Boston's vision of municipal Wi-Fi sees city, university and
hospital fiber networks bypassing the major service providers and
laying the foundation for free Internet access, proponents said
this week.
Mayor Thomas Menino on Monday announced the recommendations of a
wireless task force he formed in February. It called on the city to
find a nonprofit organization to oversee the building of a citywide wireless network for broadband
Internet access, then own and operate it.
"The most important thing is to lower the cost of this kind of
service," said Rick Burnes, a general partner at Boston-area
venture capital firm Charles River Ventures who helped lead the
task force.
Public Wi-Fi can provide the "last mile" of
connectivity to homes and businesses, but the major providers of
broadband, such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp.,
own the lines that typically connect that part of the network to
the Internet backbone, he said.
"If you're going to provide Wi-Fi or any broadband services,
they get the lion's share of the dollar, at a very high price,"
Burnes said.
Instead of connecting its wireless routers to that commercial
"backhaul" network, Boston wants to form a network out of existing
fiber owned by the city and local hospitals and universities.
Cutting out Verizon and Comcast would cut costs enough to make
free, advertising-supported basic Internet services feasible,
Burnes said. The nonprofit running the network would open it up to
third-party ISPs (Internet service providers) rather than offer
service itself. Incumbent carriers would be welcome to act as ISPs
on the wireless system.
Unlike in San Francisco, where free Google Inc. service is
envisioned as slower than the Earthlink Inc. subscription product,
all the ISPs using the Boston would offer the same speed. What will
command a premium price will be innovative services, Burnes
believes.
The cost is hard to pin down at this point, but the whole
project might cost about $10 million, Burnes said. Though a few
hundred thousand dollars have already been raised, he acknowledged
there is a long way to go. On Monday, Pam Reeve, who was a member
of the task force and once led transaction processing company
Lightbridge Inc., volunteered to develop partnerships and raise
funds.
Boston, a compact city with several universities, is better
positioned than most cities to leverage fiber owned by the city and
other partners, said Craig Settles, a wireless consultant at
Successful.com, in Oakland, California. But these resources could
be part of the solution in many places, he said. The key is to be
creative and look at all the possibilities, Settles said.
The city's funding model is also a good one, Settles said. There
are federal grants available for purposes such as emergency
preparedness, and charitable groups such as health organizations
might help fund a wireless network in exchange for being able to
use it for their own needs.
"It is a model that is in its infancy, but it has viability
because it makes business sense," Settles said.
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