Back to Working Without Wires

WiFi Q&A

Esme Vos

Esme Vos is the founder of Muniwireless.com, a blog that covers the ins and outs of the emerging municipal WiFi industry. I caught up with her at a conference she recently hosted in Dallas.

We've been hearing about these WiFi networks for a couple of years — Philadelphia's announcement that they wanted wireless Internet city-wide was a couple of years ago. Why is it taking cities so long to get these systems launched?

My last count at the end of December was about 79 to 80 cities with actual networks up and running. [A more recent listing is here]. But they're really small places that have 1,200 people, or 28,000 people in the case of St. Cloud, Florida, or 3,000 people in the case of Scottsburg, Indiana. And the reason those places were such early adopters is because all they had was dial-up. They had no broadband and this was the only way to get broadband. So it's understandable that they would set it up because they were so desperate.

The next wave after that were medium-sized cities like Tempe, Arizona and then big cities like Philadelphia. I was really surprised because I didn't expect all the other big cities to issue public tenders until Philadelphia was finished. Why put your neck on the line? To my surprise, right after Philly announced its request for proposals, boom, everyone else does it too.

Why are so many cities interested in doing this?

Vos

For a long time people in city government, especially the tech people, have been thinking about how they can bring more competition to broadband service. Because the problem in the United States, which is not so much a problem in Europe, is that there's two providers in a city, and sometimes only one. It's the cable guy and the DSL guy. And because the Federal Communications Commission failed to open up the networks of the incumbents like they were supposed to in the Telecom Act of 1996, Americans were stuck with a duopoly that keeps the price high.

The cities said to themselves, what can we do to bring competition into this market? So they decided to roll out these citywide networks, together with private providers. It's the 3rd force. But the difference is that the wireless broadband network they set up is open to all service providers. Even if Earthlink owns the network, by contract they're required to open it up to AT&T, Verizon and Vonage, which they do. And as these networks reach completion, the local Internet service providers will come on. That's nice because on the wireless broadband network you'll have all these providers competing on price. And then people will say why should I stick with the cable guy, or the DSL guy who is charging me $49?

This is the way the U.S. has gone around the total failure of Congress and the FCC to unbundle the last mile. That's the main driver.

Another feature of the contracts many cities are signing with network providers is that the city agrees to serve as an "anchor tenant" for the network. That means they'll have to figure out some applications to use on these new networks. What will they turn to first?

We did a survey on what the cities want to use it for and public safety was absolutely the top. That means, of course, the police. They can do their work in the field, they can download photos and videos stored in databases. They can do surveillance in field, so they're now putting up these wireless mesh cameras everywhere, and officers can monitor from anywhere in the squad car — they don't have to be sitting in the office. That's a big thing in public safety.

What's so new about that? Police have had wireless networks and laptops for some time.

But they're ancient. The data rate is 19.2 kilobits per second [much slower than a typical dial-up modem]. And when you look at the databases today from the federal down to the state and local level they're full of rich data on suspects. They're photos or videos, maybe of someone holding up a store. There's a lot of different things they can't do today from the field — they have to sit in an office to do it. How effective is that?

I'm hearing a lot of interest in video. But one concern I've heard is that if you put up a video camera, then you have to pay a police officer to watch it. And that officer could be on the street fighting crime, rather than watching a TV screen. One mayor put it to me this way: that the question with WiFi isn't just what you use it for, but what you choose not to use it for.

Yes that's a legitimate question. But look, if you can have internet everywhere, on a WiFi enabled device, whether that's a laptop, a tablet or a phone, why wouldn't you do your Google searches wherever you are? All the things we do online today are so useful to us now that we want it everywhere. And that's the same thing that's happening in city government.

If you look at cities that are growing very fast, some of them double in size every five years. I bet they don't have the budget to double the number of city employees every five years. That means they have to work very efficiently. But they also have to work in a modern way. The kinds of people who are moving to these new communities that are growing so fast are middle- to upper-middle class people who have a certain expectation of what kind of service is acceptable to them. I've talked to a number of cities that are fast growing, and that's exactly what they're looking at. If the building inspectors can inspect 25 or 30 percent more buildings today, then why would you double the number of them? Why double the number of cops if you can make each cop work more efficiently and effectively?

Automated meter reading is very hot. There are people running around reading meters today. That means someone has to be home to let you read the meters. And they have to keep coming back. It's so inefficient. Corpus Christi is one of the leaders in automated meter reading. That application is being looked at by cities all over the world, from Amsterdam to Houston.

All of this is driven by return on investment. All of it. Another instant ROI driver is when cities can terminate their T1 line leases and mobile-phone subscriptions because they now have citywide WiFi. In Philadelphia, they estimated they'd save $2 million in the first year alone by terminating T1 leases and mobile phone subscriptions and putting people on VOIP [internet based phones]. It's massive. Philly has a lot of government offices — there's so much inefficiency. That's instant: $2 million. Boop!

WiFi on buses and trains is going to be huge. If you want to get people out of their cars you have to give them a very good reason. With WiFi they're more productive, they can get more work done. They can do two things at the same time. They'll get out of their cars.

I would think that a lot of applications wouldn't even materialize until WiFi is more ubiquitous.

Until people start using it they don't realize how wonderful it is. Once these networks are up, what will happen is, if the network goes down in a hurricane or whatever, people will miss it so much they'll be crying. If I don't get Internet access for two days I go crazy. It's like, what's going on in the world? Where's my email? How do I find information? I'm going nuts! It's like that. Today people can't do without mobile phones. Ten years ago people were like, what do you need a mobile phone for you've got a landline! Well, yeah: Why do you need ubiquitous wireless broadband service for when you've got DSL at home? It's the same thing.

© 2007, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are registered trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.