One of the most interesting panels at Freedom2Connect was the municipal panel.
There were three speakers:
Each speaker gave a brief talk, which was followed by a group Q&A. A few questions were asked after Baller and Vos had spoken — both are wireless advocates. (Baller is an attorney representing municipalities, Vos runs a Web site covering municipal wireless.) Salter’s company is involved in municipal fiber builds.
The public is getting it. They’re asking good questions. They’re getting solid answers. The media has been very supportive, with brave articles in USA Today and Wall Street Journal saying there is something important going on. The fact the U.S. is lagging in broadband has played a major role in getting peole to wake up.
I’m one of the few that believes being 16th or 19th is not as significant a problem as the other problems we have. It’s not just the rank. It’s that we’re behind in cost of unit of bandwidth. Our growth of new users isn’t as great as in other countries. We need to move forward on all fronts and move that ability to connect through a variety of means out to as many new people as we can and lift all boats.
(Meanwhile, on the conference WiKi, Brett Glass argues that muni WiFi takes away potential capacity from private actors.)
Over time I see compromises as less and less acceptable. We need to change the tone and get rid of laws already on the books. Incumbents have already undermined agreements we made, and if that’s the case let’s just get rid of the laws and have community networks.
This year we’ve seen a considerable drop of activity in the states. The first time a bill was introduced in Indiana we were faced with a 40-6 vote against us in the Senate. We pulled together our coalition. This is not a public vs. private issue. it’s about economic development, homeland security, education, health care, cultural enrichment, and quality of life. That message is coming from many voices.
Our positive trend does not end our challenges. We are not done with state legislative sessions, and as long as a legislature is in it has power to do good or harm, mostly harm.
This is a volatile time. Bills can be introduced that seem innocuous but have significant consequences. I hate the words level playing field and fair competition, because depending on who utters them there can be a real problem.
In addition, in the laws we have prescriptions of philosophy and reognition of counter philosophy. They’re not self-enforcing, the devil is in the details. In Louisiana we can’t be comfortable that words on the page will be interpreted as written, without a partner dealing in good faith.
We have run into predatory pricing, denial of access to programming, denial of access to customers, and a whole range of dirty tricks. We need to find enforceable mechanisms to deal with that issue.
Forget the anti-trust laws. They don’t work. They’re too expensive, too time-consuming, with too many victims before an effective result.
I’m now in an anti-trust litigation in South Florida with the major incumbent, and it has been exhausting for the major cable operator. We need clear enforceable rules that can be administered, understood, and result in quick relief.
There seems to be a trend where municipal governmens see the benefits but want it free. They say, do it for me for nothing, I will facillitate but I don’t want to make a commitment of resources or take risks. That worries me because there is no such thing as a free lunch. People have to pay for service. What the idea of free service brings is it can only be of a certain level that understates the opportunity.
I hope as more RFPs get on the stret we will not lose our understanding of what the benefits are and reevaluate the commitmens it will take to make these new networks work togeher.
I’m also concerned that with the great opportunity many opportunists come forward. Some are solid, some are learning on the job.
(Back on the Wiki, Brett asks what you do with P2p’ers who exhaust the free bandwidth)
Thre will be charlatans. We need to be very careful.
Every mistake we make will be magnified by the industry. That is not fair. We have many successes, which are forgotten. Any failure is used against us over and over again. We all know th stories that have become factoids of failure. We need to be careful because we all need tow ork goether.
visit www.baller.com/comm_broadband.html community broadband page.
I’ve had my blog since 2003 and seen an explosion from cities and counties.
When I sarted covering I only saw networks without dialup. Now the big cities are trying to leverage this. The cities are putting out RFPs without waiting – San Francisco, Portland, Houston, Chicago.
There are many automated meter reading projects. There are public safety projects. If you have a public network why not use it for public purposes. The cities keenest on deploying networks are the fastest growing. They cannot afford to add personnel. They need to deliver services over a bigger area with bigger populations.
I see this as the next big IP upgrade. We get bogged down in telco speak – it’s nothing more than that. Why use expensive mobile phones when you have cheap VOIP on WiFi?
It’s interesting the cable operators are getting interested in this.
I agree with Jim in the problem of free. They say they don’t have any money but the next day they find $70 million for a NASCAR museum. They complain about $3 million for a WiFi network then find $70 million for a NASCAR museum? We should be harder on people about their priorities.
Baller – The incuments getting into municipal wireless would be wonderful but how do we enhance the prospects of public-private cooperation like that.
Sege – The dynamics inside these incumbents aren’t entirely aligned. A lot of the interest in partnering with cities comes rom the business services part of ATT. It turns out the business services guys make their money on T1 and Centrex. Guess what cities don’t want? So they hear they want to buy a $10m muni wireless network. I had a guy work with me on a proposal that went all the way to Whitacre. The CTO told him we have to study it 10 years and it got shut down. I wouldn’t say the movement we’re seeing in ATT reflects Ed Whitacre’s wishes.
Vos – I have this informal RFP alert mailing list. When I get news of a bid or updates I post it and e-mail it. When I look a the people on the list, the vendors are there, but so are a lotof telecom operators. Sprint has bid on a number of projects. It’s not like there’s a monolith that hates us. Each has factions. It remains to be seen who is going to win out. It’s largely a generational change.
James Salter
CEO
Altantic Engineering Group
I’m a fiber guy. I’m not a wireless guy.
The only solution to bandwidth is fiber.
If you’re going to rely on incumbents to make fiber happen you’re going ot wait a long time.
I only work the muni market. I get to be the incumbent basher. I believe municipaliies have a place as the broadband savior .
(Salter’s act is that he pretends to be a redneck, complete with a video of a dog smoking)
We’ve built 65 muni fiber projects, the last 11 being FTTH (fiber to the home).
We’re in Globalization 3.0, the information age, and we ain’t going back.
My personal needs have grown exponentially, 20-fold on email, an 800-fold increase in bandwidth, my connection has gone to Adelphia’s 3 Mbps.
We don’t need 3 megs. We need 300 and more.
We already have public-private compeittion in everything. And munis have an unfair advantage, starting from scratch,
BellSouth chief network architect Henry Kafka said this month the average customer uses 2 Gigabits of data and if we go to IPTV it will be 224. Here’s his quote: “This will require massive amounts of cheaper bandwidth. The performance of our networks will basically be a mess.”
IPTV won’t work, won’t sell and ain’t gonna happen. Their solution to video is to buy Echostar or Comcast.
So Henry’s new boss, Randall Stephenson, the ATT COO, says “we’re not constrained by bandwidth or the size of the pipe. In the foreseeable fugure having a 15 Mbps Internet capability is irrelevant because the backbone doesn’t run at those speeds.”
BULLSHIT.
AT&T has $193 billion in capital invested. They’re oing to buy BellSouth for $87 billion. That’s $280 billion. So what do they need to take people to invest – a 9.1% rate of return./ That’s $25 billion they have to make every year to keep people happy, and last year they made $8.5 billion. So it’s a loser for investors, and if we think this is going to save us we’re dead wrong.
They’re destroying the value of the company. They’re eating it. Why do we think they’re going to spend billions to upgrade and meet our needs?
The folks who are in this business are kicking the incumbents’ butts Whether they are making money I don’t know. I’ve done 53 projects and the average market share in 3 years is 50-60%. They’re not like a traditional overbuilder. People flock to ‘em.
Q – Brett Turner, MFS Comm – can you give a breakdown.
Salter — 11 of my projects are fiber to the home. 9 some PON, 2 point to point Ethernet. I see the market moving more toward p2p Ethernet because the market demands more bandwidth.
Q –Michael Calabrese – Will these networks work for VOIP? And is neutrality a requirement in muni builds?
Sege – Yes there’s tremendous interest in VOIP on these networks. It generates revenue. How well these networks support it is a function of how well WiFi supports voice. Right now it doesn’t support it well. The access point may be able to handle only 6 simultaneous calls. Once you get beyond 6 users on an access point you run into raw data rate issues, and packet size issues. Where density isn’t great, it works well, but in a dense urban setting we need realistic expedctatons.
Vos –The municipalities doing this are mainly issuing bids which require letting anyone come in. There are some who are doing it like a cable franchise, trying to give exclusivity. That’s not what the medium is about. But they are requiring net neutrality. Only in the last few months have we had a telco get caught blocking a VOIP provider. Sensitiviity has been raised and it’s baked into the new RFPs, but that’s not true for older ones.
Q – 4G and cognitive radio solving problems in muni builds?
Sege – the open standard community radio has great interest. Are there proprietary radios that do things better? Absolutely. Will munis deploy? It depends on the price.
Q – how do we get a stronger voice?
Baller – Victory has 100 fathers but defeat is an orphan. There are many of us and we speak together. Coordinating is something we’re just learning to do, and we’re doing it on an adhoc basis. I agree it would be useful to put machinery in place so we wouldn’t have to be as adhoc as we have been.
- Get on Esme’s list and visit her website regularly.
- We also do a daily email of development and it acts as a clearinghouse,
- Gordon Cook has been doing a lot of work in this area.
- If you want to be involved please talk to us.
You can’t make an antitrust case without experts at $200-300 an hour. You’re talking millions of dollars and years to make a case. How many of you think we have years or decades to let the antitrust process sort itself out?
Q – There are different ways to rely on it. Yopu can get in the way of the BellSouth merger. You don’t have to go to court uner the Sherman Act to use the antitrust law.
Baller – I’m not suggesting we abandon any approach. All of that is happening in fact. There’s a whole coalition of folks working to have conditions imposed on he Time Warner-Comcast swaps and the Adelphia acquisitions. How could we not try to do everything? We have to do it all. We have no choice if we’re to remain globally competitive and attractive to live in. We’ve got to push in every possible way.
