Internet and Municipal Broadband Liberate Small Towns

High speed Internet access is becoming a public necessity, like water, gas, and electricity. Large and small communities are beginning to realize that they have to provide their residents with this service, either in partnership with the private sector or as a public utility. The concept is taking hold in communities from California to Michigan to Vermont. ... Increased public access is another fine benefit. By using the local networks, towns can offer their residents any number of services, including public safety, political forums, church services, and Internet radio stations. ... Many in both the public and private sectors see broadband access as an essential tool for economic growth, health care, and education for all ages. Proponents of affordable wireless broadband say access helps to keep jobs and attract new businesses. It also is an indispensable tool for telecommuting and advances in telemedicine. isen.blog

Ah, great minds think alike - pundit David Isenberg in his Isen.blog cites his hometown newspaper with this article, introducing the article with this statement: Eureka! I opened the November 8 issue to find this Editorial, by Managing Editor Janice Walford. Clearly Municipal Wireless has reached a tipping point. Keep in mind, this newspaper is not exactly the New York Times - it serves the "metropolitan" areas of Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich, and Bourne, all small towns in Massachusetts. Seriously folks, this is small town America and we're seeing more and more interest at this level - these are towns that can truly benefit from the Internet, as soon as they get going with a municipal broadband project.

So if we are really at a Tipping Point, as many insiders suspect, and as David Isenberg suggests, (and as I proposed in the Vision Statement on the Home Page of this website), it would be what we are all looking for: the point where deployments start to rapidly increase and the interest in municipal broadband explodes, where deployments are under serious consideration by more and more municipal leaders, in big cities and small towns alike.

There's no doubt the Internet is spreading in its influence, and such influence will transform the prospects for small town municpal broadband the more it grows. As the Internet provides small town residents much of the benefits of big-city life, but without the traffic and crime that goes with big cities, it will be embraced. Small towns have better values in real estate, for one, and we like small towns as places to raise our children in. In this New York Times article, Small-Town Shops Bulk Up on the Web, we see that small town businesses are combining Internet commerce with their brick & mortar retail shops to reach more people, both in their towns and beyond, out in the global marketplace. And the improved business is reflecting well on all the residents of the towns - when downtown businesses thrive, downtowns thrive as well. This makes the case well that Internet business expansion in small towns will be an econmomic boon.

Compare this news with the news we heard not so long ago about what would happen to small busineses and small town downtowns when WalMart came to town. It's a long and winding road, apparently. The world has room for the big discounter AND the niche businesses that provide special goods and services, it turns out. And the world has room for both retail brick & mortar, and e-commerce. These things go together well. The world has room for both incumbents and new market entrants in muncipal broadband, and the world has room for many technologies working together in the integrated systems of tomorrow. WiMAX goes with Wi Fi mesh goes with fiber goes with BPL goes with cable. The world is more complex than we give it credit for - we are prone to simplifying things into dualities, either or decisions, in order to make the world more simple. But its not. It remains complex, but that's what makes it interesting now, isn't it?

Posted on November 20, 2005 at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

Through the Looking Glass...Go Ask Alice, I Think She'll Know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen so I'll be dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's on her head
Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head
Feed your head

(Jefferson Airplane, 1967)

More and more, I feel like I'm down a rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland. Telecom, Vdeo, Internet, and Wireless take up more frequent and larger chunks of the business section in my paper, but the articles give an often confusing account of what is going on. Nothing seems to make sense. Cities are behind some rural areas. Little companies do what big companies just talk about. Cable companies provide voice. Telecom companies want to provide video.

Municipal wireless consultant Greg Richardson opines on the odd behavior of telecoms in his weblog for Civitium. Civitium's Weblog: The Definition of Insanity Why do telecomes persist in fighting municpal broadband, when clearly it's a trend with sufficent momentum to go the distance, and their efforts to stop it have not to date borne fruit? Why do they both not want to serve rural areas, AND not want rural towns to serve themselves? Sane? Insane? Desperate? Deadly Serious? Highly Motivated? You make the call.

Clearly, telecoms will see their revenues from voice calls continue to decline in the coming months and years, with cellular phones chipping away at landline usage, and a myriad of VOIP options shifting into high gear. In press reports at the end of last week, SBC explained its 41% decline in profits for the quarter. While that high number can be explained in part by special events, such as the sale of a profitable directory business, higher costs related to hurricanes and a merger with AT&T Wireless, one has to think that declining voice revenues play a part.

SBC's chief financial officer, Richard Lindner, said that investors focus too heavily on how many phone lines carriers have. Instead, he said, investors should consider all of SBC's services, including broadband, cellphones and video. "All of those things represent connections to the customer and represent revenue sources," Mr. Lindner said on a conference call with financial analysts.

But some industry specialists disagree. Cable companies are persuading tens of thousands of customers to drop their phone service from SBC and the other Bell companies and instead subscribe to one of their new - and often cheaper - digital phone services. (October 21, 2005 New York Times)

But its not just about voice, so don't give up on the telecoms just yet. At the Telecom '05 conference this week, for instance, the Triple Play is all the rage. Change afoot for telecom industry tells us that Voice, Video, and Broadband constitute the Triple Play, and SBC won a big victory with passage of a statewide franchise law in Texas a few months ago. They will try to do the same thing in Washington at the federal level, paving the way for a Triple Play offer over high speed fiber. But that will take time.

Evolving technology and financial necessity are driving the change as growth in the voice business has slowed amid a growing field of competitors. It is an uphill fight for telephone companies, given cable's decades-long dominance in video, but the ultimate winners could be consumers, analysts say. The coming slugfest over America's living rooms could rein in the rising price of pay-TV prices.

"The cable television industry has not had a fierce competitor," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst based in Atlanta. "The Verizon offering is a bargain compared to the cable television offerings. I think if enough customers cancel their cable company service for their phone company television service, then the cable companies will cut their costs." However, he said, competition on a nationwide scale is still years away. (October 24, Austin American-Statesman)

That's years away for those big city folks faithfully waiting for their traditiional telecom or cable company to bring them services. But for those lucky folks, often in the smaller towns, whose municpalities lead with wireless solutions, the future is now. Smaller rural areas are in the hunt with innovative wireless solutions, as described in Wi-Fi cloud hovers over rural Oregon landscape This article has a great overview of the types of innovative solutions that are possible once an area is covered by a wireless cloud.

While cities around the country are battling over plans to offer free or cheap Internet access, this lonely terrain is served by what is billed as the world's largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune.

When a common network is available at affordable rates, many different groups can step up and share the costs and a profitable business model is available. Sure, it won't kick up millions of dollars that can go to lobbyists in Washington and in state capitals, but the municipal wireless approach, most often in partnership with a small innovative private company, can provide a backbone for all kinds of new applications and business innovations. Voice, Video, and High Speed Internet Access - the Triple Play - that's only the beginning. A world of new solutions awaits those with a high-speed broadband wireless cloud.

My advice - do your homework, ask around, make a plan, take action, try new solutions, keep reading, feed your head. There's just no substiute for open eyes, open ears, and most importantly, an open mind in today's business climate.

Posted on October 24, 2005 at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

Site Shuffling: Applications find a New Home

I'm rearranging furniture, as it were, so I thought I would give you a heads up. I will probably do more of this as I find the right combination to make information on this site easier to find and more convenient. Look for Applications (formerly, Uses of a Municipal Network) under the Leverage heading going forward.

As we get more and more familiar with broadband networks, as our level of sophistication grows, it becomes less and less compelling to realize that "I can get on the Internet and check my email, wherever I am" and more intriguing to realize "I can do 90% of what I currently do easier, cheaper, and faster by using broadband network technologies, sometimes on the Internet, sometimes on a local network." It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, "Oh the Things You Will Do With Your Municipal Network" ... once you have a wireless network. So let's assume for a moment that you have your network - what now?

This is in fact a great exercise to go through in your planning phases (i.e., begin with the end in mind, don't start your network without a full understanding of its value to the community).

I asked a pair of knowledgable, experienced high tech salesman last week: "Do you think these networks will sell based on an understanding of the technology, or on the basis of solutions and applications - what you can do with a network?" They barely skipped a beat before answering in unison, "Applications." The solution business starts from the premise that the customer has a problem and wants a solution, not from the premise that the technology is COOL. So while it is typical of a very early stage market that the early buzz would be about the capabilities of the technology, we can expect to see more and more attention paid to the applications, as wired and wireless broadband networks become more accepted as an alternative service delivery mechanism.

A few cases in point concerning new applications, in recent conversations:

* Disaster Recovery Network, fixed or mobile - when nothing else works, your municipal network should, or you should be able to set up another one in a few hours time
* Intelligent Vehicle coordination, traffic light synchronization, parking meter collection, and other traffic purposes
* Emergency Medical services - video delivery to mobile units (X-rays, etc.)

I hope we see more and more of this type of reporting. I will collect articles on applications and park them here. So, please play along with me and let me know when you see a good application - I'd like to collect as many as I can and create more and more subcategories. I think this is where it really gets fun!

Posted on July 25, 2005 at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Broadband Across the Nation

Business 2.0 :: Magazine Article :: Features :: The Road Map to a Broadband Nation This feature article by Om Malik provides a great overview of municipal broadband projects, broken out by region and describing in short paragraphs what makes each network unique. I recommend you browse this.

Posted on June 18, 2005 at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

All Municipal Networks are Custom Networks

Every city has a unique perspective on metropolitan wireless broadband, so in a way, every city will have a custom network.

Factors that will drive the type of wireless network a city ends up with include 1) topography (does the city have lots of trees, or canyons, or tall buildings?); 2) budget (how flexible can a city be?); 3) Internet access points (does the city have existing fiber to provide multiple

POPs to support a wireless mesh network?); 4) congestion (how many other users are on the available spectrum) and 5) proposed uses of network (this is where the design gets variable fast).

This section focuses on that last category - what purpose will the new network serve? What is the vision of the city? what will the network be used for? In the end, a network is merely a pipe - the challenge and the potential benefit lies in what goes through that pipe.

Typically, cities have looked at security and public safety as a primary use for these new networks. This is for two reasons: first, after 9/11, security is on everyone's mind; second, the aging land mobile radio (LMR) systems of different public safety entities make replacement of radio a key strategic concern. Wireless broadband is arriving at an opportune time.

Accordingly, UnwireMyCity suggests this hierarchy of needs for a wireless broadband network, moving from anchor tenancy to retail services:

1) Public Safety: funds are available, and this is a need that all citizens will benefit from. Applications include video surveillance from fixed wireless points for violent crime reduction (in high crime areas, a la New Orleans); mobile data access for public safety officers to take them out of their offices where they must go to fill out reports and put them back on the street for longer hours, where they can fight crime; video surveillance for property crime reduction; and video surveillance at traffic stops with lapel cameras. This is an area of rapid growth and more applications will be detailed in the near term.

2) Public Services: any field service worker will benefit from having access to mobile data, including case workers, parking meter readers,
and others who work away from the office. The benefit of a metropolitan network is to bring the applications out from the desk into the field, and bring the data in from the field into the enterprise.

3) Utility Operations: as with public service workers, utility workers benefit from having more options for voice and data broadband communications; and utility operations benefit from improved field data for better management, from automated meter reading, and from video surveillance on trouble accounts and critical infrastructure.

4) Wholesale Leasing Operations: when more competitors can be brought in to provide Internet access, voice, and video, the city benefits from having a large tenant to cover its costs, and the citizens benefit from increased competition that brings rates down.

5) Digital Divide: citizens benefit from gaining access to high speed Internet connections at an affordable rate, where none existed before; citizens also benefit when those Internet connections can be used to provide voice and video services at more competitive rates.

Posted on May 22, 2005 at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack