dagg
join:2001-03-25
Rio Linda, CA
 ·Cox HSI
 ·Covad Communications
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to NOCMan
Re: Nix City Wide expand as needed.
said by NOCMan  :If I were to do it, I'd give a company a tax break for coverage of the low income areas and deploy as needed in other useful areas. from the provider side, you cant do it that way. its too expensive to just provide services to one place.
look at it this way:
in tempe and chandler they used strix equipment for the wireless backhauls. those radios cost around 3,500 each. you have to have installers that are certified by the city to hang the APs. you have to have a crew that sets the APs up and you have to have a crew that goes out and figures out where the APs should be hung along with all the other people that you would have in your standard ISP type operation. you also have to backhaul them to a standard T1 or a fiber connection in order to get you to the gateway which was actually in PHX then out to the interwebs. in tempe, there was a HUGE underestimation on how many wireless nodes were needed to cover an area. add to this, many of the underprivileged areas that you are talking about were in areas that were extremely difficult to qualify (the process of deciding what light poles to put the radios on).
the poles have to be a certain type, and they have to have line of sight to the next pole for the backhaul or you have a stranded AP.
merely getting a tax break for starting in those areas would not come close to covering operating expenses. As with all things, when you are starting something up, you have to start where the money is at in order to bring in recurring revenue... and the idea of starting in under-served areas does not bring the money in.
i always thought it was a great idea.. but the more i learned about it, the faster i came to the realization that mesh muni networks are a long way from ever being a realistic option for people. |
