"It's not peace, love and free Wi-Fi"

There have been rumblings about 'free' wireless and muni-fi for some time now, with opposing views spouting their opinions on the wisdom of such endeavours, the costs, the correct strategy for deployment and management, etc. since the beginning of the muni-fi movement. When San Francisco announced their intention to offer wireless to the residents of the city and companies like Google, EarthLink, AT&T, and Metro-Fi jumped on the bandwagon, the 'free wireless' hype machine shifted into full gear despite the undercurrent of reports of muni-fi failures. The feel-good attitude didn't last very long. When EarthLink ran away from Chicago, to be followed by backpeddling by some other deployments, the happy hype machine ground to halt and the subject finally and officially became a hotbutton topic.

I came across this small article at eWeek. Some of the things quoted in the article caught my attention. Take this one:

"In general, we've gone through a period of early hype and expectations," said Phil Belanger, managing director of San Francisco-based Novarum. "It's not peace, love and free WiFi. It's a valuable service. There needs to be value for the city and things you can charge for." Belanger said that part of the problem is that cities have drastically underestimated the hardware requirements for installing citywide WiFi: "The number now is probably 40 access points per square mile. In dense urban areas, it could be 100 per square mile."

One hundred access points per square mile? Yeah, I'd call that a drastic underestimation of the hardware requirements. No wonder companies and cities are running away from building out 'free' WiFi networks. Its kinda hard for anyone to make a buck on a large scale 'free' or ad-supported service when you have to deploy 100 access points per square mile. At least Belanger is honest, though, when he states that There needs to be value for the city and things you can charge for". In other words, the companies and the cities want to get something out of this too besides the warm and fuzzy feeling of providing free (be it ad-supported or otherwise) Internet access to the people. Of course they do. Can you say lightpole rental?

Take AT&T, who is providing the city of Riverside, Calif., with free wireless access, supported by advertising. But there are still costs involved, according to Michael Beck, assistant city manager. Says Beck in the eWeek article, "It doesn't come free, but it can be very cost-effective. That is where a community can get caught with a surprise. You have to make sure you know what the costs are on the city side, not just the wireless community."

That seems to indicate poor research and planning on the cities side. But that's only part of it. After all, they have to go what the provider says they can do and for how much. And I'm sure the hype and some of the success stories play into the decision to deploy. Take this quote from Craig Settles, a municipal wireless consultant and author of the book "Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless," in an article at Mobile Tech Today: Municipal wireless suffered from a massive hype cycle in 2006 in which politicians got the idea that they could get business to build networks without cities taking any risks, [Settles] said. "That led to a lot of bad deals and unrealistic expectations among constituents."

On the cities side, that pretty much hits the nail on the head. And where they did get that idea? From the companies, of course. But the companies themselves have, to some extent, been caught up in the 'massive hype cycle'. I'm not so sure that (in most cases) they intentionally misled the cities and people. I think perhaps in many cases they thought the technology was there and good enough, that they understood deployment requirements, and they could make money off it while looking good to the public cough*EarthLink, Google*cough. Then again, maybe they just believed their own hype, figured they could make free WiFi work in any situation after a couple smaller scale success stories, and set out to deploy on a large scale without further research.

Then you have someone like Craig Mathias, a former chairman of the Board of Selectmen for Ashland, Mass., who in the eWeek article, first states the obvious:

"There is no such thing as free."

OK. I can agree with that. We all know that somehow and somewhere, someone has to pay for this thing.

But then he goes on to say;

"It is not the function of government to be an ISP. What we recommend is a premium service that costs more than the bottom tier. I'd never recommend free Internet service, except maybe for things like the chamber of commerce with a portal."

Now that's amusing. Of course you do.

The recommendation that muni-fi be more expensive than bottom tier Internet service goes against the whole idea of muni-fi. Muni-Fi is supposed to be a 'free' or very lost cost alternative way to provide people with Internet access. That is what makes the idea so appealing to everybody. Although it still does add another choice of service and competition for the incumbents, to have it cost just as much or more than regular ISP provided service defeats the purpose. To have a regular 'free' (ad-supported) tier and a premium tier that still less expensive than the incumbents works just fine... as long as the premium tier is still less expensive than the incumbents. This low cost alternative, of course, is the very reason the incumbents have lobbied so long and hard against the deployment of municipal WiFi.

Mathias then adds that this 'nothing is free' revelation will not delay WiFi's progress. Maybe not on the technology itself. But as for its deployment, isn't what is happening now? Isn't that the very fact that is making cities and ISPs backpeddle recently? Of course this whole realization that there is a lot more to deploying WiFi networks on a large scale is going to cause a delay in this area as the companies and cities, understandably made nervous by EarthLink's pull out, step back and figure out how to make 'free' WiFi work without having it end up costing more than bottom tier service.

I'm not saying muni-fi can't or doesn't work. I'm a supporter of the idea for sure. There are enough successes to prove that free muni-fi can work. Take the ambitious plan of covering Rhode Island with WiFi for example too. What this recent stumble in miscalculations of the costs of deployment and the hardware required for muni-fi proves is that the old adage 'look before you leap' is as true as ever - especially in large scale deployments. And ad-supported free broadband might work in some places, but not all.

Riverside, Ca.'s assistant city manager Michael Beck put it best: "It doesn't come free, but it can be very cost-effective." Cost effective for the cities, and cost effective for the people. But not free. Cities have to realize that it is going to cost money to have a network deployed. And the people have to realize that the companies and city are going to want to make money some way.

I don't think EarthLink's backpeddle from muni-fi deployment is a death knell for muni-fi at all, as some people have written. I don't think it's even that much of a serious set back. What it is is the inevitable wake-up call that everyone knew was coming. It's a sign that both cities and companies have to learn from this first blind rush into the business and re-evaluate how it should be done - or to do the research, crunch the numbers, and decide if it even should be done in a particular area.