S.F. keeps pushing citywide Wi-Fi

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Municipal services

there are many more people in the public than there are municipal employees. The need for ancillary services will be hugely expanded.

I think you're thinking of municipal WiFi as a full-service ISP substitute. It needn't be; it's just a last-mile substitute. Naked IP transport. The support requirements could very easily be next to nil, with ISPs doing front-line support.

Then, use of a communications device which works over a limited area reminds me of the police callbox problem. Snip one cord and the policeman is on his own until he can reach another callbox.

DOS-ing a wireless network is both harder to do and more tracable than the same trick with a callbox. In any case, the technology and cost motivators are driving cities to use wireless networking for everything from scheduling to stoplights and that's not going to change, so they're going to put in all of those access points regardless.

Many municipalities and other governmental authorities are considering out sourcing, and not providing many more services themselves with governmental staff.

Municipalities have the classical problem that all monopolies do (despite John Carroll's love of them): they don't need to provide good service because the "customers" have a high barrier to switching.

The advantage that municipalities have over other monopolies is that the "customers" are the stockholders, and can thus bring pressure to bear.

[url="http://www.ci.phoenix.az.us/"]Phoenix[/url] seems to have come up with a good compromise: the city puts services out for bid, with city departments bidding along with outside firms. Different parts of the city are up for bid at different times, and part of the selection process is the quality of service that a firm has provided to other districts.

Seems to work -- I can say from personal experience that city services have dramatically improved over the last several years while costs have stayed very reasonable.

The commercial monopolies (power, phone, and cable) on the other hand have gotten much more expensive while at best maintaining the prior low quality of service. I've lived in cities where the power feeds were municipal instead of private, and although it's hard to compare directly (too many confounders) the service seemed no worse and the costs quite reasonable. After all, a city has the purchasing muscle to go for competitive bids on power that an individual doesn't.

And the idea of competing against large, established corporations in the area, with which they have years of familiarity

The nice part is that they don't have to "compete" except at the Legislature (where they are admittedly up against some heavyweight lobbying muscle). At the service level, they don't need customers because they're provisioning their own needs and aren't displacing any of the current services.

If, on the other hand, municipal WiFi puts pricing and QOS pressure on the "last mile" monopolists -- well, I thought competition was supposed to be a Good Thing.

Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding   Posted on: 08/18/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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