We should not lose sight of that fact as we work to mine lessons learned from this terrible tragedy. Otherwise, all the technology in the world will not save us from ourselves.

Posted on September 05, 2005 at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

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How To Unwire, Part III

In my previous blog, I related my perspective on steps I can take to stimulate interest in bringing a wireless municipal network to Austin, my hometown. Austin is a perplexing situation, because we have abundant resources and all the raw material to be a leader in this space, but its as if all of our broadband accessibility and hot spots inhibit, rather than promote the formation of a wireless network. Time will tell.

But large cities are still the exception when it comes to municipal networks. The action is in the smaller towns, like Washington, PA, profiled in an earlier blog: Pennsylvania: Washington (PA, not DC) may get Wi Fi. Here is wireless consultant August Michel's first-hand account of his experience in Washington, PA.

How I Unwired My First City

First I started with who knows who and laid that groundwork in networking.

I spoke their language. I figured out what they wanted to hear and what they did not want to hear.

I was patient and persistent but not demanding.

I will never forget when one board member talked to me after a meeting and told me how much he appreciated the fact we did not demand a decision by 3pm or the deal would be off.

Here are some ideas and methods that helped me "UnwireMyCity:"

1. More patience - don't be afraid to ask for decisions and timeframes but be prepared for delays.
2. Be firm and honest - Tell them upfront, what you are thinking and what you expect from them.
3. Know the politics but do not get involved in them.
4. Gather as much information as possible.
5. Always listen more than you talk - my dad always said that God gave you two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately.
6. Find your allies and give them reasons to trust you - don't be afraid to show some vulnerability.
7. Never be afraid to pull out the NDA - this will let them know you are serious.
8. Sell the story not the product - sell the sizzle not the steak. Make them see the true scope of how the wireless internet can revolutionize their city, e.g. police cruisers, ambulances, fire trucks, wireless security cameras, WiFi meter readers, flood detection, etc.
9. Try to learn who really knows whom. Find out who has the real money and power.
10. Find out who is building where and when - there are projects and plans that are sometimes years in the making. You will be able to offer WiFi services even during the construction phases.
11. Learn to speak their language - what can you offer them, money talks but it is not always about money. Make sure you communicate your ideas clearly. If you are too vague they will miss the idea altogether, and if you are too detailed they will not understand what you are saying. Try to find the balance between too much information and too little information (K.I.S.S.).
12. Never be belittling or condescending - always emphasize that there are no stupid questions. There will always be people that will not understand the steak, but make sure they are "sold" on the sizzle.
13. Read How To Win Friends and Influence People - it is more important than reading WiFi for Dummies

Remember you do not have to be an expert at everything. You are a stronger and better leader when you can say with authority, "I don't know the answer to that question, however I will get it for you as soon as I can."

For more information or consulting services contact August Michel of Confidential Consulting @ 412.377.7245.

Posted on August 24, 2005 at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

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Go Back to School to Tap the Latent Potential of Your City

Helping to find the solutions is a role uniquely suited to the university. It has the expertise, but perhaps more importantly is the most trusted agent of change within a community. The university interests are clearly learning and linkages, not power or financial gain. Equally important, the university operates on a principle of "shared governance." The idea of sharing power -- giving all the stakeholders a voice in the new smart community -- is long overdue. If there was ever a time for this concept to have community-wide applicability it is now.

from Defining San Diego's Future in a Flat World- Voice of San Diego, by John Egan

Leadership can be found in a variety of places, from on high, and from down in the ranks. In Kick the Internet into high speed | csmonitor.com, the argument is made that the FCC and Congress must provide the leadership to identify alternatives to the cable and telephone duopoly indicated by recent FCC and Supreme Court decisions. Citing the three branches of our federal government, clearly this view looks for leadership from the top - and while I believe that such leadership will come in time as it must for such an important topic, a more immediate source of leadership is showing up from our cities, who are not content to wait and are mobilizing today to meet their own broadband needs.

In The City : A Global History, profiled in the Books section on this site, Books and Whitepapers, Joel Kotkin demonstrates how cites have played an historic role in driving civilization forward, by concentrating vital skills and the craftsmen who innovate, so that they could make faster progress and pass knowledge down through generations. With the rise of nation-states in modern times, the role of cities faded a little, but we are now witnessing a resurgence of the city as the core of the Region. The Internet has collapsed borders, so that regions now compete against each other and it is the nation-states that seem to be fading into the woodwork, as Tom Friedman makes clear in The World is Flat (also in the Books section - if you haven't read this yet, check it out.). And the heart and soul of the region is the city.

But as everyone knows, cities large and small are often befuddled by long-term rifts and factions that seem to slow down progress at every turn. How does the modern city move forward to become competitive on the global stage, to position the best that its region has to offer? Arguably those cities that tap into their unique potential and find a way to harness their resources and work together will be the most successful, and in the networked knowledge economy of today, those cities that have flagship universities are positioned with research capabilities, cutting edge talent, and a youthful culture that can feed an innovative and risk-taking culture to set a region apart from others.

So, as the opening quotation states, San Diego is looking to its universities to provide the leadership its community needs to set itself apart as it plans for a broadband infrastructure, and other communities would be wise to follow suit.

In Austin, Texas, my hometown, the University of Texas is a world leading university, but it has a decidedly mixed success record at providing change leadership for its host community. Too often the "ivy-covered walls" (it's virtual ivy down here in Texas) have led university leaders to look inward, but things are changing for the better. I've written about the Science, Technology, and Society program and its Community Advisory Board on this site. I view the STS Board as a tool to help Austin focus on the potential of wireless for the community.

The challenge for me is to motivate Austin leaders, in the "most wired city in the US" to formulate and pursue a municipal wireless vision.

I said I would track my success at raising wireless as an issue on this site, so here's an update. One of the first steps in any planning effort is to understand where you are starting from. One needs to get a lay of the land, to survey the various interest groups and create a baseline that will help in creating the plan. What are the resources that you can bring to bear on your tasks? Start asking questions and see if you can find some allies to your cause.

The most recent activity for me in this regard was to help with a poll of area non-profits for STS. Not surprisingly, few of the respondents understood municipal wireless networks or were aware of the potential, and those that did said that bringing broadband to their constituencies (addressing the Digital Divide) would be the key benefit of such a network in Austin. I concluded that there's a need to raise awareness of the potential of municipal wireless in Austin among this group, who could prove to be allies for the cause of bridging the Digital Divide. But there are other resources to look to in this planning effort.

I've approached a few community groups so far, but have not had success to date in putting this item on their discussion agenda. But I've only just begun, persistence is key here as well. Next up to try to get the ball rolling in Austin will be to continue my work with the city's electric utility and potential third party providers, and also to approach city leaders to see about providing a catalyst. Austin will be host to the World Congress on IT in May 2006, which provides a convenient target to get a network in place, and they are interested in helping to promote a wireless network.

I've also talked to Mike Wolleben at www.Wimax.com about using some WiMAX equipment that is already mounted on a rooftop in Austin to do a demonstration project. The key at this point, I believe, is to raise awareness and pique the interest of the community, and I think that starts with a focused awareness campaign. With the upcoming Wireless Networking & Communications Group Symposium 2005 at UT Austin in October, I will have another opportunity to promote a local agenda with experts in our community.

So, stay tuned, and let me know how you approached your community to get the ball rolling. The first habit of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is to Take Initiative, so I'd like to know how you have had success in getting started at bringing a wireless network to your community. Please let me know and I'll share it with our readers.

Posted on August 24, 2005 at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

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From Glob to Blob to Blog ... Everybody Run!

BBC NEWS | Technology | One blog created 'every second'

Indescribable... Indestructible! Nothing Can Stop It!

Indescribable... indestructible... insatiable

The indestructible creature! Bloated with the blood of its victims!

It crawls.... It creeps.... It eats you alive!

A mysterious creature from another planet, resembling a giant blob of jelly, lands on earth. The people of a nearby small town refuse to listen to some teenagers who have witnessed the blob's destructive power. In the meantime, the blob just keeps on getting bigger.

From The Blob (1958) on the Internet Movie Database

Blogs - great idea, funny name...While reading this article reporting on stats from blog-watching site Technorati, such as - the number of blogs doubles every 5 months - I couldn't help but think of the classic sci-fi thriller from 1958, one of Steve McQueen's first movies. I saw it on our family's black & white TV back in the 1960s and it always stuck with me as my first "scary" movie. Gives me chills to this day, but I'm sure its nothing like Silence of the Lambs scary.

The basic plot line is that two teenagers know about this blob from outerspace that keeps getting bigger, but nobody believes them, until it is as big as a house at the end. Man, it scared me back then!

Fast forward 40 years and I'll explain my analogy - I really think that blogs are a cultural phenomenon, but many people are still unaware of them. See my post The Wisdom of Crowds, the Safety of Numbers, urging those who would build a community network to get started on a community blog - its a great tool to gather momentum and track your progress in an open forum. Don't be one of the non-believers, start your blog before it's too late!

Oh, and by the way, the working title for this movie was The Glob, which is (almost) Blog spelled backwards .... OOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!

PS - be sure to check out the Internet Movie Database when you get time - one of my favorite sites, with EVERYTHING there is to know about movies. Great to pull up if you have a question while watching a video.

Posted on August 02, 2005 at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Practicing What I Preach

I've been preaching the message of advance community involvement to better understand the purpose of a community network project, before it is launched. That's easier said than done.

It's one thing to preach a general message and to spoon out advice, but quite another to roll up your sleeves and show how the objective can be reached. So, like Dr. Jekyll, I'm going to try out the potion on myself, and let you watch (let's hope that the analogy ends there, and we don't see Mr. Hyde come out anytime soon!). In this section, I will track my progress in working to mobilze Austin, Texas, to get a municipal wireless broadband network.

So stay tuned. Step One will be to participate in a survey of Central Texas non-profit organizations, to assess their technology issues. I referenced this study in my July 9 blog How Do You Mobilize a City to Do Wireless?. As usual, I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions along the way.

Posted on July 29, 2005 at 06:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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How to Unwire, Part I

Dupont Circle Will Become a WiFi Hot Spot One way to unwire your city is to, well, in the words of a famous sports company, Just Do It. By starting with a public access project like the one described in this article, you gain much more attention and have a focal point to press the discussion about a full city buildout. Whether starting with a pilot in anticipation of a full city network, or starting with a stand-alone Hot Zone, the impact may be the same, to generate interest and demonstrate public support for this new municpal capability.

Posted on July 19, 2005 at 12:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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How do you Mobilize a City to Do Wireless?

I hope you're not disappointed if I don't tell you in this blog how to mobilize your city to do wireless. I don't have all the answers, but I'm getting closer. Instead, I'm really asking you that question and I hope you will help me to find the answer. In my last blog, I talked about the importance of Community Involvement and I'd like to drill down on that issue herein. Let me give you a little background.

Austin is a sizeable city, but still has a small town feel to it. The University of Texas is a world class institution, recently ranked No. 3 in the US and No. 15 in the world, if I remember correctly. UT plays a large role in our community, but it's a little like Vatican City in the middle of Rome. At times, it feels like UT is a city in itself, right in the middle of our city. This is an area of growth for our community, to get UT better integrated into Austin society.

So, I was excited last fall when I was asked to be part of a new community advisory committee: UT has a new program and academic discipline, dubbed Science, Technology, and Society, or STS. The STS Community Advisory Committee is made up of about 20 some odd community leaders who meet every three months with faculty and graduate students to advise them on curriculum and community interface issues.

For instance, we met this spring to have a Q&A on Nanotechnology and its implications for society. While a lot of the discussion went right by me, I understand that our input was helpful to UT in moving forward in a competition for grants in this important technology area.

It seems that a new thing in academia is something called a Societal Impact Statement, akin to the Environmental Impact Statement that we have become familiar with on construction projects. Grant-making institutions are starting to ask academics about the impact of a technological pursuit on society before granting funding for projects. It has become the role of groups like the STS Advisory Committee to provide such community perspective. Also, we can help UT to better integrate and relate with the local community, a long-held need in Austin.

For example, last month we were asked to help provide the PhD candidates in the STS program with a two-week applied aacademic study that they could work on, and then we would all sit for a presentation of results in early August.

I submitted a project that focused on how a community might raise community awareness on the potential of and means for a metropolitan wireless network in their own community. The scope of the project would be to develop a methodology for integrating community input into city leaders' planning for a metropolitan wireless network.

I will meet with a PhD candidate on Tuesday, July 26, to kick off this study and two weeks later, I'll see his or her presentation on how we might mobilize the Austin community to get a wireless network. It's a question dear to my heart, as I've sought to mobilize Austin for the past two years to create a city-wide network. Now, as we have recently been recognized as the No. 1 most-wired city, I see it as a special challenge for me to help Austin to become a model unwired city. I have a lot of irons in the fire in this regard, and I see this STS project as one more tool in my toolbox.

I would ask you informed readers and visitors to this website to advise me in the next nine days. What would you tell the PhD student, and how would you design a two-week study to mobilize a community? I'd appreciate your comments by emailing me at your convenience. Please let me know your thoughts on community mobilization, and what you would like to find out. I will share the results with you as they become available.

Posted on July 09, 2005 at 10:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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One Cleveland

OneCleveland This website is an example of a community effort to integrate its technologies and provide for a future connected city.

Posted on June 29, 2005 at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Minnesota: Go Moorhead Broadband

Go Moorhead is the brainchild of Moorhead Public Service, which services Moorhead, Minnesota, just across the river from Fargo, North Dakota. This small municipally-owned utility provides us all with an example of the possibilities when a community works together to meet its own needs.

Communications Director Jennifer Walz presented the details of their project at the American Public Power Association Annual Meeting in Anaheim last week (6/19-22). Jennifer, who also does improv comedy on the side, held the crowd's attention as she walked through the details of how affordable and manageable a community network can be.

Jennifer described a series of events that must be all too familiar to small communities around the US. Faced with the inability to get traditional providers to provide Moorhead with high speed internet access, the town leaders investigated installing a fiber system in Moorhead, but could not make the business case provide a reasonable rate of return, so they abandoned their plans.

But taking yet another look at the issue in the past year, they discovered that wireless broadband now provided the speed and coverage they needed at an affordable cost.

How did they make the business case work? On the revenue side, they worked with city government and the Univ of Minnesota at Moorhead, establishing two anchor tenants who would cover enough of their costs to make a solid business case to bring broadband access to their citizens.

On the expense side, they not only used affordable wireless technology by Tropos Networks, but also worked the project through their locally-owned electric utility, where they could take advantage of the utility's fiber optic ring that circles the city for connecting to the Internet (also known as backhaul), and its poles and street lights for mounting the network's wireless equipment.

Jennifer spent considerable time discussing the interaction with the community that they feel is essential to the long-term success of their project, because they need the community's citizens to embrace this new service and subscribe in order to meet their conservative financial projections. I wrote about this in the recent article about setting up a community blog.

If you need broadband for your town and already have your own municipal electric utility, you would be well advised to look further into this case study as an example of how to proceed. And, Jennifer will probably provide you with a few good laughs while you're at it!

Posted on June 25, 2005 at 04:52 AM | TrackBack

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California: Broadband Broadcasting, Podcasting in Newport, CA

I was fortunate to accompany a group on a boat tour of Newport Harbor last Tuesday night (6/21), as a guest of the folks at Laguna Broadcasting Network, a new kind of community network that is springing up around the US to take advantage of metropolitan mesh network infrastructure.

It was a delightful evening. The natural beauty of the sunset harbor cruise was accompanied by interesting demonstrations of Wi Fi Mesh technology by Tropos Networks, with a mesh node mounted to the mast of the yacht, enabling Voice over Wi Fi telephony and video transmission on large screens on the lower deck. We enjoyed unique video presentations by local artists: in cooperation with the local community college, LBN is producing orignal local content for broadcast to the local community.

Wireless computer networks that serve and support the particular needs and concerns of local citizens and businesses are popping up as a new kind of broadcasting, unlike what we grew up with watching TV in the 60s, or even cable in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Whereas ABC, CBS, and NBC worked with local affiliates to present a mix of content (national network, syndicated, and local news, weather, and sports), these new networks showcase local talent and events, and offer such interactive features as podcasting (content for download) and live coverage of events that would only interest the local community.

Subscriptions to LB Net go beyond the standard High Speed Internet Access (which they make available with prepaid cards at four cents/minute). Besides live webcasts of community events and scheduled programs of community interest, there are news headlines and reporting, on-demand audio and video archives, community personalities, political coverage, and local business advertising on an interactive downtown map.

In Laguna Beach, small is beautiful.

Posted on June 25, 2005 at 04:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack