[Cu-wireless] HSLS?

[Todd Boyle]

At 05:18 PM 3/10/2004, Stephane Alnet wrote

>>  Municipalities are saying they can get fiber laid at 10 cents on the
>>  dollar if they simply wait for the installation of sewers or other work to
>>  piggyback.  So, cities could and should, grow fiber resources
>[...]
>>If Kirkland's city council provided leadership and coordination
>
>In my experience, this kind of leadership is generally the missing link. 
>I've seen very knowledgeable people working on this kind of project and 
>having all the details (technical and financial) ready for public 
>scrutiny, only to be shun down by the politics.

Briefly, the city has elected, nonprofessional city council and mayor 
system, with a professional city manager, and good, well funded IT facility 
and people.  There isn't any unusual degree of corruption or industry 
influence -just the usual swarms of vendors.   The deficiency is the 
people.  This city of 45000 has been home to dozens of telecom and IT 
companies and there must be at least 1000 of the residents work for 
Microsoft alone.  But nobody comes to the hearings or study sessions.  I 
mean NOBODY.  The tech people who ought to come, don't come because this is 
a high income city full of the beneciaries of top-down control, strong IP 
laws, a strongly ordered society generally.  For example when Bush came, 
his fundraiser was at Craig McCaw's mansion and 700 people paid $2000.  The 
non-tech people are various sorts of high wealth leisure types, and busy 
heads of families often 2 income... but my point is, there is nobody who 
gives a d*mn about george guilders' telecosm or about media reform or 
democracy, or any of the things that make you want to build a better 
network.  Or a cheaper network.    It's just a bad place to try to build a 
3rd, overbuilt, alternative broadband network.

>(I'm not pretending I know more than that; but laying fiber in sewers is 
>expensive, invisible (underground), and doesn't give a "positive picture" 
>(key word: sewer). In other words it doesn't tend to build immediate 
>political prestige, and unless you have the chance to work with a 
>leadership team that understand the bigger picture, it won't happen. Been 
>there, ...)

Oh that's all true.. .but understand, the City's conduit strategy is that 
whenever ANYBODY wants to open the street of course they have to apply for 
a City permit, and part of the permitting process is the IT department gets 
to decide whether that trench is someplace they would like to have more 
fiber or conduit.  If the answer is yes, then they horse-trade with the 
applicant and work out an agreement.   On the day the work is done, whether 
its a water line, sewer, or somebody else's fiber project, the City gets 
their element put into the ground alongside it perhaps, or sometimes, some 
fiber or some extra, empty conduit tube in the same bundle.

This makes the City look smart and has no downside. First of all the City 
has realized some actual bandwidth on routes they needed.  In any case it 
gives the City leverage in other bandwidth negotiations for their own needs 
or for local schools, hospitals, library etc.etc.

Sometimes they can get a new segment for nothing more than noncash 
concessions.  But $10,000 to get a quarter mile down the street can be a 
good move.  The City has a unique advantage.  They have a top-down 
knowledge of a lot of other future urban development.  Sooner or later they 
know, big trenches are going to happen, on certain streets.

>I think your reasoning is worthwhile and I agree that the economic model 
>of a grassroot movement can't compete with any well-designed business; but 
>on the other hand, building it yourself has the advantage of doing just 
>that: building it.
>S.

To the contrary, a grassroots movement has ADVANTAGES over 
telcos/cablecos/satellites.

1. the biggest: we do NOT have conflicting and perverted goals that our 
hardware must reliably capture other people into a rent-paying role, as 
part of a longterm stragegy, for decades into the future.  This makes our 
job massively easier.   We just want to equip ourself with bandwidth, and 
there is hardware available, just sitting there, ready to use, for such 
simple goals.

2. The equipment for our needs is so cheap that it would be $20, throwaway 
equipment if manufacturers would produce it at high volume (e.g. common 
WiFi cards/ APs)   This also means, no engineers or house calls.

(since the stuff is so cheap, we will never be a "service model" but rather 
a "user" model we know, we're just looking for a piece of hardware that 
works, and that moves bits.   This is so much easier than all the 
maintainability, SNMP, authentication and billing cruft, needed by the 
Telcos. )

3.  we don't have an "installed base" and thankfully it isn't copper
4.  we don't have 3 million unionized workers with huge pension and health 
costs to take care of....
5.  we dont have hundreds of billions of debt that to pay interest on, for 
obsolete telephone switches on every streetcorner and junk we have bought 
from every vender that came down the pike.

6. We don't have to pay rent for the last 100 feet to our homes or to 
adjacent homes, and they don't have to pay rent to adjacent homes.  (If 
people had half a brain we could just go out the back yards, and trench the 
neighborhood ourselves, about a foot deep and throw in Gig E... . easy does 
it.)

7.  Since *we* are the residents and citizens of the city, when we speak to 
our city council or staff, they actually do listen.  If there are public 
interests at stake, it becomes hard to act adversely to the public 
interest.   Unlike the federal level, here in our cities they cannot simply 
ignore the argument and bring in riot police to keep us in "free speech 
zones" !  (I am not presuming, that CWNs are the right decision or that the 
City *should* fund fiber links to feed our ideas of a mesh.   But if those 
fiber links and CWNs are actually feasable, cost effective, and low risk, 
then woe betide that city council or IT staff who makes higher cost choices 
or sub standard service to the residents out of simple negligence.  They 
would have to explain it. )

Todd 
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