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December 14, 2005
Do Muni Advocates Fear the Big Apple?
Despite glowing out-of-town notices in Philadelphia, San Francisco and New Orleans, municipal wireless advocates are concerned that the show might flop on Broadway. That’s why some of the most vocal proponents of municipal wireless, including Andrew Rasiej, a municipal technology consultant in New York, are urging city officials there to delay, or perhaps halt, any muni wireless plans.
“The worst thing that could happen is for the city to try to build one these networks and have it fail," Rasiej said. “It would set the whole muni Wi-Fi movement way back.”
In other words, failure on as visible a stage as the Big Apple would so shake the doctrinal foundation of the municipal wireless movement—that local governments can do a better job than the competitive market at delivering reliable, inexpensive broadband service--that it’s best if muni didn’t go there at all.
Rasiej made his comments at a legislative hearing on a proposed bill that would create a special commission to advise Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city council on how the city can get affordable broadband access to all its residents. CNET’s News.com carried the story.
This is the first time any municipal wireless proponent has raised the possibility of failure in a forum of this type. Up to now, all I’ve been hearing from advocates like Rasiej, who this year unsuccessfully ran for New York Public Advocate, is that municipal systems were the only way to assure universal access and coverage. The commercial sector, they said, was the problem – and the government sector was the solution. Now, when comes the opportunity to prove these precepts in the nation’s biggest stage, the response is, “No, thanks.”
That’s because even advocates like Rasiej know that municipal broadband systems rarely meet their goals while costing communities millions of dollars. Large-scale municipal wireless has yet to establish a track record. In their breathless reports about the benefits of municipal broadband, the media often forgets that Philadelphia is not launched service and San Francisco has little more than a series of diverse proposals.
The lack of confidence about the performance and viability of a municipal wireless system in New York is striking considering what’s said elsewhere. Consultants routinely promise in-building coverage, 1 Mb/s and higher bandwidth, and applications such as distance learning and telemedicine. This time, there was a distinct attempt to manage expectations. “New York is definitely a challenge from a technology perspective,” aid Craig Mathias, founder of the Farpoint Group of Ashland, Mass., a wireless technology consulting firm. “You may not be able to get it in every nook and cranny."
All this led to a lukewarm statement from city council member Gail Brewer, chairwoman of the committee on Technology in Government, which held the hearing. "The more hearings we have, the more I realize how complex this issue really is," Brewer said.
Not exactly the most resounding of endorsements.
Posted by steve.titch at December 14, 2005 01:58 PM
