Muni Fiber vs Muni WiFi
From a recent email, Andrew Orlowski, in <theregister.com> (UK), compares examples of municipal fiber vs. municipal wifi projects.
Could Muni Fiber KO Muni Wi-Fi?
By Andrew Orlowski ([email protected])
Published Monday 31st July 2006 20:17 GMT
http://www.theregister.com/2006/07/31/muni_fiber_vs_muni_wifi/
Berkeley city council in California has become the latest city to
examine municipal ownership of "the last mile", a move which could deal
the latest blow to the stalling Municipal Wi-Fi movement. Palo Alto in
the heart of Silicon Valley voted to investigate a fiber to the home
(FTTH) scheme a few days earlier.
Berkeley had looked set to rubber stamp the Wi-Fi option, but voted
5:1 instead for a feasibility plan which would see the city partner
with a private contractor for fiber.
"A successful economic model for running municipal Wi-Fi networks has
yet to emerge," notes from the city's director of IT, Chris Mead,
acknowledge.
The city also noted that while subscription models for Wi-Fi have
been a flop, advertising-based revenue "cannot be taken for granted",
either. "It may be that municipal Wi-Fi is a passing fad
that will be left behind by economic reality and new technology,"
advised Mead.
Some FTTH plans are well advanced.
Seattle, Wa. voted to explore ownership of the last mile two years
ago - issuing
(http://www.seattle.gov/broadband/) a RFI (Request for Interest) in
May. But the poster child is undoubtedly Utah's appropriately named
UTOPIA MetroNet project. A bond issue raised $85m two years ago, and
now 14 areas will receive FTTH at speeds of up to 100mbit/s. (See this
detailed Spectrum (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3434 ) report for
more details.
Laying fiber to the home is a much more expensive proposition than
the cheap and cheerful option of attaching 802.11 transceivers to
street posts. But it offers many advantages, the most significant of
which is that residents would have a genuine alternative to the local
Bell monopoly and the local cable provider.
Fiber would also offer the municipality a much greater opportunity
to monetize the investment. Fiber links can be opened up to
content providers to offer entertainment services such as IPTV, in
addition to broadband and telephony. And there are basic
technical advantages. Wi-Fi doesn't handle mobile operations well,
standards haven't settled, and coverage is patchy and flaky.
Typical city Wi-Fi contracts only stipulate that the contractor
provide reception to street-facing rooms or the front rooms of
apartments - and it's too bad if your apartment doesn't face the
street. However, fiber promises far greater bandwidth at speeds 80x
faster than the 256kbp/s basic tier that forms San Francisco's
contract. The signal is naturally less vulnerable to weather
conditions, challenging topology, or leaves on trees.
The disadvantages are obvious: it's more expensive, harder to sell, and
still faces regulatory challenges and hard lobbying from
incumbents.
Verizon lobbied hard against Muni Wi-Fi, to protect its high speed
mobile 3G investments. But Verizon has already burned through $2bn
laying its FiOS fiber network. So how much would it cost the city,
really?
According to advocate Bill St Arnaud, quoted by Bob Frankston
(http://www.frankston.com/public/?), who in turn was cited in a recent
Robert X Cringely
column (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060629.html) that
helped swing the
Berkeley vote, the price per home is $1000 to $1500. Amortized over ten
years that comes to $12.50 a month.
Palo Alto, one of the most socially divided cities in the US,
estimated the cost of a FTTH
network at $40m. That's a lot of social services. And, of
course, householders who already have cable or DSL may see this as
unnecessary burden.
St Arnaud admits that there is "no obvious consumer demand for
'third' network", and that
"North America is well served with a duopoly, with [the] 'promised'
potential of WiMaX, BPL
[broadband over powerline] and other technologies" just around the
corner.
There's also a problem he could have mentioned, but didn't. If
councils adopt "net neutrality" legislation, or if such legislation is
forced upon the municipalities by Congress, there will be little
interest from the content providers, who then find themselves doomed to
compete with BitTorrent downloaders. The content providers are
essential if the service is to pay for itself - and such content
companies themselves are keen to find a competitor to King Cable.