The Anaheim City Council is “getting ready to consider granting Earthlink a 20-year franchise to operate a public Wi-Fi network”:1 throughout all 50 square miles of the city.
As proposed, this franchise is both good and bad. On the good side, Anaheim is recognizing that public wireless is a good feature to add to their city, and they’ve already completed an RFP for their network. And its also good that the City is providing access to streetlight poles and existing fiber deployments.
On the bad side, the franchise is exclusive, and it specifically enables Earthlink to be both network maintainer as well as the sole service provider. This aspect of the franchise clearly shows a lack of vision on the City’s part. Earthlink will be allowed to set prices, and the City has given them a complete monopoly for public wireless service for 20 years. What Anaheim should have done is provide a 5 year exclusive franchise for the operations of the network, but require the network be open to any ISP that wants to use it at wholesale rates. This would enable price and service competition that will ensure that *affordable* wireless broadband is deployed.
In addition, the 20 year franchise is far too long for Wi-Fi deployments, and its not clear that such a franchise will be useful for Anaheim once Wi-Fi has evolved over the next 5 years. The City is granting a very long term exclusive contract for a service that is brand new, and technology that is also in its infancy. Whether Earthlink will succeed *and* provide good service remains to be seen.
As cities increasingly move towards trying to deploy municipal networks, they need to recognize that they shouldn’t be giving away the farm. Too many cities and towns were burned badly by franchises handed out to telco and cable operators, but they haven’t learned their lessons. In cases like Anaheim’s, Earthlink would have been happy to get the network operations contract for a handful of years, without any franchise or exclusivity. The City could have bargained much harder and given away far less, thereby ensuring that they get full value for their physical resources.
And of equal if not greater importance, Anaheim should have required that competition be part of the marketplace. Having a single company that controls the creation, operation, maintenance, and service over a network is a terrible idea. Its exactly the type of behavior shown by telco and cable giants like SBC and Verizon, who provide expensive, poor service.
[1]http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/97030
Filed under: Muniwireless, News, Policy, Urban Wireless
Dana: you’ve got a few points wrong. In EarthLink’s RFP for Anaheim, we advocated for an open access model, which is one of the reasons we won the contract. If you look at the minutes from last night’s city council meeting, you would see a discussion about this between the mayor, city council and EarthLink. We believe in open access, and that other competitors can offer their services over the network (we would wholesale to them, as ILECs and MSOs do to us for traditional broadband service).
Also, the agreement is for a ten year franchise, which can be ‘re-upped’ for two, five year segments. Also, in the minutes you would see our explanation that we built in plans for improving and upgrading the network as technology adapts and changes over the course of time. I’d be happy to set up a briefing between you and our executives, if you want to have a discussion. Thank you, Jerry Grasso, director, EarthLink
Jerry,
Thanks for the feedback and clarification. I’m happy to hear that EarthLink is taking the socially and economically path when pitching (and winning) franchises and contracts for muniwireless. I certainly support all of the work that you are doing.
My writing was not so much about EarthLink’s involvement, but rather about how the Anaheim City Government handled and put out the RFP, and the requirements that they stipulated. That EarthLink advocated an open access model shows that you guys are progressive, but the City should have **required** this.
I and NYCwireless would be very interested in sitting down to talk with you futher about how we can work together to make muniwireless and Community Wireless work for everyone.
Dana: give me a call and I’ll try to help you set something up. Jerry
Dear Dana,
I am sending this mail at 11:08 pm while sitting in my car across the street from Bryant Park. I am probably the “most frequent user” of free publick wi-fi since I spend many hours every day working in my car, which has been converted into a fully-equipped mobile office. I am an example of how “wi-fi-anywhere” will change the way we work in the future. Although my car is probably the only personally cosumized “office-Car”, I have no doubt that in the near future significant number of people will discover the “incredible” utilty of universal or city wide wi-fi. I am “impatiently” waiting for this city wide Wi-Fi so that I can work one day sitting in my parkrd car in the middle of Time Square and on the following day at the riverfront in Brooklyn and on the third day watching the shoppers on fifth avenue.
Stefan