Out of Control

The city of Provo, Utah, announced today that it will sell its money-losing municipal fiber network, iProvo, to Broadweave Networks, a Jordan, Utah, start-up for $40.6 million. This represents, I believe, the largest sale of a municipal fiber operation to a buyer that plans to maintain and grow it. Lebanon, Ohio, sold is failing muni broadband system to Cincinnati Bell last year for $7 million.

Reason has covered the financial disaster that Provo was becoming in two reports, the latest issued last month. Through the end of its fiscal year last June 30, iProvo had lost $7.4 million, and has been on pace to lose another $2 million this current fiscal year. The system was built in 2005 with a $39.5 million loan backed guaranteed by local taxes.

Nonetheless, the sale comes as something of a surprise. Separate reports from two consulting firms issued the week after the Reason policy study urged continued city funding of iProvo, although they recommended substantial changes in organization and operations. Up to last month, Provo Mayor Lewis Billings was expressing confidence in the system and stated that the city planned to stay the course.

Billings should be commended for his reversal. He’s unloading the system while there is still value to be derived for the city as well as Broadweave. Other cities, particularly Ashland, Ore., have stubbornly held on to losing operations as growing debt drained any net value. They’ve become white elephants.

Moreover, the $40.6 million sale to Broadweave Networks demonstrates that significant investment dollars exist for fiber-optic development. The market for small-city fiber has not failed. If incumbent cable and telephone companies do not meet local demand it is apparent that other companies will step up. And Broadweave is no fly-by-night. It’s an exciting, growing local company funded by Sorenson Capital, one of Utah’s most respected venture capital firms.

That makes it all the more important for cities to pursue policies that encourage telecom infrastructure investment: franchise reform, low taxes and deregulation. These do a much better job at bringing viable broadband service that consumers actually want to buy to cities like Provo, while at the same time nurturing entrepreneurship, capital and job growth. This doesn't happen when government attempts to compete with the private sector through municipally-funded schemes.

Finally, Provo’s decision to privatize coincides with the decision by (so far) 10 of 11 other Utah communities to refinance UTOPIA, the statewide fiber-to-the-home initiative with a new 33-year bond that could end up costing $505 million. It will be interesting to see how government-provided in these cities fare compared to Provo. Chances are residents of Provo, with a private sector provider, will have better choices, better prices, better service and higher take rates in 12 months than any of the UTOPIA cities.

The FCC-mandated conversion to digital TV broadcasting next February is touching off a battle among cable TV and telephone companies to hook-up so-called “nevers,” consumers, who for whatever reason, have been content to watch over-the-air TV and have never been interested in purchasing cable, so reports cable industry trade Multichannel News.

When the DTV conversion becomes effective Feb. 17, 2009, consumers who have older analog models will have a choice of purchasing a new TV, using a government-provided $40 voucher to purchase a digital signal converter, or sign up with a cable, telco or satellite TV provider.

Naturally, multichannel video service providers are hoping to entice consumers to embrace the last option. AT&T reportedly will offer a bundled package at $44 a month. Comcast is prepping a basic cable tier, with less frills, priced at $15 to $20 a month. Their target: people like Andrew King, a 45-year-old airplane mechanic who watches off-air television in Culpeper, Va., 70 miles from Washington, D.C.

King is satisfied with his free TV experience. He picks up broadcast stations from two markets, Charlottesville, Va., and the nation’s capital. He is unenthusiastic about the prospect of paying a cable, satellite or telephone company for television.

“I’m kind of a cheapskate,” he said wryly, adding he’d sign up for subscription television and then the “rates will shoot sky high.”

King’s objections echo responses cable researchers have long heard from TV viewers they classify as “nevers” or “formers.” This audience of 14 million to 19 million households are viewers who have steadfastly refused to take, or keep, pay television programming. Winning the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of such consumers is a top priority for cable, satellite and telco TV providers during the next year.

“Frankly, this may be the last big chance to gain market share,” said Cox Communications vice president of product marketing David Pugliese.

Regulators and legislators should note, that despite accusations that cable TV is a stagnant duopoly and needs competition from local government to meet all consumer needs, the article lays out four important facts, backed up by market research:

1) There is heated competition for cable customers.
2) Consumers are aware of service provider choices.
3) Video service providers are interested in attracting budget-conscious customers, even those who might pay only $15 to $30 a month.
4) That even when prices drop, there is still a segment of the population who does not desire cable service.

…And it’s done.

Citing “unrealistic ambitions and technological ambitions,” The New York Times all but wrote an obituary for big city municipal WiFi last Saturday, acknowledging the problems in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Tempe, Ariz., that for years municipal proponents attributed to exaggeration by industry lobbyists if they did not deny them altogether.

The article, by Ian Urbina, is password-protected, but in three paragraphs summed up the universal problem of municipal wireless, long demonstrated in reports from the Reason Foundation, the Heartland Institute and other think tanks where a sound undertstanding of market and technical reality trumped wishful thinking:

In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.

But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in the numbers that providers initially hoped, Mr. Phillis said.

Prices for Internet service on the broader market also began dropping to a level that, while above what many poor people could afford, was below what municipal Wi-Fi providers were offering, so the companies had to lower their rates even further, making investment in infrastructure even more risky, he said.

Government still tends to view the broadband usage problem in the U.S. as a paucity of infrastructure. The California Broadband Task Force (CBTF) blundered in the same policy direction in its recommendation last month that the state issue “broadband bonds” to fund infrastructure development in all parts of the state.

Writing for the Pacific Research Institute, Daniel R. Ballon immediately found the flaw:

According to the CBTF’s final report, a full 96 percent of households have access to high-speed Internet services, but only 56 percent opt to subscribe. This gap indicates a lack of broadband demand, not a lack of infrastructure. This demand correlates strongly with household income. Instead of increasing the affordability of available commercial services, "broadband bonds" will displace existing services with inefficient government-run versions.

This strategy would be akin to replacing grocery stores with a chain of state-run commissaries. Government bureaucrats cannot possibly micromanage a rapidly evolving technology such as high-speed Internet. Unlike roads and similar capital improvements, broadband networks require constant upgrades to serve the changing needs of consumers.

In the past four years, Verizon has built more than 7,000 miles of high-speed capable infrastructure in California. How does this compare to the government’s record of upgrading transportation infrastructure? More than a decade after the legislature introduced plans for a high-speed train system connecting San Diego and Sacramento, lawmakers have yet to finalize the 700-mile route, much less begin the projected 15-20 year construction process. The CBTF’s plan dwarfs this train proposal.

Technically, universal access exists in the U.S. Satellite service is available everywhere. Admittedly, it’s clunky, but terrestrial-based wireless alternatives are on the rise, that may not deliver 100 Mb/s, stand to deliver 30 to 40 Mb/s. And for the record, few U.S. households are using 100 Mb/s of bandwidth right now, even if they are among the 2 million that the Fiber-to-the-Home Council estimates are connected directly by fiber.

This may be heresy, but there is no “right” to fiber. Living in rural areas has trade-offs. Fresh air, cheap real estate and elbow room are great and I bet you can still get a good cup of coffee in town, it just may not be Starbucks or Seattle’s Best (and some think that’s a good idea). Companies like Zayo Bandwidth and Bend Broadband are showing that commercial carriers can reach rural customers. California should let them and others go for it rather than funnel subsidies to technologies that are costly and inefficient for the purpose.

The Utah state auditor’s office has opened an investigation into iProvo’s finances after receiving a tip that the municipal broadband operation was owed nearly $1 million from its retail partners.

iProvo is a fiber-to-the-home network owned and operated by Provo’s city electric department. Retail sales of phone, cable TV and high-speed Internet service are handled by three local companies—Veracity Communications, MStar and Nuvont Communications. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Veracity and Nuvont denied being in arrears. MStar officials, however, did not return calls from the reporter.

This would not mark the first time iProvo had trouble with a retail partner. Its first year of business was hampered by poor performance of HomeNet, which ultimately went out of business.

The retailer woes are only the latest for iProvo. In December, the operation reported that it was $614,000 in the red for the first four months of its fiscal year, which began July 1. That comes on top of several million in losses since its launch in 2005.

See coverage here and here.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts today became the first cable company CEO to address the annual Winter Consumer Electronics Show, emphasizing the role public broadband networking has in the delivery of sophisticated consumer information and entertainment platforms that leverage technology and content from multiple sources.

Broadband networks, as I’ve written often, are part of a much larger value chain for service. Each year it gets more and more difficult to categorize what the cable and telephone companies as merely infrastructure companies. Yet there continues to be a naive belief by city governments that they can easily duplicate cable TV service.

According to the CES press release, here's the bar Comcast is going to set for competitors this year:

“Roberts announced the end of an era for set-top boxes, and proclaimed a new generation for two-way platforms with the introduction of an OpenCable platform called tru2way. Panasonic president Toshihiro Sakamoto joined Roberts on stage to announce their co-creation of AnyPlay, the first portable DVR and DVD combination with tru2way capability. Roberts also announced that more than 1,000 HD choices will be available for the portable device in 2008.

”With the help of American Idol's Ryan Seacrest, Roberts debuted Fancast, a launch pad for the convergence of the PC and television, creating a personalized television experience. The individualized site links quickly and easily to content on the television, Internet, DVDs or in theaters. With the use of wideband instead of broadband, Fancast is able to download a two-plus hour HD movie in four minutes. It is the first site where consumers can find, watch and manage all their video content in one place.”

Yet the cities like Provo, Utah, and Lafayette, La., forge on, spending millions on their own broadband and cable TV systems, insisting to local taxpayers that simply because they are using fiber-to-the-home, they will easily match or succeed the quality and quantity of commercial broadband service. It doesn’t work that way. Service providers are competing on the strength of the service packages. So expect more head-scratching and puzzlement from the muni crowd as 2008 turns into another bum year for municipal broadband.

There have always been those who are magnanimous enough never to say, “I told you so.”

Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. iProvo, the municipally-owned wholesale fiber optic system, has lost $214,000 over the first four months of its current fiscal year, which began July 1, Provo’s Deseret Morning News reported last week. That figure does not include the four payments of $100,000 made by the city to cover the shortfall iProvo had anticipated going into the current fiscal year. So, all told, four months into fiscal 2008, the operation is $614,000 in the red.

In a policy study Reason released 12 months ago, I predicted that the losses would continue, growing larger year to year. If they continue at this current rate for the rest of the fiscal year, iProvo’s 2008 cost will be approach $2 million--$850,000 on top of the $1.2 million already budgeted from city coffers. iProvo spent $1 million in 2006. All this for phone, cable and/or Internet services that Provo residents can get from either Comcast, Qwest, DirecTV or Dish Network, not to mention a bevy of local ISPs, at comparable prices.

iProvo reports that it has 10,236 customers, a goal that its business plan had required it to reach two years ago. Even then, 10,000 has not proven to be the break-even point it was expected to be. Lower revenue per subscriber plus an abysmal churn rate–140 service activations per month offset by 120 cancellations—frustrate any attempt to gain market traction.

Some of the proposed quick fixes are rather cynical. iProvo is seeking to add additional retailers. The idea is that they would flip their captive customers to the iProvo network, immediately boosting the muni’s numbers (at the expense of commercial ISPs now carrying the backbone traffic). And while Mayor Lewis Billings is loath to raise taxes to support iProvo, he and interim project director Kevin Garlick have said they might raise the rates city departments pay for iProvo services. Any resulting tax increase then, while not funding iProvo directly, will fund the ability of the city to do business with iProvo.

Billings says he has “31 key strategies” for iProvo. He needs only one: An exit strategy. This route might be the best way to salvage the city treasury, taxpayer wallets and perhaps his own administration.

The Deseret News said it best in an editorial (which cited the Reason study) the next day:

“By now it should be obvious that private businesses, faced with such losses, would consider abandoning ship. Provo is treading where only private business ought to go, and doing so badly. Telecommunications is a market demanding the nimble feet of private investors. Trends and technologies are constantly shifting.”

Corpus Christi is remains one of two cities to which EarthLink remains committed, the other being Philadelphia, which stands as EarthLink’s highly visible entry into muni wireless. At the Public Technology Institute conference I report on below, Oscar Martinez, assistant city manager, disclosed some details of the 10-year EarthLink contract, stating that part of the success is understanding the culture of business, which can be much different from a government operation. “You must understand the goals of your partners and how they fit into the city goals.”

Under the terms of the Corpus Christi-EarthLink partnership:

-- EarthLink paid Corpus Christi $5.3 million for the 147-square mile city network built and financed by the city’s municipal gas and water utility for $7 million.
-- EarthLink pays the city a franchise fee of 5 percent of revenues to pay for right-of-way and other costs associated with network maintenance.
-- EarthLink pays $237,000 per year for use of the city’s fiber optic backbone to backhaul wireless network traffic.
-- EarthLink provides 10 free hot spots within the city, although not at airports and convention centers.
-- EarthLink must optimize the network to provide access to 95 percent of Corpus Christi Households
-- Corpus Christi is committed to paying $450,000 this year in wireless network services from EarthLink, although if the city fails to reach that plateau in 2007, the payments will be credited toward billings next year.
-- EarthLink will provide 100 hours a month of maintenance as part of the agreement. Above that limit, maintenance is billed at $200 per hour.
-- EarthLink must provide wholesale access to its network, but is permitted to charge prevailing market rates.

The city did not antagonize the private sector, but did its best to work with it, acknowledging upfront that their vendors and suppliers—EarthLink, Tropos Networks, Northrop Grumman, National Metering Services, not to mention the dozens of hardware and software companies that the various city departments have turned to provide equipment to work with the network—are in this to make a profit. Corpus also uses Verizon Wireless’ high-speed cellular data network as a back-up.

While this is only the first year of service and time will tell if Corpus Christi sees the return on investment it hopes, the city got off on the right foot by not pretending that the economics of broadband networking were somehow vastly different because it was a municipality and not a commercial company (as opposed to, say Lafayette, La.; Provo, Utah; Ashland, Ore.; and San Francisco, to name just four).

Anywhere municipal wireless is discussed, Corpus Christi, Tex., comes up. Even as cities around the country pull the plug on projects, analysts look to this south Texas city of 300,000 to understand exactly what went right.

The answer might turn out to be respect for both the private sector and the complexities of information technology. As such, Corpus Christi may turn out to be the exception that proves the rule that muni WiFi and broadband is incredibly difficult to pull off.

Corpus is nearing completion of its 147-square-mile network. It is just one of two cities where its private sector partner, EarthLink, has agreed to remain (the other is Philadelphia, its inaugural system, where sticking around might be a matter of pride).

Speaking at a conference last Thursday called “WiFi Done Right Part 2,” organized by the Public Technology Institute (PTI), a Washington-based non-profit organization promoting ideas in urban planning, officials ranging from the city manager to the chief of police sketched a picture of a wireless network that was conceived not as an end in itself, but as an element in a much larger information technology overhaul designed to improve city operations through strategic application of digital technology and large-scale networking. “Our focus was not on the digital divide and not on delivering service into people’s homes,” said George “Skip” Nowe, Corpus Christi city manager.

Market failure – two words heard when discussing the spread of broadband to small cities and less densely populated areas.

Market failure – the chief reason municipal broadband activists give when citing the need for government to fund infrastructure projects like Utah’s UTOPIA. There are some areas of the country, they say, where private investment won’t go. There are some areas of the country, they say, that offer no profitability to attract enterprises. The government, dammit, must step in.

Oh, really?

In catching up with my e-mail alerts, I came across “Zayo Plans Broadband Success in the Boonies” by Carol Wilson in Telephony OnLine. Seems like one entrepreneurial start-up sees opportunity in small markets.

Zayo Bandwidth is getting its start with the acquisition of a series of regional fiber networks, and founders Dan Caruso and John Scarano have lined up $225 million in funding from major venture capital firms, including Battery Ventures, Centennial Ventures, Columbia Capital, M/C Venture Partners and Oak Investment Partners. Caruso and Scarano are both veterans of ICG Communications and Level 3 Communications and are strategically positioning their new company to cover areas they believe are not well-served today.

The initial two acquisitions are PPL Telcom, an Allentown, Penn., company that serves the Northeast via a 4600-route-mile fiber network and Memphis Networx, a 200-route-mile fiber network serving that metro area. In addition, Zayo has definitive agreements in place to buy Indianapolis, Ind.-based Indiana Fiber Works (IFW) and Minneapolis, Minn.-based Onvoy.

“Our strategy is to acquire unique fiber-rich assets throughout the country to create a company that provides large bandwidth responsibly, quickly and reliably,” Scarano said in an interview. “We are being selective in the markets we invest in. Where we are buying the assets, there is limited deep metro competition. We generally do not have assets in NFL cities, but mostly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities that have ties to NFL cities. By investing in those areas where incumbents have not invested and where other competitive carriers have largely not invested, we will be able to keep up with the bandwidth demands of businesses in those areas.”

For those who have followed the muni broadband controversy, the fact that one of Zayo’s first investments was in Pennsylvania, where state legislators passed legislation preventing municipal government from setting up competitive broadband operations, is particularly significant. And in Tennessee, municipalities face stern tests and voting requirements before they can set up broadband operations. Opponents said these laws would lead to entire regions missing the digital era. Free marketers said laws like these, in keeping governments out of the market, would make states more attractive to a new generation of broadband investors.

Let me know when Zayo hits Utah.

I had the privilege yesterday of testifying before the Utah State Legislature’s interim subcommittee on Government Competition and Privatization. The subcommittee, which is doing some large scale fact-finding on privatization issues (Reason’s Geoff Segal took a turn at a session earlier this year), devoted the morning to looking at municipal broadband, particularly Utah’s two highly visible projects, UTOPIA and iProvo.

UTOPIA, short for Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, is an organization made up of 14 member cities who have agreed to support a statewide fiber optic backbone that sells wholesale bandwidth to commercial service providers, cable and Internet access companies, large end-users and real estate developers.

UTOPIA’s recent agreements with the final group have touched off questions, especially since in pursuit of them UTOPIA has stepped up recruitment of “non-pledging” members. “Non-pledging” members agree to allow UTOPIA’s network to connect into local facilities, but they do not have to commit sales tax revenues to the project if it needs extra money. As the price for not pledging sales taxes, UTOPIA officials explained, the consortium will not extend its fiber backbone to points all over town. UTOPIA parses this condition as if the town were sacrificing something.

Aside from conjuring a variation on a famous Groucho Marx quote, suggested by the title above, this “non-pledging” member category is incredibly self-serving.

Chicago is the latest city to pull the plug on plans to build a citywide municipal wireless system after failing to come to terms with EarthLink, its perspective partner, the Chicago Tribune reports today.

Chicago is the largest city so far to scrap its municipal plans in the face of new demands from commercial partners to act as “anchor tenant” and commit to purchase a certain level of wireless data services each year. Earlier this summer, Anchorage, Alaska, and Corona, California, decided to drop their plans for similar reasons. MetroFi was the commercial partner in both cases.

In addition to the disagreement over the city’s role as anchor tenant, a number of other factors influenced the decision, including the wider availability of affordable wired and wireless Internet connections, some provided by the city itself through other departments. For example, free wireless Internet is available in all 79 city public libraries as well as in large downtown public spaces such as the city’s Millenium Park and Daley Plaza.

Chicago never intended to be a leader in municipal Wi-Fi, said a city official, preferring instead to watch what happened in other cities and learn from that. Some of what's happening isn't pretty.

In San Francisco, bickering among elected officials has stalled progress for months. In Houston, where the city council approved a contract with EarthLink last spring, work on the project has yet to start.

As municipal wireless projects have hit one snag after another, prices for wired Internet have fallen. AT&T charges $20 a month for speeds of 1.5 megabits a second in Chicago and will provide connections half that fast for $10 to new subscribers, although more than 10 percent of residences in the metropolitan area cannot get digital subscriber line service because they are located too far from AT&T's switching centers.

It appears that EarthLink is re-evaluating its municipal wireless plans in Houston, which, at 640 square miles, represents the largest muni system so far contracted.

As part of the deal, the city agreed to pay EarthLink $2.5 million during the next five years to serve as the anchor tenant. That, it turns out, may not be enough to make the project worthwhile. The Houston Chronicle reports that EarthLink has delayed the start of construction and may be having doubts about the ultimate success of the operation.

The Chronicle reports:

But EarthLink officials, who declined to comment for this story, have expressed unease recently about the financial viability of wireless projects, which have yet to prove on a scale as large as Houston's that they will draw enough customers to make a profit.
The project here is expected to require an investment of about $50 million, according to EarthLink and city officials.

EarthLink officials have not publicly discussed Houston's network in particular in recent months. New CEO Rolla Huff said in late July the company is reviewing its business model and will not accept new projects until officials are confident they will get their money's worth.

"The Wi-Fi business that's currently constituted will not provide an acceptable return. We're actively exploring ways to scale this business more economically," Huff said during a conference call with analysts. "You can expect that we'll scale back both new-build capital as well as ongoing operating expense structure."

“But municipal networks aren’t on track to offer consumers a cheaper high-speed alternative to the powerful U.S. phone and cable companies, as some backers once envisioned.”

That statement comes from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal in a Page B1 article (subscription required) about the way cities are revising their priorities now that their grand plans to use municipal wireless systems to provide competitive retail broadband Internet service are crashing down around them.

The Journal goes on sums up the last few years in a mere two paragraphs:

“Initially, cities funded their projects out of their own budgets. That proved controversial, as telecom operators argued that it smacked of the government competing with the private sector. Now many cities are contracting out the work of building and operating the networks to companies like EarthLink and MetroFi, who team up with WiFi equipment providers like Tropos Networks Inc., Motorola Inc. and BelAir Networks. In many cases, the only thing cities are offering the companies in such deals are the rights to hang hundreds or thousands of small Wi-Fi transponders on public property such as lightpoles and traffic lights.

That model isn't holding up. The WiFi companies envisioned being able to offer subscription service to consumers at rates that were significantly cheaper than phone and cable broadband. But the unexpectedly high costs of building Wi-Fi networks -- the price tag can easily run into the tens of millions for a big city -- coupled with lower prices for broadband from some phone companies, has made it tougher for consumer Wi-Fi to be competitive. For example, EarthLink offers Wi-Fi for about $20 a month, a price that is on par with the lower-end Internet services now offered by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.”

My favorite quote, however, comes from muni wireless consultant Esme Vos, who noted that the pressure on cities to use the networks for government services is forcing them “to sit down and think about what they want to do with the networks. They actually have to come up with a business plan.” Of course, implied in that statement is that, up to now, cities haven’t bothered developing WiFi business plans, which, by and large, is true. Instead, blinded by hype, most have rushed headlong into these projects without really comprehending the financial and market risks they were taking on, something I have been saying for several years—and backing up with research—in the face of shrill antagonism and ad hominem attacks from true believers.

A doff of the chapeau to Adam Thierer at Progress & Freedom Foundation for citing for the San Jose Mercury’s critical look at “free” municipal wireless in Silicon Valley. The article is only the latest in a series of skeptical reports in papers around the country about what the actual cost commitment these projects are going to require from cities.
Here’s a portion of the report, available in full here (registration may be required).

While initially the project was lauded as a way to give the masses affordable Internet, key organizers have gently shifted the focus of the network from serving residents, for free, to giving businesses and city governments wireless access, for a price.

"The idea that we've always had is that this is not just a WiFi network for people to get their e-mail," said Seth Fearey, project leader for the Joint Venture Wireless Project. "Right from the start we said, `We know the operator has to make money; it's very, very important there be a sustainable business model."'

As system costs rise, there’s a certain degree of retconning going on about these systems—namely that the plan from the start was to serve city agencies first and the public second. Minneapolis wasted no time in getting word out about how its municipal wireless system aided first responders during last week’s bridge disaster. That’s all well and good, but that’s not how most of these projects were sold to taxpayers (the ComputerWorld article cited above mentions but ignores the significance of the fact that on the day of the disaster there were just 1000 people using the system. If it’s really outdoor wireless coverage for emergencies the city wants, it then begs the question if the city actually needs to create exclusive franchised municipal WiFi monopolies for the purpose. Why not open right of way to all would-be players, just like Anaheim did? As business models evolve, it’s simply a false dichotomy to assert it's muni or it's dead air.

Telecom business analysts continue to express more disappointment with municipal wireless. Market research firm Forrester Research, has identified basic flaws in municipal business models and Craig Settles, who increasingly comes across as a reluctant advocate of municipal wireless, continues to find fault with the way cities continue to view muni wireless as a ticket to free Internet services.

In the wake of decisions by Anchorage, Alaska, and Corona, Calif. to scrap muni wireless projects after their partner, MetroFi, said it could not offer free service, Carol Wilson at Telephony looks at new research in the first what she promises to be a series on the potential and pitfalls of municipal wireless.

Here’s some of what Wilson reports:

Those two situations reflect a new market reality that muni Wi-Fi isn’t about “free, free, free,” said Craig Settles, president of Successful.com, and author of the report, which was sponsored by [the International Economic Development Council].

“The market shouldn’t have gone in that direction in the first place,” he said. “A lot of cities saw other cities getting a Wi-Fi network, seemingly for free, and thought ‘We have to have one, too.’ Rational planning took a back seat in a number of cities. And the ones that went down the path of having everything for free are having the moment when the hens come home to roost. You can’t make money with this business model.”

The cities most likely to fail, Settles said, are those that put resources into building a network in the expectation that it will both attract new businesses, and generate income from consumer use.

Turning to the Forrester report (executive summary here), Wilson talks to author Sally Cohen, who addresses a key miscalculation cities are making—focusing on outdoor coverage when most WiFi use occurs indoors.

“Most of today’s consumer public Wi-Fi use happens indoors,” Cohen states in her report. “When using public Wi-Fi away from home, most consumers access the Net in public indoor spaces, such as hotels, office buildings, airports and train stations. Yet most municipal networks are designed to cover only public outdoor spaces, where most of today’s users don’t go online. In order for the wireless signal to reach the interiors of local businesses or homes, most muni networks require the purchase of additional equipment, a consideration that is likely not obvious – and thus potentially confusing – for potential consumer customers.”

Finally, Cohen addresses how muni networks are failing in closing the digital divide, a reason used to justify the heavy borrowing and spending needed to build them.

Another misconception, which both reports address, is that muni Wi-Fi can close the digital divide by making broadband access available to lower-income residents. Instead, Cohen reports, the people using public Wi-Fi are early adopters, who tend to be young, tech-savvy men with higher-than-average incomes.

While researching a story on the admissions practices of elite American universities for Reason magazine recently, I stumbled across a comparison of public and private technical colleges by Kent A. Farnsworth in the October 27, 2006 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, that was remarkable for two reasons: One, it was favorable to the point of glowing toward private colleges, even advising public colleges to follow their example. And two, it was written not by some free market enthusiast, but a professor and director of the Center for International Community College Education -- who describes himself as a long-standing “community college devotee.”

Fransworth said he had his epiphany about private colleges when he attended a conference in Beijing organized by the World Bank’s International Corporation in 2005. He said that as president of a community college, he had always been troubled by why so many students chose to pay 10 times more to private or proprietary schools over public community colleges.

The participants from emerging economies at this conference provided him the answer: Much to his amazement, he found, that, unlike the academic establishment in this country, these folks viewed the private sector in First World countries as the being far more effective in responding to the technical education needs of an economy than public colleges. “Most educators in the United States have chosen to believe that proprietary technical institutions cannot compete in quality and respectability with the public sector,” he wrote. “Yet educators in many other countries view them as setting the standard.”

Why?

Fransworth identifies four reasons:

One, private colleges firmly keep the needs of employers in mind when developing their curricula. This allows them to build relationships with local businesses so that sometimes they guarantee jobs to graduates years in advance.

Two, in order to prepare students for the workplace, these colleges place great emphasis on inculcating an ethic of professionalism, including insisting on proper attire in the classroom both by teachers and students. No strolling into class in torn jeans and an unwashed T-shirt.

Three, private colleges impose on themselves strict competency-based performance standards. They don’t just indicate to employers what skills their students have been taught as public colleges do, they offer an assurance that their students have actually mastered these skills.

And finally, they don’t force all students to waste time and money on courses in abstract liberal arts disciplines that have little relevance for employers. Rather, they emphasize applied courses in communications and mathematics.

By the way, a lot of private colleges in India too are embracing the applied over the theoretical approach to education as I reported in a piece for Reason magazine last year called: Where did India’s skilled force come from?
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36681.html
This is one big reason for India’s IT boom.

Academics who feed at the public trough might not understand this: But the bottom-line, so to speak, is that profits are a far more effective way of enforcing accountability on the higher education industry than either the good intentions of professors or heavy-handed state regulations.

A nasty spat has developed around Toledo, Ohio’s proposal to build a citywide broadband wireless system in partnership with MetroFi. The city council this week voted to withhold approval until it understood how the city planned to come up with the $2.16 million needed to fund it.

Bare-knuckled politics served as a backdrop to the proceedings, as Patsy Scott, director of Toledo’s Department of Information Services, quit, and was then apparently fired, in what appears to have been a tussle with Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. According to the Toledo Blade, Scott said she chose to resign after the mayor told her to threaten the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library’s levy if library director Clyde Scoles refused to endorse the muni WiFi project at this week’s council meeting. As an aside, the library system already had invested in its own WiFi network and offers free access at it libraries. Four hours after submitting her notice of resignation, Scott said she was dismissed from her job.

Finkbeiner denied making the threats against the library levy. Complicating the matter further is the fact that the Toledo Blade is a sister subsidiary of Buckeye CableSystem, which was a losing bidder for the Toledo muni contract. Both the Blade and Buckeye are owned by Block Communications.

Propensity toward civic infighting serves as another argument against municipal wireless. Toledo’s experience is reflected on a larger scale in San Francisco, where politics is the motivation on the part of several members of the Board of Supervisors to scuttle Mayor Gavin Newsom’s muni plan. Despite their high dudgeon about lack of broadband and digital divide, city officials know full well that muni wireless is an expensive vanity project—and they treat it as such. In Toledo, look no further than Scott, who as city IT director was a major asset to the project, yet ended up as a casualty. Readers can imagine how this sort of pettiness goes over at MetroFi, which is trying to run a business.

It bears repeating: government can’t do broadband. Toledo is a great example of how the nature of politics runs counter to intelligent planning and operations. One way or another, muni systems can’t help but fail. It’s in the genes.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors may not know it, but the new chairman of EarthLink has pretty much given them 60 to 90 days to make up their minds as to whether to pursue the municipal wireless partnership proposed by his company and Google.

Activists in San Francisco have been pushing the city council to dump the EarthLink-Google deal, which they see as too tainted by the profit motive, and pursue a taxpayer-financed municipal broadband system that will cost millions. The result has been months of gridlock as Mayor Gavin Newsom, who backs the EarthLink-Google deal, and vocal opponents on the city board, remain at loggerheads.

Meanwhile EarthLink, which once saw the muni wireless partnerships as a strategic growth area, has been getting second thoughts after finding that in other other markets network costs have doubled and competitors have dug in. Now comes a statement from Rolla Huff, EarthLink’s new CEO, that all of EarthLink’s operations are up for strategic review.

Here’s how InformationWeek reports it.

Saying he will spend the next 60 to 90 days reviewing EarthLink's current lines of business, Huff said, "I don't know at this moment where the company will wind up" in terms of overall strategy. "What I've told the board is that we will put together a clearly articulated and focused strategy of what EarthLink is going to be and what it's not going to be."

That's a fairly clear implication that at the moment it's unclear just what EarthLink is. One of the earliest nationwide Internet service providers, the Atlanta-based company succeeded by providing reliable and relatively low-cost Internet service to millions of consumers. Though the company still has 5.3 million subscribers (and $1.3 billion in annual revenue), its ISP business is declining fast as broadband options proliferate and it lost $30 million in its most recent quarter. Attempts to diversify, including joint ownership of virtual wireless carrier/handset vendor Helio, along with partner South Korean wireless company SK Telecom, and a series of municipal wireless projects, some in collaboration with Google, have not yet paid off.

More telling are statements that follow.

"The real question around municipal Wi-Fi is, 'What is the economic model going to look like?'" said Huff. "At end of day, we all have to understand what it's going to take to make money at this."

If he decides the business model is cloudy, Huff said, he won't hesitate to pull the plug -- even on highly visible projects like the Google-EarthLink effort to build a wireless network for San Francisco. "To the extent I don't think we have the capability to get to the point of profitability, I'll make that judgment, too."

EarthLink's strength lies in a fairly loyal customer base, but the monthly-subscriber model is changing, Huff said, for telcos and Internet companies alike. "The model is gradually moving away from monthly charges to a model that rewards those that can deliver very customized content to very well-understood groups of people."

This final statement may well be the epitaph for these costly, ill-conceived muni schemes. It runs counter to two major assumptions that muni enthusiasts have made since the beginning: First, all that’s needed to make broadband popular is a low price (or no price at all). Second, and more important, that broadband is a content-neutral utility, and one service is indistinguishable from another. Consultants have continually used these two dubious premises to sell municipal governments on throwing millions of dollars at misguided fantasies of creating cheap, city-run, broadband ubiquity. If EarthLink, which staked a lot on municipal wireless, is questioning them, perhaps its time some elected officials did, too.

The city of Philadelphia and its private industry partner, EarthLink, have begun to promote citywide municipal wireless service in the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia, which back in 2005 was the first city to commit to building a metro WiFi system that would cover all parts of town, is among the most closely-watched muni operations. Its initiative sparked a trend across the country. Yet as service launches in many cities, there’s already been disappointment about the costs, the coverage and customer interest. And many believe, as Glenn Fleishmann reports at WiFiNet News, that the municipal wireless will rise or fall on Philadelphia’s experience.

Thus far in Philly, reviews are mixed. Novarum, an independent consulting firm the city employs to measure network performance, found that service was available in 74 percent of the sections it tested. In a less scientific test, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters found they could get a signal about 50 percent of the time, although when they did connection, the link was of good quality.

Still, that percentage of coverage is coming at a higher cost than planned. The Inquirer also reports that EarthLink is deploying an average of 42 access points per square mile, more than twice as many as what WiFi planners thought would be necessary. Because EarthLink is funding the project, the extra costs don’t come out of taxpayers pockets (something not true for residents of cities that have run into the same coverage problems, but are relying on city utility funds to bankroll the buildout), but the added expenditures have forced EarthLink to re-adjust its muni strategy. The company, for example, will limit bids to projects in large cities.

More insight comes from Anthony Townsend, research director and wireless consultant at the Institute for the Future, who, while supporting community wireless initiatives, never pretended that the municipalities would be somehow exempt from the technology, cost and competitive challenges that commercial providers face.

“What's happening with these projects now is that it's harder to do than they originally thought,” Townsend said.

He likes Wi-Fi, he said, and in a previous job worked to promote wireless hot spots in parks and other places where the public can use them. He just does not think Wi-Fi will work well over a large area where bigger providers such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. already offer Internet service.

“It's not the wrong idea,” Townsend said. “It's just that Wi-Fi is turning out to be much more time-consuming and expensive than they thought.”

Several things can happen. The system could indeed be a success, in that it pays off for both Philly and EarthLink. The city itself sees the benefit of wireless applications and functionality and more residents get connected a lower prices. Or EarthLink could see the find itself hemorrhaging money and pull out, accepting the pain of any contract penalties in lieu of years of unprofitable operation.

Or the project can become slow drain on EarthLink revenues, where its networking costs continue to run ahead of sales. This has tended to be the experience with most muni systems. Look no further than Provo, Utah, which has once again revised its break-even numbers on its iProvo muni fiber system.

In that case look for EarthLink to renegotiate its agreement with the city, probably to raise prices and/or go slower on city build-out. This is the most likely outcome, because it saves face for everyone. As the past history of muni broadband shows, from a political perspective, anything short of a shutdown can be spun as a “success.”

From the reporting of the event, the atmosphere of Esme Vos’ MuniWireless 07: New England this week has been downright dour. Recent press reports, from AP, to InformationWeek to The Economist, had speakers and consultants on the defensive.

Suddenly we are hearing that cities need to re-adjust expectations; rethink business models and perhaps abandon the idea that citywide wireless mesh, whether city-funded or not, is an effective way to deliver cheap, ubiquitous broadband. And, by the way, give up on the idea that it can be free.

Even Vos herself is coming close to conceding the technology was overhyped and that few city managers grasped its cost and complexity. Yet she remains steadfast in her support for government-financed networks, even if she can’t quite put her finger on an actual model that works, at least outside of Europe, where business subsidies are a matter of course.

Here’s part of Computerworld’s report:

Vos was quick to tell conference attendees in brief remarks and reporters in interviews that none of the big U.S. cities with ambitious plans have fully deployed their networks. Some cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco have begun falling short of lofty political goals to serve poor neighborhoods and to listen to grass roots political organizations as well, Vos and other attendees pointed out.

"The [approval] process has moved away from its roots, and we've seen tension in San Francisco," Vos noted. "They've moved away from the community model."

Vos pointed to St. Cloud, Fla., as a success, but said that some IT managers will visit a conference and hear about successes where a town's geography was flat, only to encounter problems when they hit their hilly home communities that require installing many more access points for full coverage.

One attendee asked Vos if municipal Wi-Fi is working anywhere, which prompted her to mention St. Cloud. After her mention, the attendee asked again, "Is it really working anywhere?" Vos didn’t have a chance to respond.

Saved by the bell, I guess.

In a textbook case of how a politician can get caught up in the sizzle and hype of the Internet, Melissa Noriega, a city council candidate in Houston, declared Internet access was more important than a college degree.

“I think every family in Houston needs a computer. That’s really what the difference is now. It’s not a college degree. It’s not any of that. It’s whether you are wired, and whether you can get online and figure out your way,” Noriega told KRIV, the local Fox TV affiliate.

Noriega, who garnered 47 percent of the vote in Saturday’s municipal elections, qualified for a run-off against Roy Morales, who won 19 percent. The two are running for the council seat vacated by Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who stepped down last fall to make an unsuccessful Congressional bid.

Noriega was speaking in support of a public-private municipal wireless project underway in Houston—which stands to rank second largest after LA. While it does not stand to be as big a risk to taxpayers as some other projects, the political motive here, as well as in other cities, tends to stem from misplaced panic that without a government-mandated program for cheap broadband, cities will be left behind. Admittedly, Noriega’s “chuck-school-and-get-online” is the most extreme example of the breathless hyperbole that has surrounded municipal broadband, but it shows how civic leaders have a tendency to mislay perspective the moment someone says “broadband.”

Even cities that set up municipal networks through private-public partnerships may have to re-assess their promises and expectations, especially when it comes to free service.

MetroFi, one of the leading wireless network companies in the municipal space, has told cities it will not offer a tier of free services unless the city agrees to become an anchor tenant on the network. This has proved a setback to leaders in Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles, Ill.—the so-called Tri-Cities—which had been touting wireless as a new way of offering residents “universal free broadband.”

This was the same Tri-Cities that a few years back proposed a $62 million municipal fiber-to-the-home plan that area residents voted down twice.

MetroFi said that while a free, advertising supported tier of wireless access is viable, it cannot by itself support a city-wide network infrastructure. Adrian van Haaftan, MetroFi’s vice president of marketing, told Wireless Week, an industry trade publication, that revenues from municipalities must be part of the sales “equation.”

In other words, even private-public partnerships may be subject to the rules of the marketplace. In the end, it just might behoove cities to step aside and let build out proceed without their “help.”

Wireless Week reports:

Industry observers don’t seem surprised with MetroFi’s stance given that municipal Wi-Fi networks offerings are still relatively unproven and it was obvious from the advent of RFPs that business models would evolve as the market matured.

[Market research firm] IDC’s Godfrey Chua says that at a high level, given a relatively densely populated urban setting, metro-scale Wi-Fi coverage makes sense because the economics are very favorable at around $5 million to $15 million to cover a city.

“It’s a really cost-effective means of providing wireless access and delivering services,” says Chua. “A lot of folks are experimenting with different iterations that should be able to support the cost of the networks.

“But our view is that purely ad-supported networks are yet to be proven. Tiered services might work better because the service provider isn’t left counting on one revenue stream or one customer type to support their business. They need to be able to play to different market segments.

“But the key element is making municipalities anchor tenants. At the end of the day, I don’t see service providers building networks for free. Nobody builds networks for free.”

And here they come….

Lompoc, Calif., which spent $3 million on a citywide municipal wireless network reports that has signed up a whopping 281 customers since it launched service in September. That’s an investment of $10,676 for every customer, for those scoring at home. The town’s original feasibility study said the system would need 3,000 to break even. Town leaders say the system is attracting 24 customers a month. At that rate, in 12-1/2 years, Lompoc will finally be in the money.

The San Francisco Examiner reports that in Foster City, Calif., “for better or worse, a citywide free Wi-Fi Internet signal has enabled Foster City residents to take their e-mail, homework and digital assistants just about anywhere they go.”

Except in places the wireless network doesn’t, which in Foster City’s case is 40 percent of the town. The city, which contracted with MetroFi, had promised residents 95 percent coverage by now. It blames the coverage problems on the layout of homes in Foster City and the geography of the city itself, as if these factors didn’t exist when the network was originally designed.

Meanwhile, Willamette Week Online, in an article eloquently titled “Portland Wi-Fi Sucks Inside and Out, says Independent Evaluation,” reports the findings of Portland’s own Personal Telco Project.

In one of the more balanced articles I’ve come across about municipal wireless, Bryan Zandberg, reporter for the on-line Canadian publication The Tyee, looks at how 2007 may become the year of reckoning for many municipal wireless systems.

He turns to wireless consultant Craig Settles, who, while not completely anti-muni, has been critical of the tendency of city administrators to overpromise, particularly when in comes to in-building coverage and free service.

“This is the year where a lot of things are going to come to fruition,” said Settles in an interview with The Tyee. “A lot of theories are going to be proved out and a number of folks are going to be a little disappointed.”

Moreover, by the end of 2007, Settles tells Zandberg, setting up networks for the general public will be “the weakest pillar” when governments make their case for going wireless.

“I’m still not convinced that the idea of free Wi-Fi around the city is going to fly, in this city or in any city.”

Zandberg’s angle was ongoing delays in Vancouver, which announced it would build a city wireless network last year. The city still has not finalized on a plan.

Meanwhile, the novelty of municipal wireless is wearing off. Recall that one of the drivers of these plans has been political vanity: big city mayors looking to stamp their towns with the “first-to-be-all-wireless” cachet. Trouble is, how trendy and pioneering can you be when places like Fredericton, New Brunswick, not to mention Addison, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, and already have limited WiFi systems covering downtown areas and public parks?

But in an interview last week, [Vancouver City Councilor Peter] Ladner admitted it’s getting a little late in the game to come out looking like a world leader. Along with many high-tech business leaders in Vancouver’s new media sector, he now just wants to avoid the embarrassment of failing to keep up with the Joneses.

“Fredericton got a return from the branding of being the first [to do it] and being a very happening town. But now that everybody’s doing it, it doesn't really pay back that much.”

And in politics, that’s a killer.

Someone or something disrupted service for 1,000 of the 3,800 users of Moorhead, Minn.’s municipal wireless network in late February, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting.

Let’s recall that early critiques of municipal systems mentioned that radio systems that use unlicensed spectrum, as Moorhead’s does, would be prone to interference from everything from microwave ovens to garage door openers to radio controlled remote control toys.

More chilling was the city’s response. Purely on the say-so of GoMoorehead network administrator Kevin McClain, who believed the source of the interference was a local residence, police shut down power to the house and executed a search warrant for “a directional antennae” (it’s not clear whether the newspaper or the search warrant made muddled the use of the singular indefinite article and the Latinate plural of antenna).

You’d need a lot of radio power to jam wireless service to more than quarter of GoMoorehead’s user base. Although the interference stopped when the power was cut off, police found nothing at the home and no arrests were made. So either the interference was unintentional or the home itself was not the source of the problem.

So what happened? Police are still investigating. The paper does not report the perspective of the hapless homeowner. My money’s on the likelihood that the interference stemmed from a problem within the network itself, not a malicious attack. It’s not as if Moorhead has no history of interference problems. Here’s a trade paper report from last October on Moorhead’s use of a device to detect and resolve RF problems.

“It's alarming just how much interference is out there that you don't know about,” Travis Durick, wireless network engineer for the city, told SearchNetworking.com.

At [Minnesota State University-Moorhead], cordless phones and microwaves often interfere with or create trouble on the wireless network, Durick said. In one instance, four small wireless surveillance cameras installed in one building tucked behind lighted exit signs interfered and made the wireless channel unavailable. Complaints came pouring in. Durick said he found the access point that wasn’t working and replaced it, but there was still no connectivity. Using Spectrum Expert, he was able to determine why the access point wasn’t transmitting and was able to fix the problem.

The city of Moorhead’s Wi-Fi deployment created a different set of challenges. In many cases, too many devices were operating on the same channel and were canceling one another out.

Either way, the city’s reaction was overkill and serves as another example of why municipalities shouldn’t be in the broadband business in the first place. Say what you want about the phone and cable companies, but they can’t turn off your electricity on a mere whiff of suspicion.

A Pacific Research Institute survey of 52 municipal broadband systems has found that they have soaked up $840 million in local taxpayer money over the past 20 years, while failing to gain the traction of positive cash flow amid greater and greater debt..

Wi-Fi Waste: The Disaster of Municipal Communications Networks, by Sonia Arrison, Dr. Ronald Rizzuto and Vince Vasquez, represents the latest round-up of municipal broadband financial performance, confirming again what past studies have shown: municipal broadband systems invariably costs more and deliver less than promised. They heavily on loans and transfers from established municipal utilities such as electricity and water. Even with the power of the public purse, 77 percent of the time, muni networks can’t pay their way, the report states.

Dalton, Ga., (est. 2005 population 32,140) gains the dubious distinction of the nation’s top municipal “money pits,” accounting for $171 million, or $5,320 per capita, of the $840 million spent across the 52 cities studied.

The other nine cities are:
Tacoma, Wash, $110.9 million
Grant County, Wash., $76.4 million
Jackson, Tenn., $63.7 million
Alameda, Calif., $59.3 million
Provo, Utah, $45.7 million
Newnan, Ga., $41.8 million
Bristol, Va. $37.8 million
Marietta, Ga., $25.9 million
Muscatine, Iowa, $22.9 million

Together, the ten systems account for 78 percent of the total government-initiated spending within the telecom industry.

Download the 90-page report here.

Four major Hollywood studios have signed agreements to license content on BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer Web site, which until now made its name among users as an easy source of unauthorized movies downloads.

The deal, covered here and elsewhere Monday, makes BitTorrent a legitimate site for rental of film and TV titles from Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers and, on a limited basis MGM.

While this deal won’t end all P2P pirating on BitTorrent, it will be interesting to see if Culver City, Calif., which has been blocking P2P sites on its municipal wireless system since last year, makes the site available. Although it is not clear if BitTorrent specifically was censored, the city proudly announced that it was blocking all popular P2P sites (of which BitTorrent, which accounts for 1 million illegal downloads a day, surely qualifies) in order to battle piracy and pornography. Others, including myself, said it was a thinly-disguised excuse for dealing with the massive congestion problems free bandwidth, coupled with a self-imposed policy of network neutrality, created for the city officials tasked with managing the wireless network.

So now we’ll see. Now that BitTorrent has joined the side of the angels, will its site be unfiltered? Don’t bet on it.

The founder and managing director of the biggest national consultancy for municipal wireless systems has ripped left-wing activists in San Francisco for their attempts to get the city dump its deal with EarthLink and Google and pursue a multi-million dollar, taxpayer-financed city-owned wireless network.

In what amounts to a repudiation of San Francisco’s chapters of the Institute of Self-Reliance, Media Alliance and the American Civil Liberties Union, Greg Richardson, head of Civitium, which provides consulting services for cities that are pursuing and evaluating municipal wireless systems, accused both groups of promoting a political agenda at the expense of a sound business plan that would create a metropolitan wireless system that could provide free service to low-income residents.

Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to put the EarthLink-Google contract on hold in order to study the feasibility of a government-owned system. As a result, many feel that EarthLink and Google will ultimately pull out.

Civitium was hired by San Francisco to evaluate the bids for its citywide wireless plan. The company also is working with Chicago, Corpus Christi, Tex., Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix. A list of client cities is available here.

“For the record, Civitium supports private-ownership of Wi-Fi for San Francisco, and we support the recommendations for public-ownership of fiber (with an open, wholesale model) presented by our partner, CTC,” Richardson wrote Feb. 14 on Civitium’s blog.

In last Friday’s very quick “debate” between muniwireless.com founder Esme Vos and myself on CNBC (view it here), Vos