April 18
issue - Nobody doubts the benefits of Wi-Fi
broadband technology. No longer is a computer
user tethered to a wire in order to surf the
Web. All you need is to be within range of a
Wi-Fi hotspot, and thousands are sprouting up—at
airports, parks, hotels, bookstores, coffee
shops, college campuses. Business travelers rely
on them. Students need them. Everybody with a PC
likes them. The only problem is that, though
Wi-Fi is spreading fast, access is hardly
universal. Most areas of any given locale are
not "hot," and even in those that are, being
only slightly out of range or behind the wrong
building means no more service. The irony of
Wi-Fi convenience is that, without ubiquity,
dependent users can pretty quickly become
frustrated.
The telecoms, while deploying Wi-Fi in ever more
places, won't likely be solving the problem
soon. Telecoms "target lucrative, high-density
markets to make a profit," explains Jim Baller,
a Washington telecommunications lawyer. That has
led municipalities to begin creating hotspots
themselves, as a way to reach lower-density and
lower-income areas that a profit-making company
would ignore. More than a dozen communities—from
downtown Baton Rouge, La., to San Francisco's
Marina neighborhood—now have significant Wi-Fi
coverage provided by the government at nominal
or no cost. But the real tests of municipal
Wi-Fi are in Philadelphia and Portland, Ore.,
both of which plan to begin blanketing their
entire areas with low-cost Wi-Fi next year.
Cities like Chicago and San Francisco are keenly
watching those efforts—as are telecoms that have
spent millions in for-profit efforts to provide
wired broadband infrastructure.
There will inevitably be holes in any Wi-Fi
cloud spread across a major city. Signals often
don't extend into basements, tunnels or larger
buildings—but true believers say the advantages
make up for any gaps. They say the poor will get
access, cities will be able to run more
efficiently and storefront businesses will be
able to work online on the cheap. Naysayers,
particularly the telecoms, doubt cities or the
technology itself is up to the task.
For business travelers, Wi-Fi clouds are being
designed to be so user-friendly that anyone can
get online as soon as he or she is in town. In
theory, once your PC picked up a municipal Wi-Fi
signal, all you'd have to do is complete an
online registration and pay a small fee via —a
credit card. Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief
information officer, says city planners are
talking to T-Mobile—a leading Wi-Fi service for
travelers—about a roaming agreement that would
allow visitors to surf big areas with their
T-Mobile accounts.
In a big city, the thousands of actual Wi-Fi
installations—routers with antennas—required to
make a cloud operational are typically being
done and maintained by private companies and
volunteer groups. That way the municipality
isn't put in the difficult position of becoming
an ISP itself.
In many cases, Wi-Fi installation can be quite
cheap. Existing lampposts make perfect mounts
for the metal-boxed access points that transmit
Wi-Fi signals. "Streetlights have that optimum
of being 30 feet off the ground and already have
power running to them," says Nigel Ballard, a
director of the Portland Telecommunications
Steering Committee, which guides the city's
strategy. Post-mounted Wi-Fi has already
blanketed small communities like Chaska, Minn.,
since 2004, and with only $850,000, Chaska has
offered its 18,000 citizens Wi-Fi for less than
half of what most Americans pay. Equidistant
access points throughout the Minneapolis suburb
create an even mesh of coverage. But not
everyone is certain this kind of mesh can be
stretched over a major metropolitan area. Chaska
has only a few hundred access points. That's why
the Philadelphia and Portland experiments are so
important.
Beyond the technical issues, municipalities
considering their own clouds may also face
political obstacles. Consider Philadelphia's
bout with Verizon in November 2004: having
invested millions in capital to supply DSL
broadband to citizens, the company balked at
competition with the municipality's bargain
Wi-Fi. Verizon lost, but Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell did sign legislation that gave incumbent
telecoms in the state, beginning in 2006, the
right of first refusal in any municipality. That
means, for example, if Punxsutawney wants to
follow Philadelphia's lead on Wi-Fi, Verizon can
say no—as long as it provides broadband itself.
Other states are considering similar
telecom-friendly legislation. But the trend
seems headed in the other direction. If Portland
and Philadelphia demonstrate that a Wi-Fi cloud
can really work, public demand for widespread
wireless may prove irresistible.
