George Rausch has filmed an excellent documentary on Philadelphia’s Muni-wireless Wi-Fi network built by Earthlink. Now that the network has been shut down (as of June 12), its a great time to gain some additional insight into what happened and why (on Philly’s side).
Now Recruiting for a Pilot In A Box kit team for the OLPC Grassroots Jam
One Laptop per Child will be holding a Grassroots Jam at the Manthattan Neighborhood Network studio from Saturday June 14 through Sunday June 15. In two days, we’ll be building a Pilot In A Box kit (focused on integrating XO use into specific curricular modules) and testing it with local children in preparation for deploying the Kit at an actual school pilot within 4 months - stay tuned for more on the specific deployment conditions we’ll be designing for. All materials will be provided.
We’re looking for a 50-person team of educators, content-creators, artists, writers, programmers, engineers, and others who can contribute to a Pilot In A Box kit. In addition to coming up for ways for teachers to use the things inside The Box, we’ll need to figure out (and make) what’s in The Box, how schools will repair equipment from The Box, how The Box is transported and stored, how its content can be localized, how The Box can be used for communication over a diverse set of networks, and more. We are also looking for young testers (ages 7-14, with their parents) to come in and try out the finished products on Sunday afternoon, June 15, from 3-6pm.
Registration is free but space is limited, so we have a rolling admissions process. To view more information, including how you or your group can participate, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Grassroots_Jam. We hope to see you there!
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The rugged, Linux-based, mesh-networking-enabled, and power-efficient laptops have begun to be deployed to children by schools across the world on the basis of one laptop per child. OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital.
Published by Laura Forlano on June 4, 2008 under NewsComments Off
German techno-political blogger Markus Beckedahl, the founder of Newthinking, interviewed me for a podcast, which is available on Netzpolitik. The podcast is about the failure of municipal wireless networks to identify sustainable business models and lessons that can be learned from community wireless networks such as NYCwireless, Freifunk and Funkfeuer.
Published by Dana Spiegel on June 4, 2008 under NewsComments Off
Laura Forlano, Joe Plotkin, and I went to the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks in Washington, D.C. last week, and (as usual) it was a great experience. We saw FCC Commissioner Adelstein speak, and had lots of great conversations (many over beer) with a number of other CWN folks that came to the conference.
Of particular note was the significant forward progress that is being made to create a simple, unified mesh router (built on OpenWRT, OLSR, and Wifidog). We’ve got a bunch of test units and will be trying it out soon.
Published by Dana Spiegel on May 13, 2008 under News1 Comment »
Earthlinktoday announced that they are discontinuing their Philadelphia muni-wireless network. Apparently, the company has been trying to work with the city and Wireless Philadelphia (the non-profit formed by the city originally to manage the Wi-Fi network) to transition the wireless network assets and maintain its operation.
Those discussions have fallen apart, and now Earthlink has notified customers that its decomissioning the network entirely, and removing all of the equipment.
So the poster-child of Muni-wireless is now back at square one.
What does this say about muni-wireless in general?
Certainly, Philadelphians will need to find alternative broadband options, and the free public-space hotspots will be going away, taking away a valuable public resource for the city.
But the single most important lesson from this experience is that single-source solutions for muni-networks are a bad idea. If Wireless Philadelphia followed their founding purpose instead of being tempted into a devil’s bargain with Earthlink to hand over the entirety of the network to the company, the story today would be very different. Wireless Philadelphia, which would have owned the network and contracted out its building and operations, would merely need to find a new partner to take over those roles. The city’s network would continue on, and users would have experienced few, if any, hiccups in service.
Instead, the network will now be disassembled and all of the work done over the past few years by the non-profit was for naught. People currently using the network (including a number of low-income families) will be left without a broadband connection, and Wireless Philadelphia will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with an alternative solution for bridging the digital divide, a process that will likely take months, if not years.
Contrast Philadelphia with Boston’s approach. In an insightful report, the Boston Wireless Task Force sketched out a plan for creating 2 competitive marketplaces that will drive the creation of the city-wide muni-wireless network. On one side, a number of infrastructure providers will all provide last mile networks, each within a different part of the city. Those networks will all wind up funnelling thorugh an network exchange managed by the Wireless Boston non-profit. On the other side, ISPs (and any other organization) will be able to purchase transport on the last-mile wireless network at competitive prices, and provide customers with a choice of companies from which to purchase retail wireless ISP service. Enabling all of this interconnectivity are standards-based hardware and software interfaces, and common routing and management interfaces.
In Boston, if an infrastructure provider exists the business, another company can step in an take over the operations of that part of the network–one that is likely already providing service in another part of the city. If an ISP decides to stop reselling the wireless network, there will be other ISPs who can provide service.
Looking back, its hard to miss the fact that Philadelphia chose the worst path. They had the option, early on, of taking a more Boston-like approach, but instead opted for a short term political win at the expense of a lasting solution. In reality, Philadelphia’s muni-wireless network, if they choose to rebuild it, will likely cost even more than it would have if they took a more progressive approach from the beginning. And its not lost on anyone that Philadelphia’s Wireless Task Force recommended a more competitive and holistic approach similar to (though different in certain ways) Wireless Boston’s current approach.
Published by Dana Spiegel on May 4, 2008 under PolicyComments Off
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has just released a new report examining in depth broadband policies in 9 nations, and concludes that while we shouldn’t look to other nations for silver bullets or assume that practices in one nation will automatically work in another, U.S. policymakers can and should look to broadband best practices in other nations.
Learning the right lessons and emulating the right policies here will enable the United States to improve our broadband performance faster than in the absence of proactive policies. The report analyzes the extent to which policy and non-policy factors drive broadband performance, and how broadband policies related to national leadership, incentives, competition, rural access, and consumer demand affect national broadband performance. Based on these findings the report makes a number of recommendations to boost U.S. broadband performance.
The report is extensive, and has some very good policy recommendations that should be heeded by all levels of government.
Overall, at the broadest level, nations with robust national broadband strategies–that is, those that make broadband a priority, coordinate across agencies, put real resources behind the strategy, and promote both supply and demand–fare better than those without.
NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates and enables the growth of free, public wireless Internet access in parks, public spaces, and affordable housing residences in New York City and surrounding areas.
If you are interested in building a free Wi-Fi hotspot in your business, park, or housing development, contact us.
Published by Dana Spiegel on June 24, 2008 under Events 
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