The Future of Wi-Fi Could Run Through Old TV Infrastructure

Free, high-capacity Internet access using old television frequencies

"Two academics are recommending that governments develop free, public Wi-Fi networks using obsolete TV frequencies. The researchers believe this could potentially lead to 'Super Wi-Fi' systems popping up across the globe.

"Broadcasting TV via old-school frequencies received through antennas has almost entirely given way to digital services, leaving blank channels or 'white spaces' -- TV frequencies that are no longer in use. In a new study, researchers suggest transforming these abandoned frequencies into a 'wireless commons.'

"Distributing public Wi-Fi through underused TV infrastructure, they say, has many potential benefits: Wi-Fi traveling through antenna and radio frequencies can extend beyond six miles, according to a recent report. Moreover, it may have the capacity to penetrate through walls, buildings, vegetation, and other obstacles that often disrupt current Wi-Fi infrastructure. This range, coupled with public access, could result in 'unprecedented low-cost,' the new study suggests, because 3G and household wireless services would likely be less in demand.

"'Individuals, institutions, and companies would be far less dependent on expensive mobile communications networks in conducting their digital communication,' says Arnd Weber of Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and a co-author of the new report."

The rest of the story: http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/11/the-future-of-wi-fi-could-run-through-old-tv-infrastructure/383231/

Action: Tell the FCC and Congress You Support Net Neutrality

Here is a special action page that pipes your personal comments into the FCC electronic filing system for public comments on net neutrality, and forwards your comments to all your members of Congress at the same time.

We have already seen blatant moves towards making a two-tier toll road out of our wide open democratic internet, as when Comcast started discriminating against particular users recently and Warner Cable began experimenting with metering. Nor have the service providers shied away from censorship, as when the AT&T blocked Pearl Jam's criticism of Bush, and when Verizon censored NARAL's pro-choice text messages. This is a chance to counter the high-priced lobbyists and the avarice of the telcoms and cable companies.

Net Neutrality FCC Comments (anyone can use this link):
<http://www.usalone.com/laesch/pnum786.php>

Facebook Users:
<http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum786>

Action: Tell the FCC and Congress You Support Net Neutrality

Here is a special action page that pipes your personal comments into the FCC electronic filing system for public comments on net neutrality, and forwards your comments to all your members of Congress at the same time.

We have already seen blatant moves towards making a two-tier toll road out of our wide open democratic internet, as when Comcast started discriminating against particular users recently and Warner Cable began experimenting with metering. Nor have the service providers shied away from censorship, as when the AT&T blocked Pearl Jam's criticism of Bush, and when Verizon censored NARAL's pro-choice text messages. This is a chance to counter the high-priced lobbyists and the avarice of the telcoms and cable companies.

Net Neutrality FCC Comments (anyone can use this link):
<http://www.usalone.com/laesch/pnum786.php>

Facebook Users:
<http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum786>

Equal Access: Meraki to Tackle City-wide Wi-Fi for San Francisco

If municipalities in Europe and Asia can routinely provide wi-fi, sooner or later we will be forced to catch up here. Could it be that this is a service, like water, power, police and fire protection, education, parks, libraries and prisons, that is better suited to organization as a public service than a business?

City-wide Wi-Fi might not be a pipe dream for San Francisco residents after all. After successfully rolling out mesh networks in 6 San Francisco neighborhoods, Meraki Inc. has announced its plans to blanket the entire city with coverage by the end of 2008.

Google and Earthlink hatched a similar plan for a municipal Wi-Fi project last year that ultimately fizzled. However, Meraki believes that by bypassing coverage for the public safety sector, relying on volunteers, and installing dozens of wireless gateways on rooftops it can rapidly roll out coverage.

...be sure to visit Meraki's website.

The rest of the story: Wired

Public Access: NYC's Biggest Hotspot

Just when it seemed like citywide Wi-Fi was kaput, the wireless Internet technology has come to New York City.

On Thursday, CBS announced the creation of a 20-block wireless high-speed network in Manhattan. Dubbed the "CBS Mobile Zone," it stretches from Times Square to the southern portion of Central Park. Within the zone, people with Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones, laptops or PDAs will be able to access the Internet and make calls over the Internet for free. CBS has committed to a six-month trial of the technology.

The experiment should provide hope for boosters of municipal Wi-Fi following the recent bust-up of Wi-Fi projects in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and St. Louis. EarthLink, once a high-profile backer of the technology, is grappling with a restructuring that has left planned projects in Chicago and Houston in the lurch. Projects in San Francisco and St. Louis have been delayed and downsized, due to technical issues and city politics.

The rest of the story: Forbes

Second thoughts: Municipal Wi-Fi Easier Said Than Done

As you know if you've tried to use it, wi-fi access in Santa Monica is hit or miss. Instead of organizing wi-fi around the excess bandwidth of major users -- businesses such as Yahoo, Google, Sony; educational institutions such as SMCC; government entities such as the city itself -- Santa Monica is planning to hire a private service provider to build a system over the next few years (why it should take "years" to provide service to 8.3 square miles of flat terrain is a topic for another time).

According to reports, instead of contracting with a big player like Earthlink or a civic-minded company like Google, the city plans to hire AzulStar, a little Michigan-based company specializing in municipal access, to create a seamless city-wide network of hotspots.

According to AzulStar’s website, the company has built four city-wide systems to date, in such major metropolitan areas as Grand Haven, Michigan and Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Although touted as a free service, in reality, relatively slow, advertising-supported public access will be available to residents and tourists for free, but they will be asked to pay for faster ad-free service. Businesses will required to pay for access separately, which will require the creation of some sort of enforcement mechanism to keep companies from logging on to the slower but costless version.

Any city-wide plan will be a big advance over the patchwork of public hotspots, now numbering 11 and growing, including City Hall, the Third Street Promenade, the Pier and Virginia Avenue Park, that make current access so spotty (at the end of May, three more parks -- Reed, Cloverfield, and the new park at the airport -- were scheduled to be on line).

A city-wide system will also enable the City of Santa Monica to tie all municipal services together on one wireless network.

Some of the problems with using a private company to provide a public service (instead of relying on a municipally owned system or a city-wide cooperative, two methods widely used in other parts of the world), as well as some of the technical difficulties particularly irksome to commercial providers, are outlined in an article published this week by The Economist (2007-05-25).

Long before Walt Disney built his theme park in Anaheim, this savvy little city 30 miles south of Los Angeles was deploying cutting-edge technology to improve its citizens’ lot and upstage neighbouring communities. It was one of the first cities in America to build its own electricity grid -- to illuminate its streets and lure late-night shoppers from nearby towns.

The innovation continued. Before most had even heard of the internet, Anaheim had networked the city with fat communications piping, so residents could have a variety of cable TV providers and telephone companies to choose from, while local utilities could automate their meter reading and businesses could provide all manner of online services. Now the city is in the process of blanketing itself with a wireless broadband network.

Anaheim is not the only city turning itself into a giant Wi-Fi hotspot. No fewer than 175 municipalities and metropolitan regions in America are building community-wide networks. A similar number are in the planning stage. But having blazed the trail in network services, Anaheim is the municipality that other cities are watching the closest -- all the more so because the company rolling out its wireless network is Earthlink.

Once the loudest booster of municipal Wi-Fi and still the biggest in the business, Earthlink is having second thoughts. Having turned in a $30m loss for its most recent quarter, Earthlink now says it is “re-evaluating its position in the muni-Wi-Fi market." The announcement has sent shivers through city halls across America.

Like Anaheim, most municipalities installing wireless networks are not paying for the privilege, but relying on providers like Earthlink to foot the bill. Having won the right to supply Wi-Fi services to a municipality, most companies expected to recoup the investment though subscriptions and advertising.

Neither revenue stream has lived up to expectation. Originally, Earthlink thought it would be in clover if 20-25% of households signed up for its wireless internet service. It now realises it will be lucky to get 15%. And without the eyeballs, advertisers have been slow to come aboard.

The trouble is that too many cities' schemes were half-baked to start with. In some cities, such as Philadelphia, the mission was to offer cheap (or even free) internet connections to the poor. In others, such as Anaheim, a more pragmatic, market-driven approach was adopted. Elsewhere, populist mayors and city councils pandered to voters with promises of universal internet access. In almost all cases, however, the reigning philosophy was “build it and they will come."

What no one seems to have bargained for was that, while Wi-Fi technology works perfectly well over short distances within a home, coffee shop or airport, it doesn’t work all that well outside. Wi-Fi’s popularity stems from its use of the unlicensed, 2.4 gigahertz part of the radio spectrum. But being unfettered by licences and regulations means that there are many PCs jostling for access. Adding to the mayhem are the domestic appliances, like cordless phones and microwave ovens, that radiate in the same frequency band.

This creates enough trouble inside a building. Outside, there are the added problems of foliage, tall buildings and hills. These can reflect, absorb or otherwise interfere with a municipal Wi-Fi’s signal, beamed from aerials on lamp-posts and traffic lights.

Because of these glitches, network operators have found that the old rule of 15-20 Wi-Fi aerial nodes per square mile is nowhere near good enough. Nowadays people expect to connect to the internet using low-powered devices such as laptops and Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones. To meet this demand, operators must install twice as many nodes per square mile.

The cost escalation does not stop there. In opting for external Wi-Fi, municipal operators seem to have forgotten that the vast majority of dwellings in America use chicken wire in their walls. As every high-school physics student learns, a mesh of chicken wire can screen out electromagnetic fields, especially those caused by radio waves. For an external Wi-Fi beam to be detected indoors, homes have had to be kitted out with signal-boosting wireless modems.

These complications have made a mockery of service suppliers’ business plans. When Earthlink says it is re-evaluating its position in the municipal Wi-Fi market, what it really means is that it can’t make money out of communities with fewer than 2,500 households per square mile. Even then, it needs assurances that the city will commit to buying a big chunk of the network’s capacity for such “anchor tenancies” as emergency services, traffic and parking control, video surveillance and internet telephony, as well as automated meter reading and other utility services.

This is precisely how it should be. Internet access for residential users was never going to be the mainstay for municipal Wi-Fi. Most communities are pretty well served these days by cable, DSL and satellite internet services. As a result, competition has beaten broadband-access charges down to around $15 a month. And where such services are not competitive, they quickly become so the moment municipal Wi-Fi presses its nose to the window.

No, the future of municipal wireless broadband rests on making cities safer, saner and simpler to manage. Trivial pursuits like downloading songs or posting video clips can be safely left to phone and cable companies."

Azulstar is using in Santa Monica the same business model, attempting to recoup its investment in infrastructure and to turn a profit through subscriptions and advertising, that the Economist reports is a failure elsewhere. At least Earthlink and its ilk have the deep pockets that would enable them to live up to their commitments even while losing money for a while. How long will a little outfit like AzulStar be able to hang in without making a profit? I guess we're going to find out.

The Economist

New Media: FON challenging starbucks' wi-fi

"Listen up, Frappucino-lovers -- cheap Wi-Fi could be headed to a Starbucks near you.

"...Madrid, Spain-based FON [has] launched a campaign called 'FonBucks,'...to hand out free wireless Internet routers (for which the company normally charges about $40) to people who live near Starbucks coffee shops...

"FON is one of the most interesting new entrants in the wireless industry, largely due to its unique model. Here's how the service works: For a small fee, ($2 per day), anyone can use a FON network when near a hotspot, but FON members... must purchase a wireless router and then choose to either give away the extra bandwidth for free, or charge for it...

"Of course, the success of the service relies on widespread growth...exactly what FON is hoping the FonBucks campaign — and more importantly, soon-to-launch strategic partnerships — will help achieve...

"If it sounds warm and fuzzy, it is and it isn't. Like Vonage and Skype, FON is a disruptive company in an industry that, like most others, doesn't like to be disrupted....[T]hey did run through 10,000 free Wi-Fi routers very quickly in a similar campaign they ran recently. After all, who doesn't like free Internet access? Or frothy Frappuccinos, for that matter."

The rest of the story: Third Screen.

[FON is available on Main Street, Santa Monica at Library Alehouse.]

Access: Villaraigosa announces plan for citywide Wi-Fi by 2009

"Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa outlined plans Tuesday to blanket Los Angeles with wireless Internet access in 2009, in what would be one of the nation's largest urban Wi-Fi networks.

"The L.A. Wi-Fi initiative would give Los Angeles residents, schools, businesses and visitors uninterrupted high-speed Internet connections — for work, research, Web browsing or even phone calls.

"More than 300 municipalities nationwide already have launched plans for similar networks based on the Wi-Fi technology that has become popular at coffee shops, bookstores, public parks and countless other so-called hot spots...

"The city's existing commercial broadband providers — AT&T Inc., Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications Inc. — aren't planning to oppose the city's efforts. Verizon, which once joined cable giant Comcast Corp. to try to curtail Philadelphia's wireless project, no longer stands in the way of municipalities."

The rest of the story: L.A.Times

Connectivity headed for the nation's 4th largest town, too:
City Wi-Fi coming, but will it be worth what you'll pay? (Houston Chronicle)

Dogs Gone

Most troubling about the campaign to unleash dogs upon the beach in Santa Monica is its disingenuousness. To bolster her case, for example, Santa Monica Daily press columnist Carole Orlin cites the safety record of pet visitations at nursing homes and hospitals, while failing to mention that these programs are motivated by hoped-for therapeutic benefits and are limited to a very small number of carefully monitored animals in highly controlled environments that are cleaned by professional staffs and protected by extensive liability insurance.

Do we really want to worry about the risk from additional semi-curbed canines on our crowded strand? Statistics show that nearly 2% of the population is bitten by a dog each year, the great majority of and most severe bites and attacks being suffered by children under 12 years old. If the mutt mavens are successful in their designs, some personal injury attorney can save everybody a lot of time by opening a kiosk right at the beach. Along those lines, I have a question: given the inevitability of dog bites if a large number of animals is introduced into a crowded venue, especially one heavily populated by casually supervised children (and with full appreciation that most severe dog attacks involve kids), won't the city and state governments be on the hook for potentially millions of dineros in damages if they knowingly create an inherently unsafe situation? Just asking.

Orlin also anecdotally points to her experience at the "completely open and dog friendly beach" in Carmel, from whence she returned "amazed at how beautiful and clean it was." Well, maybe. I remember the Carmel beach as sparsely attended, certainly when compared to ours, which is as heavily trafficked as Times Square. Closer to home, I myself am "amazed" at the amount of dogtritus already at the beach, especially on the sidewalks and bike path where dog owners can't fall back on the excuse that they lost it in the dunes.

Speaking of the sidewalks and bike path, isn't it also disingenuous to describe the off-leash proposal as being limited to "a 1/10-mile area of beach?" How are the pups going to get there? Dropped by helicopter? Catapulted from the palisades? No, they're going to walk there, depositing packages in the sand and on the byways as they go. And how are the animals going to be confined to the off-leash zone? Do the dogafiles propose barricading the beach at each end of the dog pound with fences? And, by the way, 1/10 of a mile doesn't sound like much, but if the fenced-in area extends from the street to the water line, what's being discussed is privatizing 50-60 acres of public beach.

The most disingenuous argument of the dog people Orlin puts this way: "Dog owners appear to want the same access to recreational opportunities as do tennis players, soccer players, volleyball players, surfers, sunbathers and others." As things stand now, though, everyone already has equal right to use to the beach. Including dog owners. It's the pooch park promoters who want to make some residents of Animal Farm more equal than others.

If dog owners are comparable to anyone, it is smokers, who are also welcome at the beach but have been asked to leave their filthy habit at home. Besides whatever messes are left by dogs that fail to reach the designated area before letting go, Orlin can't seriously think that dog owners, enough of whom already can't be bothered to pick up after their animals on sidewalks and streets and in neighbors' yards, will be able locate their pets' droppings in acres of sand, even if they want to.

Make no mistake: if the fidolators get their way, the beach will be dirtier. Parents of small children, to take one interested group, should ask themselves if they truly want to have more dogs at the beach (you haven't enjoyed the full, rich experience of parenthood until you've watched your little one pop a sand-encrusted "tootsie roll" he's found into his mouth). Turds aside, don't forget that many canines urinate copiously, and there is nothing much even the most conscientious dog owner can do about that. If you're already afraid to let your children play freely on your urine-soaked front lawn, do you really want the same concern on your treks to the beach? For that matter, does any of us look forward to spreading our blanket in a giant box of doggie litter that isn't even odor-absorbing and pine-scented?

Cleaning our beach is already a formidable job. We shouldn't be entertaining proposals that will make it harder. Some boosters of the canine corral seemed determined to press the issue, though, and they are organizing others to hound public officials about it. The rest of us may want to let the city council and the coastal commission know we think about it, too.