Municipal Wi-Fi is Real, but is it Real Good?

Local governments rarely get excited about anything unless the words “free” and “ubiquitous” are part of the deal.  So, it’s no surprise that municipal Wi-Fi is sweeping the U.S. because its attractiveness is rooted in no charge to users and it would be deployed everywhere.

“Yes, but …” say a few groups such as the personal wireless service carriers.  Personal wireless service facilities are, as PlanWireless predicted ten years ago, cropping up on utility poles everywhere, the same places that Wi-Fi would be installed.  Try to understand the carriers’ frustration when:

·       Wi-Fi will soon be able to handle Voice Over Internet Protocol phone calls, or cheap (maybe free) competition to carriers’ cell phone offerings.

·       Wi-Fi is a personal wireless service (because it is an unlicensed service) like Cingular, Verizon, Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile.  So why do carriers need permits on utility poles, while Wi-Fi will be placed there free and without permits?

·       Wi-Fi gets “face time” from elected officials as the great technological bridge over the “digital divide.”  The carriers get “hearing time” where neighbors are allowed to disparage wireless technology at local government’s expense.

So, it’s no wonder that carriers are investing in dual-mode and tri-mode phones that include Wi-Fi along with CDMA or GSM.

But before jumping on the free Wi-Fi bandwagon too quickly, consider these cautions from Mobile Radio Technology, a public safety communications journal:

·       Amit Sinha, chief Technology Officer of Air Defense (a security firm) is quoted as warning offices with regular networks:  “Even if you have a policy of no Wi-Fi (usage), suddenly Wi-Fi is available on the lamp pole outside. … If you’ve got wireless or not, you’re screwed.  People who don’t have wireless haven’t thought through the (security) problems.”

·       John Girard, Vice President of Gartner Group says: “A more likely problem is a powerful municipal Wi-Fi network ‘bleeding through’ from outside a building, causing interference problems.”

Even the San Francisco Chronicle, a booster of the City that will install a Google Wi-Fi system for “free,” editorializes that Google and others may be “mining” the Wi-Fi users’ data, raising privacy issues.  The Chronicle offers four leading questions:

·       Will users be tracked from session to session?

·       Will the service provider resist the legal demands for users’ personal information?

·       How long will companies keep users’ personal information?

·       Will users be aware of how their information is being used?

Mobile Radio Technology quotes John Howard, who designed the Phoenix and other Arizona municipal Wi-Fi systems:

·       You install this … mesh network, what you’re doing is chewing up the available spectrum …

·       Not only are you going to clobber your applications but (you are going to) potentially create interference for your corporate neighbors … You need to have an overall RF infrastructure, talk to all your business leaders and figure out what to do.

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Kreines & Kreines, Inc.
58 Paseo Mirasol, Tiburon, CA 94920
Phone: (415) 435-9214
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