[CWN-Summit] Re: Mayor prorosed giving away public resources for ATT "free" wifi

[Sascha Meinrath]

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Hi all,

For anyone working on municipal wireless, the Boston Wireless Task Force report
is definitely well worth the read.  Mike and the rest of the Task Force really
deserve a good deal of praise for having the wisdom (and gumption) to put
forward a far more innovative recommendation than we've seen in most other metro
deployments.  For those looking for "Task Force Lite," I wrote up an article
that hits the main points for GovTech (available here:
http://www.govtech.net/digitalcommunities/story.php?id=101185).

In solidarity,

- --Sascha

Michael Oh wrote:
> Ben,
> 
> Mike Oh here from Boston - just some quick background:  I was there in
> St Louis as well last year, I run one a public WiFi network in Boston -
> NewburyOpen.net, and was on the Mayor's Committee in Boston that
> analyzed the feasibility of WiFi in the City of
> terrorism-paranoid-people-that-don't-know-the-difference-between-bombs-and-advertising.
> 
> 
> But one thing that we've done our homework on is WiFi and the tradeoffs
> that cities make to implement "free" WiFi with large providers like AT&T.
> 
> Me and 24 other city residents, business owners, and academic folks
> worked to put this report together...
> 
> http://www.cityofboston.gov/wireless/
> 
> Our conclusion is that what the Mayor of St Louis is doing is a very bad
> idea, for exactly all the reasons that you've mentioned.
> 
> Letting AT&T be the sole provider of the network - including owning,
> operating, and defining end-user pricing - and giving them control over
> a valuable public asset - the right to poles - is only going to end up
> with disappointed residents.  If there is an agreement, there should be
> very specific (and quite stringent) policies regarding end-user service
> levels for the "free" users - but chances are even then, a provider with
> sole control over the network will try to push the limits of the
> agreement.  They do this because they know that a city will most likely
> not take them to court to enforce the agreement, no matter how bad it
> may get.
> 
> The incumbents a while ago realized that they would have a lot more
> success duping city governments to handing over public assets rather
> than stopping municipal WiFi networks in court.
> 
> So, in summary, if you don't see the details, that probably means that
> the Mayor didn't bother working them out - and AT&T assured them that
> they would just fill in the details for the city.  I would be very
> aggressive in trying to get the city to see this, for the sake of the
> residents of St. Louis.
> 
> Now, I do qualify this by saying that the Boston model - based on the
> establishment of a non-profit organization that forces structural
> separation between the wholesale and retail sides of the network - has
> not been proven either.  If anything, our ideas have slowed the progress
> in Boston while the city has to try to find the funding to make the
> model work.  But we do feel confident that, even if slow, the Boston
> approach (or any similar approach that double-checks all the details) is
> still better in the end.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Mike
> 
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