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February 2, 2006 • 8:19 am 0

Study: 'Digital divide' affects school success

This is an older article that I failed to post at the time, but eSchool News reports on a study that the “‘Digital divide’ affects school success”:1

bq. Having a computer at home increases the likelihood that students will graduate from high school, a UC-Santa Cruz researcher claims in a report that casts the digital divide in a new light. But others question the report’s conclusions.

The report details a number of key findings:

* Teenagers who have access to home computers are 6 to 8 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than teens who lack access to a home computer, after reportedly controlling for individual, parental, and family characteristics.

* Only 50.6 percent of blacks and 48.7 percent of Latinos have access to home computers, compared with 74.6 percent of whites.

* Only 40.5 percent of blacks and 38.1 percent of Latinos have internet access at home, compared with 67.3 percent of whites.

* Among children, slightly more than half of all black and Latino children have access to a home computer, and about 40 percent have internet access at home. By comparison, 85.5 percent of white children have home computer access, and 77.4 percent can use the internet at home.

Clearly, as more of our society and economy is tied to the internet, these disparities within different ethnic groups is going to have a greater and greater impact, and will only serve to grow the digital divide.

This is one of the reasons why citywide municipal networks and muni-wireless networks are even more important, since they provide affordable and universal internet access across an entire city, regardless of the demographics of the local areas.

[1]http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5999

Filed under: Muniwireless, News, Urban Wireless

February 1, 2006 • 9:24 am 0

Free Commercial Wi-Fi

“Wi-Fi Net News reports”:1 that “MetroFi”:2, a Bay Area wireless ISP that covers Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Santa Clara, recently switched to an all free model for wireless access (they used to charge monthly fees for access). Last year, they deployed a test network in Sunnyvale to test out free, advertiser supported wireless service, and found that it was a resounding success.

bq. CEO Chuck Haas said last week, “Most communications business — and MetroFi is no different — is a high fixed cost, low incremental cost business. Your denominator, how many subscribers you have to amortize that cost, is one of the big drivers of that business.” Haas said that his top three per-user costs were customer acquisition, support (mostly to do with billing), and Internet bandwidth. By removing the first two major factors, it’s cheaper for him to offer free service.

I have been saying this for years: billing is one of the most expensive parts of running an ISP. This is one of the reasons why NYCwireless offers free service. Without billing costs the network is much cheaper to operate.

Unfortunately, many people new to providing internet service (like restaurants, coffee shops, and hotels) just see dollar signs ($$$$). In a food establishment, internet service could cost less than $100 a month to provide, whereas creating and supporting a billing system might cost as much as 10 times that amount. How many more users would be needed to cover this additional expense? Its unlikely that any location will derive that much revenue from their users. Especially when you consider that a free network might draw as many as 10 times the number of users.

[1]http://wifinetnews.com/archives/006249.html
[2]http://www.metrofi.com/

Filed under: Community Wireless, News, NYCwireless, Urban Wireless

February 1, 2006 • 8:43 am 1

A Closer Look At EarthLink's Muni WiFi Strategy

The Wireless Weblog “offers a glimpse”:1 into EarthLink’s municipal wireless strategy.

A couple of months ago, I and some other NYCwireless folks also got on the phone to speak with a few people at EarthLink about their plans. Of particular interest is that they are persuing an open access network, where any ISP or other organization can buy carriage on their networks (like DSL used to work). This is a good strategy, and one that every municipality should require (though some are not). This ensures that there is a competitive marketplace in the wireless ISP space.

In the interview on the Wireless Weblog, EarthLink also acknowledges that there’s an issue with low income and digital divide service: though they can provide internet, families need PC’s as well. EarthLink would do well to persue partnerships with local non-profits for this part of the solution, as many cities have free or cheap PC programs that provide computers to low income residents. They’d also do well to work with local organizations to provide training and other services.

[1]http://wireless.weblogsinc.com/2006/01/28/a-closer-look-at-earthlinks-muni-wifi-strategy/

Filed under: Community Wireless, Muniwireless, News, Policy, Urban Wireless

January 19, 2006 • 9:15 am 1

Advocates of Wi-Fi in Cities Learn Art of Politics

A “great article”:1 in the New York Times (“same article on C|NET”:2):

bq. January 19, 2006

bq. Advocates of Wi-Fi in Cities Learn Art of Politics

bq. By GLENN FLEISHMAN
SEATTLE, Jan. 18 – The idea of building citywide wireless networks from the community level was suspiciously simple back in 2000, although the plans sounded like the work of underground revolutionaries. “All of us were very idealistic, and all quite strongly opinionated,” said Adam Shand, founder of Personal Telco, which had visions of such a network in Portland, Ore.

bq. There as elsewhere, it was seen as a three-step process.

bq. First, build home-brew Wi-Fi antennas and develop software to make outdoor wireless networks affordable and practical.

bq. Second, persuade thousands of people in each city to stick Wi-Fi antennas out their windows, on their roofs or in their places of business to serve collectively as the nodes of a network. (Some groups sought to share existing commercial broadband Internet access – often regardless of whether an Internet service provider allowed that kind of sharing – while others wanted to build a separate community network.)

bq. Third, link those thousands of nodes into neighborhood networks that would themselves connect into a cloud of free citywide Wi-Fi coverage. That’s free as in free beer as well as free as in freedom: most advocates envisioned no restrictions on content or participation, and no access charges. In contrast, almost all early Wi-Fi hot spots were pinpoints of service, had fees attached and restricted use.

bq. Step 2 was never completed, which is why victory speeches seem, at first glance, out of place. Nonetheless, “community wireless accomplished spectacularly well what it set out to do,” said Dana Spiegel, president of NYCwireless, a volunteer wireless advocacy group in Manhattan.

bq. While attendance at some community networking groups has plummeted and some smaller groups have disappeared, their technical and political impact has never been higher. Wireless advocates no longer dangle dangerously from rooftops mounting antennas built inside potato-chip cans, although some still provide technical help to business owners and nonprofit groups in creating free Wi-Fi hot spots.

bq. “The problems that were hard in 2001 were technical ones,” Mr. Spiegel said. “Now, they’re personal and relationship and political ones. The technology, we almost don’t even think about it anymore.”

bq. Greg Richardson, president of Civitium, a consulting firm, says that movement was the impetus for government-run citywide wireless Internet plans. Mr. Richardson has been a consultant on municipal wireless policy and technical issues for Philadelphia, San Francisco and other cities.

bq. Community wireless gave municipal planners “the validation that a lot of those ideas could work,” Mr. Richardson said. Early and continuing municipal efforts to provide small areas of free access in parks and downtown districts were and still are often created in conjunction with these community groups.

bq. The move from building physical networks to building political influence, many advocates say, stems in part from an August 2004 forum organized by the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network in Illinois.

bq. At the event, many community wireless leaders met for the first time. Sessions were conducted with politicians and members of nonprofit groups interested in diversifying media ownership. Sascha D. Meinrath, the network’s project coordinator, said he saw a political awakening hit the technically focused participants.

bq. “We could develop all of these technologies, we could come up with the holy grail of wireless technologies, and then it would be illegal to deploy it,” he said. After they returned from the conference, several wireless advocates became involved in the political debates over municipal broadband. These debates intensified after Philadelphia announced in late 2004 that it would build a citywide Wi-Fi network.

bq. In quick succession, other cities announced their own plans, including Minneapolis; San Francisco; Anaheim, Calif.; and Tempe, Ariz.

bq. Much of the advocates’ involvement has centered on stressing network neutrality, in which a network operator has little say over what devices are used on a network and for what purpose.

bq. The issue became more prominent after recent statements by the chief executive of AT&T (the former SBC) suggesting that content providers like Google might be required to pay fees to reach AT&T’s Internet access customers. Scattered reports also indicate that some access providers may be blocking or interrupting Internet phone services.

bq. Michael Oh of NewburyOpen.net, a commercially sponsored free Wi-Fi zone on Newbury Street in Boston, said, “I don’t think anyone in the SBC world or the policy-making world would have anticipated that there would have been anyone at the table like us when it came to municipal wireless.”

bq. Many wireless advocates said they already had relationships with local politicians, and now were stepping up to the state level; some were contacted by officials trying to make sense of broadband policy. Richard MacKinnon, founder of the Austin Wireless City Project, testified at state hearings in Texas and joined in a successful fight against a bill to restrict municipal broadband service.

bq. Wireless advocates “have done more to bring forward the concerns of network neutrality as well as open access” than anyone else in the political process, Mr. Richardson said. “They have a very loud voice in an advocacy role.”

bq. A policy statement by NYCwireless lists several principles that define network neutrality: a city or network builder must resell service to other Internet service providers, avoid restrictions on content or types of service (like Internet phone service) and allow all legal devices to be connected to the network – meaning that Internet telephone adapters and wireless cameras would be as legitimate as laptop Wi-Fi cards.

bq. Because of concerns over neutrality, many community groups have focused on how to create independent networks that require neither government support nor an Internet connection to be useful.

bq. The Champaign-Urbana network is developing software that allows computers and Wi-Fi gateways to organize into a larger network as they find other nodes. The approach is called mesh networking; the software would be open sourced and distributed at no cost. (Mesh networks are to be the basis of all the municipal Wi-Fi networks currently planned, but are to use commercial equipment and proprietary software.)

bq. Seattle Wireless is taking a different approach to creating fixed networks using wireless equipment. Since 2000, its founder, Matt Westervelt, and other members have planned to create a central point that would act as a relay medium for local groups seeking to connect their offices, create temporary networks for events or offer Internet connections to others.

bq. His organization raised $2,500 for a climber to place network equipment on a cellular tower on Capitol Hill, one of the highest spots in Seattle. The cost of upkeep is to be donated by a private company.

bq. Community advocates want to use both these independent networks and municipal broadband to carry new kinds of locally focused services and data.

bq. Mr. Oh and The Boston Globe (a division of The New York Times Company) are experimenting in locations around Boston with what they call Pulse Points: freestanding Wi-Fi nodes with no Internet connections. These nodes carry only local discussion boards and information.

bq. At a Pulse Point in the South Station train terminal, every other board posting in the early days “was a flame about why there was no free Internet access,” Mr. Oh said. Now, the spot is routinely used to exchange information and personal stories.

bq. Mr. Spiegel said that the transition from hardware and networks to the higher level of programs and politics was inevitable as networks spread.

bq. “In the end, what all of us were trying to do was to change the way people thought about communications,” he said. “The Internet wasn’t something that you sat down at the computer to use, but that it was something that permeated our lives – it just didn’t have the distribution to permeate our lives.”

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/technology/circuits/19wifi.html
[2]http://news.com.com/Advocates+of+citywide+Wi-Fi+learn+art+of+politics/2100-7351_3-6028573.html

Filed under: Community Wireless, Muniwireless, Network Neutrality, New York City, News, NYCwireless, Policy, Urban Wireless

January 11, 2006 • 8:42 am 0

Appearing at NYC SIG-CHI Presentation on January 18th

I will be appearing on January 18th from 6:30pm-8:30pm on a panel at the next “NYC SIG-CHI”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nycchi/ meeting. I will be discussing wireless networks and building software for wireless broadband use. I’ll be concentrating my talk on NYCwireless and the software that I and others have built to make use of our Wi-Fi networks. I’ll also talk a bit about social software and how wireless technologies play a role in bringing social software into more natural social situations.

The panel should be fun. Scott Weiss of Usable Products will speak on quantitative research for mobile devices. Josh Rubin, formerly with UPOC and now on his own, and John Devanney of MOMENT will also be speaking. I expect there will be much open discussion about the different aspects of mobile design.

*Location*

Metropolitan New York Library Council
57 East 11th Street, 4th Floor (between Broadway and University Place, near Union Square)
“map”:http://www.metro.org/ab_direc.html

Filed under: Community Wireless, NYCwireless, Urban Wireless

January 9, 2006 • 12:31 am 0

Let There Be Wi-Fi

Robert McChesney, president of “Free Press”:1, and John Podesta, president and CEO of the “Center for American Progress”:2, write about the need for Municipal Broadband and Community Wireless in “Let There Be Wi-Fi”:3 in the Washington Monthly.

The article covers a lot of ground, crafting a case for why municipal wireless initiatives have cropped up all across America, why telco incumbents are fighting them, and why they may be the only thing that will save this country from being an also-ran in the internet race.

bq. Those countries that achieve universal broadband are going to hold significant advantages over those who don’t. And so far, the United States is poised to be a follower — not a leader — in the broadband economy.

bq. …

bq. While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that’s more than 10 times faster than what’s available here for just $22 a month.

McChesney and Podesta discuss why other countries have more advanced internet access available. Often, its not that there has been government control of telecommunications. In Japan’s case, their progress was due specifically to the fact that their government gave each municipality the power to address deficiencies as necessary, including situations where local private telecommunications providers wouldn’t or couldn’t provide needed connectivity.

bq. The countries surpassing the United States in broadband deployment did so by using a combination of public entities and private firms. The Japanese built their world-class system by ensuring “open access” to residential telephone lines, meaning competitors paid the same wholesale price to use the wires. The country is also establishing a super-fast, nationwide fiber system via a combination of tax breaks, debt guarantees and subsidies. But of particular note, the Japanese government also encouraged municipalities to build their own networks, especially in rural areas. Towns and villages willing to set up their own ultra-high-speed fiber networks received government subsidies covering approximately one-third of their costs.

This is in marked contrast to the state of broadband in this country, where our President and our FCC have only paid lip service to solving the problem of universal internet access.

bq. Instead of encouraging competition, the FCC has allowed DSL providers and cable companies to shut out competitors by denying access to their lines. And whereas the Japanese government encourages individual towns to set up their own “Community Internet,” Washington has done nothing. Fourteen states in the United States now have laws on the books restricting cities and towns from building their own high-speed Internet networks. No wonder America is falling behind its Asian competitors.

Indeed, the early history of electrical service in America bears many similarities to the current state of broadband. Perhaps we can learn from the past, in this case.

bq. Borrowing from Richard Rudolph and Scott Ridley’s 1986 book, Power Struggle: The Hundred-Year War Over Electricity, Baller showed that when electricity first became available in the 1880s, privately owned utilities marketed “the new technology as synonymous with wealth, power and privilege,” lighting large cities, businesses, and the homes of the rich. Electricity also allowed factories to stay open 24 hours a day, and led to the institution of swing shifts. But communities that didn’t have electricity couldn’t produce as much, and couldn’t keep up with urban competitors. Rural communities were left with the choice of forming a government-owned utility or being left in the dark. Even big cities like Detroit built municipal power systems to cut prices and extend service. In response, private utility companies responded with a massive propaganda and misinformation campaign that attacked advocates of municipal power as “un-American,” “Bolshevik,” and “an unholy alliance of radicals.”

bq. But the expansion of electricity, Baller argued, showed that the presence — or even threat — of competition from the public sector is one of the surest ways to secure quality service and reasonable prices from private enterprises delivering critical public services. FDR, he notes, called municipal power systems “a birch rod in the cupboard, to be taken out and used only when the child gets beyond the point where more scolding does any good.”

bq. …Baller concluded: “The plain, hard truth is that universal electric service would never have developed on a timely basis in the absence of municipally owned electric utilities and rural electric cooperatives” — which still account for more than a quarter of the power in the country today.

Essentially, both telecom lobbyists and the state governments who are enacting their legislation are cutting municipalities off at the knees, removing the only solution many of them have left, and preventing these governments from spurring the competitive marketplaces for internet services that they desperately need.

Cable and telephone companies are playing dirty by launching misinformation campaigns.

bq. First, they contend that municipalities have no place in the “free market.” Of course, the cable and telephone giants don’t mention that their own monopolies — which control 98 percent of the broadband market — have been cemented with extensive public subsidies, tax breaks and incentives (as well as free rein to tear up city streets).

bq. Opponents also warn that municipalities will “crowd out” more efficient private players. In reality, most municipal networks are a last resort by desperate local governments. Often their choice isn’t between a municipal system and a private one, but between municipal and nothing.

bq. The same critics of Community Internet claim that cities are too “lazy” or inefficient to manage complex systems and will be unable to adapt to changing technologies. But municipalities have a long track record of successfully and efficiently operating power plants, sewage systems and subways. It’s hard to imagine that the broadband networks—most of which will actually be operated by private contractors—are any more complex. Perhaps the more obvious question is: If these systems are destined to fail, why are the telephone and cable companies expending so much energy trying to stop them?

In the end, the solution requires members from all levels of government to both recognize that there is a problem, and be strong enough to enact smart policy that will address that problem.

bq. Most importantly, the federal government must ensure that the cable and telephone monopolies can’t crush innovative projects like Wireless Philadelphia and the emerging national movement for Community Internet. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have introduced a bill that would free municipalities to decide for themselves which technologies best serve their citizens. U.S. policy should create incentives for communities to build advanced telecommunications networks in hundreds of cities and towns across the country, creating robust competition for communications services, assisting small entrepreneurs through public-private partnerships, and bringing opportunity to low-income urban neighborhoods and rural communities too often neglected by large entrenched monopolies.

[1]http://www.freepress.net
[2]http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=8473
[3]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0601.podesta.html

Filed under: Community Wireless, Muniwireless, Policy, Urban Wireless

December 7, 2005 • 8:42 am 0

$100 Laptop Plus Mesh Networking Equals Salvation for US, Too

$100 Laptop

The “$100 Laptop that the MIT Media Lab:1 has been working on has gotten some press lately, and for good reason. I was at the Lab for a reunion gathering a few weeks ago, and Nicholas Negroponte talked about the “$100 Laptop”:1 as more of a vehicle for social change, as opposed to just another piece of hardware. It is cheap and functional, and it will enable entire countries to equip all of their children with an educational tool.

Most importantly, it will act as a vehicle for an entire country’s youth generation to gain a voice that is independent of the government and independent of the established power structures. Its action as a social tool comes almost entirely from the inclusion of mesh wireless technology into the Laptop, so that each child can communicate with every other child using peer-to-peer wireless connections. Imagine the early American Pony Express, where letters were handed from person to person in order to travel across the country.

Nicholas is appropriately concentrating on third world countries with the “$100 Laptop”:1. But as a vehicle for social change, the Laptop, with mesh wireless, stands to be a powerful force in the US and other first world countries as well, and not just for kids. Right now — and if you’ve read this blog, you know about this already — all communications technologies in the US necessarily get filtered through large Telco/Cable/Media companies. SBC plus AT&T and Verizon plus Sprint control a majority of this country’s communications pipes, and as “I’ve spoken about in the past”:2, are increasingly seeking ways to control the content and conversations that take place over “their” networks.

This is bad for everyone. A reliance on asymmetrical communication services (cable-modems, DSL) chokes off our voices, and our country becomes more and more influenced by fewer and fewer people who care less and less about us, the public.

What can we do? The mesh networking built into Nicholas’ “$100 Laptop”:1 enables communication from person to person, without any need to interact with the Telco companies that want to stifle real conversation. If everyone in the US had a “$100 Laptop”:1 with mesh networking, there would truly be conversation “For the People, By the People”.

This is the real power of a transformative technology, one that can effect change in both First and Third World countries.

[1]http://laptop.media.mit.edu
[2]http://wirelesscommunity.files.wordpress.com/2005/12/tnlaptopcrank1.jpg2005/11/02/sbc-ceo-claims-he-owns-the-internet-and-will-charge-everyone-for-its-use/

Filed under: Community Wireless, Mesh, News, Urban Wireless

December 6, 2005 • 8:41 am 0

Updated: NYC SIG-CHI Panel Presentation on Dec. 7th

_note: this entry was republished today as a reminder_

I will be appearing on December 7th from 6:30pm-8:30pm on a panel at the next “NYC SIG-CHI”:1 meeting discussing wireless networks and building software for wireless broadband use. I’ll be concentrating my talk on NYCwireless and the software that I and others have built to make use of our Wi-Fi networks, and I’ll also talk a bit about social software and how wireless technologies play a role in bringing social software into more natural social situations.

The panel should be fun. Scott Weiss of Usable Products will speak on quantitative research for mobile devices. Josh Rubin, formerly with UPOC and now on his own, and John Devanney of MOMENT will also be speaking. I expect there will be much open discussion about the different aspects of mobile design.

*UPDATE: The panel has been postponed until January 18. Please update your calendars!*

[1]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nycchi

Filed under: Community Wireless, Event, New York City, NYCwireless, Urban Wireless

December 2, 2005 • 12:26 am 0

Tracking Wireless Network Users in Real-Time

[MIT has created a great tool for exploring the use of its campus-wide Wi-Fi network":1. The tool displays a real time view of the location of each Wi-Fi user on campus, and provides a way to visualize the patterns of network use over time. Its not a tracking tool per se, but rather a trend analysis tool.

I'd love to see a tool like this available on all public networks (anonymous of course). Some of the tools in WifiDog -- a centralized hotspot management tool that "NYCwireless":2 is working to deploy -- enables a form of this statistical analysis (its a start, anyway). With a little more work it would be possible to easily see the trends of use of public wireless networks like "NYCwireless":2 and "Île Sans Fil":3. With a bit more work, we will be able to tease out trends that bridge both online use and changes in the physical world environment (time of day, sales, events, etc.). This type of analysis will be particularly important especially for large scale networks like those planned for deployment in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

[1]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Wireless_Campus.html
[2]http://www.nycwireless.net
[3]http://www.ilesansfil.org

Filed under: News, Urban Wireless

October 26, 2005 • 8:30 am 4

Anaheim to Consider Citywide Wi-Fi Franchise with Earthlink

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

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