Very curious too that:

(a) The report from Diamond Consultants is only about the digital divide, since I was under the impression that the research was supposed to be about a lot more than just the digital divide, and

(b) This is being presented as “the Bloomberg Administration’s plans”, because I would think that the Bloomberg Administration would present their own plans and not have a consultant present for them, and further their “plans” should be based in part on the findings of the Broadband Advisory Committee, who’s whole point of existing is to bring a different perspective and set of expertise to any “plans” that are created.

Overall, I’m not too hopeful for what will be presented. I suspect it will be much too little, and frankly at least 6 months too late. This administration inexplicably has shown no spine for dealing with internet and network access issues and tends to kowtow to Verizon and Time Warner Cable. But, maybe, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

CITY HALL – On Wednesday, July 30th at 11:00am there will be a briefing from the Mayor’s Office and Diamond Consultants for the Broadband Advisory Committee regarding the Bloomberg Administration’s plans for bridging the digital divide in New York City.

The Broadband Advisory Committee was established in 2005 with the passage of Introduction 625-A creating a joint public broadband commission to advise the Mayor and the City Council of New York on how the resources of City government can be used to stimulate the private market so that residents and businesses of New York City have more options in terms of high-speed Internet access. The goal of the committee is to educate the general public about broadband and the newest communication technologies, and to give New York City residents the opportunity to comment on how the digital divide in New York City can be closed. To support these efforts the Broadband Advisory Committee has held public Broadband Hearings in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. The Committee will hold its fifth and final hearing in Staten Island this fall.

Diamond Consultants was hired by the New York City Economic Development Corporation to determine the breadth of the digital divide in New York City and develop programs and initiatives to provide greater digital inclusion for all residents. Chris O’Brien, a Partner in Diamond’s Public Sector practice, will be detailing Diamond’s findings and its recommendations for the City’s next steps.

The meeting will take place in the Committee of the Whole Room, City Hall, New York, NY on Wednesday, July 30th at 11:00 am. This is a public meeting and all are welcome to attend. For further information please contact Kunal Malhotra, Director of Legislation & Budget, 212-788-6975 or Kunal.Malhotra@council.nyc.gov.

Those discussions have fallen apart, and now Earthlink has notified customers that its decomissioning the network entirely, and removing all of the equipment.

So the poster-child of Muni-wireless is now back at square one.

Josh Breitbart has good coverage about the happenings in Philadelphia, and through New America Foundation released an excellent report on the subject, “The Philadelphia Story: Learning from a Municipal Wireless Pioneer”.

What does this say about muni-wireless in general?

Certainly, Philadelphians will need to find alternative broadband options, and the free public-space hotspots will be going away, taking away a valuable public resource for the city.

But the single most important lesson from this experience is that single-source solutions for muni-networks are a bad idea. If Wireless Philadelphia followed their founding purpose instead of being tempted into a devil’s bargain with Earthlink to hand over the entirety of the network to the company, the story today would be very different. Wireless Philadelphia, which would have owned the network and contracted out its building and operations, would merely need to find a new partner to take over those roles. The city’s network would continue on, and users would have experienced few, if any, hiccups in service.

Instead, the network will now be disassembled and all of the work done over the past few years by the non-profit was for naught. People currently using the network (including a number of low-income families) will be left without a broadband connection, and Wireless Philadelphia will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternative solution for bridging the digital divide, a process that will likely take months, if not years.

Contrast Philadelphia with Boston’s approach. In an insightful report, the Boston Wireless Task Force sketched out a plan for creating 2 competitive marketplaces that will drive the creation of the city-wide muni-wireless network. On one side, a number of infrastructure providers will all provide last mile networks, each within a different part of the city. Those networks will all wind up funnelling thorugh an network exchange managed by the Wireless Boston non-profit. On the other side, ISPs (and any other organization) will be able to purchase transport on the last-mile wireless network at competitive prices, and provide customers with a choice of companies from which to purchase retail wireless ISP service. Enabling all of this interconnectivity are standards-based hardware and software interfaces, and common routing and management interfaces.

In Boston, if an infrastructure provider exists the business, another company can step in an take over the operations of that part of the network–one that is likely already providing service in another part of the city. If an ISP decides to stop reselling the wireless network, there will be other ISPs who can provide service.

Looking back, its hard to miss the fact that Philadelphia chose the worst path. They had the option, early on, of taking a more Boston-like approach, but instead opted for a short term political win at the expense of a lasting solution. In reality, Philadelphia’s muni-wireless network, if they choose to rebuild it, will likely cost even more than it would have if they took a more progressive approach from the beginning. And its not lost on anyone that Philadelphia’s Wireless Task Force recommended a more competitive and holistic approach similar to (though different in certain ways) Wireless Boston’s current approach.

Learning the right lessons and emulating the right policies here will enable the United States to improve our broadband performance faster than in the absence of proactive policies. The report analyzes the extent to which policy and non-policy factors drive broadband performance, and how broadband policies related to national leadership, incentives, competition, rural access, and consumer demand affect national broadband performance. Based on these findings the report makes a number of recommendations to boost U.S. broadband performance.

Executive Summary (pdf)
Full Report (pdf)

The report is extensive, and has some very good policy recommendations that should be heeded by all levels of government.

Overall, at the broadest level, nations with robust national broadband strategies–that is, those that make broadband a priority, coordinate across agencies, put real resources behind the strategy, and promote both supply and demand–fare better than those without.