Will Municipal Wireless Plans Leave You Disconnected?
A recent CNET story asserts that small towns may have to wait a while -- a very long while -- before vendors get around to implementing municipal wireless projects with them. While cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia have announced major partnerships with the likes of Earthlink and Google to provide free or low cost wireless access to their citizens, smaller towns aren't able to attract the attention of the vendors.
Cole Reinwald, vice president of product strategy and marketing for Earthlink Municipal Networks says that right now:
"We should be looking at cities with densities of about 2,500 people per square mile. As tech costs drop, we'll be able to bring that number down."
Given that number, many communities may be left behind. This means smaller towns and rural communities will need to figure out how to build and implement wireless infrastructure in some other way. But is that right?
I'm concerned about the issue of Municipal Wireless because I believe that Internet access is a vital and necessary service, like phone service or roads. It's something to which we all need access, to support economies, social networks, even our health and well being. People who have easy access to the Internet have a tremendous advantage over those who don't, and municipal wireless projects have the potential to be the great equalizer because there is no expensive cable to run, no city streets to dig up, in order to implement them.
But all that is moot if smaller towns and rural communities can't partner with companies to deliver, or come up with creative strategies of their own. Should ISPs and TelCos be required to deliver Internet access in the same way TelCos must deliver telephone service to everyone?
There's Meraki, who offer cheaper outdoor wireless equipment. They seem to so far be working in more densely populated areas, but they seem to be dedicated to helping everyone get on the Internet.
Wireless access is a big deal in international development for precisely the reason you mention: the infrastructure costs are relatively low. While I was in Mali, Geekcorps pioneered a way to provide wireless access using readily available and cheap materials, including plastic bottles that otherwise would have littered the ground.
I'm not sure the good people of Topeka (population density: 309) would want their telephone poles to sprout modified plastic bottles -- even though they're a big problem here, too -- but this is the kind of ingenuity it may take to connect everybody, unless and until it becomes policy to provide public internet access everywhere.
The internet is no longer a luxury it is a neccessity, rural and low income areas should not be left out. Leave no citizen behind.
It is high time the U.S. creates a Connect America Program and take a page out Kentucky's private-public partnership to promote deployment and demand for high speed internet service at the local community level.
In just two years, Kentucky's residential broadband availability grew by 17 percentage points to 77%; its home broadband penetration rate grew by 8 percentage points to 30%. The goal is to ensure that every resident, business and community has broadband access by the end of 2007.
If you want to know more go to http://www.speedmatters.org and read CWA's recommendations for providing affordable high speed internet access for everyone.