[wplug] muni wif non-starter

[terry mcintyre]

The article which started this thread mentioned that cities are unwilling to pay to be anchor customers. Of course, given Pittsburgh's track record of falling for every boondoggle under the sun ( two stadiums and a half-empty convention center and a vastly unprofitable Lazarus department store come to mind ), it is likely that Pittsburgh politicians will, as usual, fail to exercise due diligence before voting to spend still more taxpayer dollars. 

It may be that, for their own purposes, a smart city government prefers some other more affordable option(s). This is very interesting, since cities have hundreds or thousands of employees wandering around - inspectors, parking maids, police officers, firemen - who presumably could use muni wifi. 

What problem does muni wifi solve? Cable and DSL are already affordable for most homes, and prices are dropping every year. Wifi routers are cheap enough that most people with broadband install a wifi router. Free or inexpensive wifi is already available at many libraries and coffeeshops and other small businesses, which use it to attract customers. Maybe there isn't an enormous demand for ubiquitous wifi ... maybe broadband cellphone access will take care of such demand as there is.

Terry McIntyre <terrymcintyre at yahoo.com>
They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters. -- Daniel Webster

----- Original Message ----
From: Patrick Wagstrom <pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu>
To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 2:01:25 PM
Subject: Re: [wplug] muni wif non-starter

terry mcintyre wrote:
> Coverage: Walnut Street from Aiekn to S. Negley; Resources: 17 nodes
> 
> Multiply by hundreds of miles of streets in the Pittsburgh area, you do 
> the math.
> 
> Econ 101: Businesses don't long remain well-funded if they throw away 
> resources on projects which don't return profits. There is a time to 
> ignore welfare queens who desperately beg for free goodies.

Exactly!  The most successful wifi networks are small and localized 
(airports, hotels, etc), where the revenue is going to be high with 
relatively low usage and high turnover.

Jon Peha has led a project at Carnegie Mellon that has investigated the 
prospects of a municipal wifi network in the city with the city as the 
anchor subscriber for most of their services (extra stuff for police, 
fire, medical, meter maids, etc).  However, without an additional 
substantial base, it still is cheaper to just get the 3G/EDGE/GPRS cards 
for laptops which tend to be marginally more reliable.  Most of the cost 
comes from the fact that the city does not own light poles and power 
poles -- all access is leased from Duquesne Light or Verizon.  That's a 
huge cost there -- and one which Verizon has little incentive to help with.

They did some pretty interesting modeling of the economics of the 
situation and found that only a few neighborhoods met the criteria for a 
successful network over the entire neighborhood:  Squirrel Hill south 
and Greenfield (props to my peeps!).  Several other areas came close, 
SqHill North and Shadyside.  However, the issue with all these 
neighborhoods is that most people already have network access.

Anyway, the research was presented to the council sometime in the 
spring.  If I recall corrrectly, Peduto is on board with it, but the 
rest of the council isn't.  Of course, one may also say that Peduto 
chooses to ignore the economics of wiring up Homewood and Hazelwood in 
favor of looking tech savy.

--Patrick
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