Wireless (and Wired) Minneapolis

Copyright 2005 Star Tribune
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

April 21, 2005

Citywide Wi-Fi;
Maybe cool and maybe not

BODY:
How cool is this: A high-speed wireless network that provides low-cost Internet access to any Minneapolis resident, saves the city a bundle on its current telecommunications bills and doesn't cost taxpayers a cent? Pretty cool, maybe. It all depends on the details.

Certainly the boldness of the Wi-Fi initiative announced last week is admirable. But several key questions are unanswerable for at least two months, when the city begins reviewing bids from companies that hope to build and run the network. Others may remain open for years beyond that, as Wi-Fi (for wireless fidelity) and competing technologies evolve both rapidly and unpredictably.

Up to now, Wi-Fi networks have made sense chiefly for remote areas and smaller cities, where the costs of building a wireline network (like cable TV) are hard to recover. A wireless "cloud" is cheaper to build, but requires line-of-sight signaling between transmitters that must be mounted in the air - on light poles, say - every few hundred feet; terrain, trees and tall buildings are trouble. As of now, Wi-Fi is slower and more difficult to protect from hackers than high-speed networks using phone lines or TV cables.

But all of these factors are in flux, and so large cities are beginning to look at their wireless options. In the last year, Corpus Christi, Texas, has moved its high-speed police and public safety communications onto city-owned Wi-Fi. Philadelphia, where a stunning 48 percent of households have no broadband option, is joining with private partners to build a citywide network in hopes of spurring economic growth. St. Louis has shelved plans for a Wi-Fi network until it sees how things play out in Philly; San Francisco is studying how to proceed.

What Minneapolis is proposing - a privately built and operated Wi-Fi network available to every home and business - has never been done on such a large scale. And while the ownership plan may ward off unfair-competition charges from telecom companies, who bitterly attacked Philadelphia's initial notion of a city-owned system, its feasibility rests on a business model that has yet to be developed, let alone tested.

For example, it's an open question what the Wi-Fi owners would pay Minneapolis for access to its light poles and rooftops - or what they would charge the city to provide high-speed data streams to its police cars and firetrucks, as well as 300 city park shelters, schools and office buildings. Profitability will require widespread sales of network access - and probably of special services or content - to residential and business customers. But at what cost, and under what rules?

Though Minneapolis has far better broadband availability than Philadelphia, it shares the goal of extending access and lowering costs as a way to bridge the "digital divide." But that task requires additional assistance to Internet nonusers hindered by barriers of income, education, language, age and disability.

Finally, while there's understandable attraction in shifting all the costs and risks of this endeavor to private entities, there remains a critical question of what happens if the approved business model fails and Minneapolis must take over a bankrupt network on which it now relies for essential communications. Or if evolving technology makes the Wi-Fi contract unappealing to the city's partners, or to the city itself.

Stuff happens, despite best-laid plans, and for one relevant example consider the long-running dispute between the city and its cable franchisee. After years of fighting over issues of public-access bandwidth and service to city buildings, an agreement was reached in 2000 whereby Time Warner would build high-speed links among all city properties. This was the so-called I-Net - and because of continued disagreement since that breakthrough, Time Warner has yet to build any of it, leaving the city to install some fiber-optic links at its own expense.

Whatever Wi-Fi's appealing present-day cost and future potential, it does not transcend the principles that cities and their residents get what they pay for - and must pay for what they get. As this ambitious proposal goes forward, its balancing of complicated interests will bear very careful scrutiny.