Free and Low-Cost Wireless

Beyond Coffee House Loitering

 

Speakers:

Chris Vein, Senior Technology Advisor to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

Esme Vos, Founder, Muniwireless.com

Jim Forster, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco Systems

 

Immoderator:

Lauren-Glenn Davitian, Founder and Executive Director, Center for Media and Democracy

 

Note Taker:

Amit Asaravala, Manager of Editorial & Content Strategy, TechSoup

 

Key Points

Initial Points from the Speakers:

Jim Forster:

·        Even poor people spend money on communications. Studies show even the poorest spend ~5% of their income on communications.

·        Mesh networking -- wireless nodes that have more clever networking capabilities and pick the best path -- is on the rise. The cost: $20K-$80K per square mile. "Seems like a lot of money, but it's not. It's a couple of cars." The scale of things: $3 mil for a section of a bike path in Palo Alto, CA.

·        The barriers to internet access:

·        Knowledge -- understanding of the technology

·        Capital -- more required in regions with no grid power

·        Licensing -- VoIP operators jailed in Namibia last month

·        NGOs can: play a great role in this but ultimately they should not be in the networking business.

·        ISPs can: supply people with technical expertise.

·        Community can: Supply facilities, protection from vandalism, and some of the capital?

·        ISP gets: customers and revenue

·        Community gets: cheaper voice service (where legal), connected to the world.

 

Esme Vos:

·        Think of this as the next big IT upgrade. We went from mainframes to desktops to networked desktops and so on to community wireless.

·        Example: Corpus christi was replacing utility meters in houses with wireless meters -- these will communicate with lamppost base stations. At this point, they figured it's a good idea to extend this network to allow for community wireless.

 

Chris Vein:

·        SFConnect project serves need to take services out into the community rather than making community come into City Hall to access services.

·        What is the governments role?

·        provide vision

·        understand the need

·        find ways to meet need

·        communicate

·        plan for the future

·        Issues important to San Francisco in this roll-out:

·        privacy

·        competition

·        performance

·        open Process

How do you build in privacy protections on a municipal network?

According to Jim Forster:

·        This isn't a new challenge. The process of coming up with safeguards and process for working through concerns is one that governments deal with all the time (if government is running health clinics, etc.)

 

According to Esme Vos:

·        If people are paranoid, they won't use the network. If they don't use it, it's not commercially viable. So building in privacy protection benefits commerce.

What are the top three things a community organizer needs to know to get community wireless in their towns?

According to Jim Forster:

·        Try it on a small scale.

·        Get the book Wireless Networking in the Developing World

 

According to Esme Vos:

·        Try to involve the community as much as possible.

·        Be really careful when the incumbents come and respond to your bids; they may offer bandwidth that's not competitive with their own wireless offering.

·        Try looking for open source alternatives.

 

According to Chris Vein:

·        Be careful: What you wish for you might get.

·        Communicate, communicate, communicate.

·        Ynderstand that no deal is perfect -- there is always going to something wrong with it. Just go with it and do the best you can.

 

Further Reading

Web:

American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California

http://www.aclunc.org

 

MuniWireless

http://www.muniwireless.com

 

Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network

http://www.cuwireless.net

 

Nepal Wireless Networking Project

nepalwireless.net

 

Association for Progressive Communication's Wireless Training

www.itrainonline.org/itrainonline/mmtk/wireless.shtml

 

Books:

Wireless Networking in the Developing World

http://wndw.net/

Events:

Airjaldi Summit, Conference & Workshops, Oct. 25-29, Dharamsala, India

http://www.airjaldi.com