WiFi and wireless

Tempe, Arizona's foray into community and municipal wireless has not worked out as expected. Like many other communities that have tried the same thing and have also failed, Tempe tried to avoid spending any money. They simply granted an untested wireless firm access to city lightpoles and structures for wireless equipment. The private firm had to bear the entire cost of build out. The wireless system was also not seen as reliable as a wired system, and the wireless firm has not been able to attract many subscribers.

The lesson learned is that there is no free lunch for community broadband. Communities that spend very little are getting very little in return, and if all of the risk is left in the private sector, the private sector won't come or won't stay long. Another lesson is that building out without a solid business plan to attract customers is also a non-starter. The right approach is to target underserved areas and/or to be able to offer innovative services that are not already available from other providers.

"Free wireless" is beginning to look a lot like "free lunch" -- it may not be possible. The City of Hartford, Connecticut embarked two years ago on an ambitious plan to provide free wireless service to large portions of the city. After two years and $800,000, there is little to show.

The Hartford project appears to be having difficulties similar to other early community wireless efforts: unjustified optimism about the ability of wireless signals to penetrate apartment and office buildings filled with steel reinforcement, and the lack of a business plan that provides for long term sustainability of the system.

In some quarters, there have been pronouncements that private sector wireless is not working (i.e. public/private partnerships), and that the only way to go is an all muni free or very low fee system. But it is not the nature of the partnership that is the core issue--it is the nature of the business model, which can be public, private, or a public/private partnership. Any of those can work and work well with the right business model.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Community broadband and community wireless projects are going to be very important to the economic future of many U.S. towns and cities, but it is not who owns it that determines success, it is whether or not the owners have a sustainable business plan.

This article provides another example of the "no free lunch" principle as it applies to community wireless. Sprint is having trouble rolling out its WiMax service offering because of backhaul costs (you need fiber to the towers to provide adequate bandwidth) and subscribers are getting about 4 megabits of bandwidth--exactly what I was hearing years ago from knowledgeable wireless experts.

WiMax is an excellent set of technologies that will eventually replace most WiFi, but wireless is only a partial solution for community broadband.

This New York Times article makes it clear that there is no free lunch for municipal wireless. There are still a lot of communities pursuing initiatives that cling to the idea that they can get a wireless provider to come in a build an extensive wireless network for free. These kinds of efforts have been and continue to fail, due to cost overruns, poor performance, and the lack of business-class services. Wireless is necessary as a mobile access technology, but it is not sufficient. Communities contemplating broadband investments should start with a careful planning effort that identifies the business and financial model early, before spending money on equipment.

An Australian wireless ISP who has operated a WiMax network for more than a year unleashed a blistering attack on the protocol, calling it a "disaster" and that it "failed miserably." Unfortunately, the article provides little detail on exactly what frequencies were used (WiMax is a catch all term for the protocol, which can use several different chunks of frequency spectrum). The interesting thing about the comments is that the firm is planning to deploy more traditional WiFi as part of their wireless network. This article illustrates that wireless systems are not a panacea, and that they have to designed and engineered carefully to get good performance.

Christopher Mitchel of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has written an article in the current issue of Broadband Properties. It is an excellent analysis of municipal and community broadband that presents a compelling argument that only integrated wireless andfiber community/municipal networks are going to be able to support the kinds of applications and services needed, especially services needed to support businesses and economic development.

Here is a key quote:

Those who expect a future without wires are sadly mistaken. Existing wireless networks are perfectly adequate for voice, email, or Internet surfing, but their limitations preclude high quality videophone applications and other bandwidth-intensive applications."

Mitchell argues, as I and others have, that wireless is a necessary component of any community or municipal broadband effort, but that wireless will evolve (as it already is doing) into primarily a conduit for mobile access to services. Fiber will be required in virtually all residences and businesses because video in all its forms will need the very high capacity that fiber offers.

Read the whole thing; it is well worth printing out and distributing to others who are interested in community broadband.

This moderately technical article (PDF file) has an extensive discussion of the vulnerabilities of wireless systems, including WiFi, Bluetooth, and WiMax. Communities interested in investing primarily in wireless broadband should read this article first, as the data presented illustrates why most businesses do not regard wireless as a business class service.

Here is a short summary of the issues from the article:

Wireless networks have three additional aspects that make the security of wireless
networks even more challenging than the security of fixed networks:

• Wireless networks are always open
• Attackers can connect into the network from anywhere and from any distance
• Attackers are always anonymous

Wireless networks are always open – Physical media does not protect them. Any device
that implements the same radio interface can access a wireless network. One common
assumption is that wireless technologies are secure when authentication and encryption
are properly deployed. Looking closely at the operation of related protocols, there are
many message sequences that take place before the authentication. These message
sequences can always be attacked regardless of the deployed security measures.
Attacks are not limited by location or distance.

Attacks are not limited by location or distance. The distance from where the attacker can
reach the wireless network is only limited by the power of the transmitter. For example,
Bluetooth attack tools are known to have several-mile radiuses, although valid usage
scenarios would never attempt such range of coverage for Bluetooth.

Attackers are always anonymous. Although a valid user can be pinpointed with good
accuracy, an attacker can use directed antennas that will only target a selected victim. It is impossible to guarantee detection of malicious users in wireless networks. As stated
above, an attacker can also always attack the message sequences that happen before the
authentication of the device and thus avoid identification.

Unlike the rest of the world, cellphones in the U.S. only work on the network for which they were originally purchased, and we have always had to buy the phones from the cellular provider. In Europe, for example, you can walk into almost any store and buy a cheap cellphone and then activate it for use on the network of your choice.

AT&T has announced that they are now taking the same approach on their GSM network in the U.S. This has apparently been an option for a while, but the company has never publicized it.

The one exception to this is the iPhone, which works only on the AT&T network. iPhone users will not be able to get their phone unlocked so it could be taken to another network.

Oddly enough, AT&T's new openness is probably due in part to the success of the iPhone. AT&T's new popularity as a cellular provider has been lifting out of last place in the U.S. cellular market, and the company probably sees this as an opportunity to bring even more customers--many of whom may not want an iPhone.

Fights over WiMax spectrum are slowing deployment of WiMax. The FCC, which manages the WiMax spectrum, has been renewing the existing spectrum, called EBS (Educational Broadband Services). The problem is that the EBS spectrum licenses, in many cases, belong to local educational institutions. Sprint wants to build a national WiMax network and thinks that the FCC should require the schools not using the spectrum to give it up.

To make things more confusing, Clearwire, another WiMax provider, has taken the route of simply negotiating licenses directly with the schools, who make some money from something many of them were not using.

The end result will be extensive overbuilding of WiMax networks, which raises costs and makes it more difficult for users to roam from network to network. Wireless broadband operators have never been able to work out roaming agreements the way the cellular industry did. Cellphones did not become popular until roaming agreements were in place, meaning your phone would work pretty much everywhere. Today, in most airports, as one example, there are often two to five WiFi providers, and paying for service on one operator's network does not let you roam on any other operator's network.

The bigger problem here is overbuilding. With several different companies all trying to build wireless broadband networks in a community, costs go up for all users because of duplication of infrastructure. The solution is for the community to build a multi-service network that allows multiple providers to use a single network. Users gain the benefits of true competition, and prices are lower because there is no duplication of infrastructure. The FCC could play a valuable role here by encouraging the development of multi-service networks, but instead, continues to try to put band-aids on outmoded policies.

Even as some municipal wireless projects are falling apart, many other communities are still pursuing the risky "direct to vendor" approach. Instead of identifying broader community goals and needs first and then selecting systems and technology that support those goals, community leaders are going straight to a vendor and letting the vendor specify what the community should buy.

These "solutions" are typically expensive wireless systems, offered to the community in some kind of bundled business deal. There are two common approaches. The first is that the local government buys an expensive wireless system, usually with a combination of public safety wireless and data wireless (WiFi) for residential and business use. The second model is that the wireless firm builds the network but obtains a lucrative long term contract from the local government for public safety wireless and usually some WiFi services for government agencies.

There are two problems with this direct to vendor model. The first is that what a single vendor offers may or may not be well aligned with the long term community and economic development goals of the town or county. As an example, wireless (WiFi) is not a business class service and does little to help with economic development.

The second problem is that the vendor ends up deciding the economic future of the community, not the community itself. It is as if water and sewer were managed privately, and the water and sewer vendor gets to decide when and where water and sewer lines will be be upgraded or added. If the company decides it is not profitable to make such upgrades, the community is out of luck if said upgrades are needed to retain existing businesses or to attract new ones.

Local leaders are handing the keys to their community's economic future to a third party; they are doing so in part because they don't feel competent to make technology decisions. But the solution is to educate local leaders on how to make wise decisions, rather than avoiding them altogether. In fact, communitywide fiber and wireless systems are less expensive and less complicated than your average community sewer system.

Design Nine provides seminars designed specifically for community leaders and economic developers, and provides technology advice for communities that is technology neutral.