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EarthLink rolls out more citywide Wi-Fi
December 21, 2006 -
Cities deploying Wi-Fi face challenges
May 1, 2006 -
S.F. keeps pushing citywide Wi-Fi
August 17, 2005
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Settles said that both EarthLink's and MetroFi's strategy shifts make sense. He believes that for these companies to make money, they need to concentrate on winning contracts with large municipalities that can throw them a significant amount of business in terms of providing emergency services and other wireless and mobility services for city agencies. In addition, he said these companies also need to focus on selling services to local businesses.
"The revenue that will support these networks won't come from the general consumer," Settles said. "There is a lot of churn and pricing pressure in the consumer market. The consumer pitch is great for the political side of the house, but anyone with any kind of financial sense realizes that the city government itself and local businesses will pay more for services and offer a more stable subscriber base."
Up to this point, the hype around citywide Wi-Fi has centered on offering services to consumers. But getting finicky consumers to use a service and stick with it is difficult. For one, competition for broadband customers is fierce. And depending on the promotions offered by cable or telephone operators, consumers can get more bandwidth at a competitive price somewhere else.
Service reliability is another huge issue for Wi-Fi when compared with DSL or cable modem services. Users in some of the early Wi-Fi cities such as Tempe, Ariz., and Chaska, Minn., reported poor indoor coverage and other technical issues. While some of these issues have been addressed with indoor modems to boost signals, some cities still appear to be experiencing issues. For example, Lompoc, Calif., is struggling to sign up subscribers because of poor signal coverage, the Lompoc Record reported recently.
The main thing that differentiates Wi-Fi from other broadband services is mobility, but competition is mounting there, too. In addition to the 3G services offered by cellular operators, which are often expensive, a lot of businesses in downtown areas offer free Wi-Fi hot spots.
And soon some cable operators such as Time Warner will offer mobility with their residential cable modem services, enabling subscribers to take their service on the go. Last week, Time Warner announced it had struck a deal with a company called Fon Wireless that offers a router to enable people to securely share and access Wi-Fi with others. Time Warner and three other cable operators, including Comcast, also have a deal with Sprint that could eventually extend their broadband service outside the home.
Donald Berryman, president of EarthLink municipal networks, said he agrees that the Wi-Fi subscriber base needs to be spread across the municipal, business and consumer sector. He said that about 50 percent of EarthLink's business on its Wi-Fi networks comes from municipal contracts and business customers. But he said that despite the many challenges, he believes the consumer market will be key to EarthLink's success.
"Consumers are absolutely a critical part our strategy," he said. "Our service is ideal for upgrading dial-up customers to broadband. And in some cities, where there is redlining going on, people can't get DSL or cable modem service even if they are willing to pay for it."
Berryman also emphasized that EarthLink's recent announcement is more about taking a pause to digest the many contracts it has won as well as evaluate how best to address the market going forward.
Of the 13 contracts that EarthLink has won thus far, only two have been completed, Milpitas, Calif., and New Orleans. The company has partially built networks in Philadelphia, Anaheim, Calif., and Corpus Christi, Texas. It has completed contracts and is beginning the design phase for four other cities. And it is still negotiating final contracts with four cities. Altogether, the company serves only about 2,000 customers on all of its Wi-Fi networks.
"We aren't really changing strategy," Berryman said. "We're just reassessing where the next markets should be. The only thing that has changed strategically is the allocation of resources. Instead of pursuing 18 to 20 cities, we are building out the 13 we already have and going after a few other targeted cities."
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"But the stark reality is that someone still needs to pay for the infrastructure and the cost of running the network."
"Now as operators move beyond proof-of-concept networks, they are re-evaluating their business models to ensure they can make money. This means carefully selecting the cities where they want to build networks..."
OK, maybe I'm not reading this correctly, but it seems to me the great philanthropic effort of providing internet access to the masses, who cannot afford $50/month cable broadband is not about philanthropy at all, but about making piles of money for private companies.
Why are we even talking about "profit" here? If the goal is a community service, why isn't the idea of covering costs sufficient?
If internet access is infrastructure, why is profit a necessity? Does the city "make a profit" on roads, schools, water, or police service? Did the federal government make a profit when they made the freeway system?
And in this rush to make a profit, we're already seeing, before we've even started, a trend to offer the service in places where these companies can make money - i.e. more affluent areas. I'm sorry, but they don't really need this initiative. They can already buy service.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating socialism, but making a profit is something for private endeavors, not municipal services. Municipalities can feel free to subcontract functions, but the companies accepting these contracts should be soaking the citizens of the municipality for a profit. Privatization is supposed to lower costs, not raise them.
If you're farming out municipal functions to private companies focused on profit, you're just using political power to line the pockets of well connected individuals and companies. Smells bad to my nose.
These are risky endeavors - return on investment does matter, especially when these new services will be built by the private sector, laboring in an, as-of-yet, unregulated and hyper-competitive market.
I hope Rep. Markey's office reads this for next week's hearing in his Subcommittee. This sould give him some pause before asking for more regulation on the Net.
Here are few additional points to keep in mind:
1. These networks were oversold by the first-to- market providers and vendors, in that they are primarily designed for Outdoor Portable and select Mobile coverage. In short they caved to the Social/Digital Devide requirements and the politicians need to provide everyone coverage and were disapointed when indoor coverage was weak and or more expensive.
2. Without the City as Anchor and a large commercial subscriber base these 1st Generation networks are and will continue to fail.
3. The Muni and some of their Consultants focused to much on the provider and not enough on the equipment these entities selected (deployed 1 & 2 Radio Mesh nodes)and that is hurting their business case now and will continue to as the demands on these networks increase. Just wait until users demand the P2P, Video and Music Sharing, commercial VPN services-these all need symmetrical services (solid return path) while in portable/mobile mode. MultiPlayer gaming will also have a major impact on overall performance.
4. If Earthlink does not change its approach in hardware selection and deployment, its focus on only the major cities will kill their business case instead of helping it. For 2 reasons:
a. Backhaul between nodes is critical to the long term survival of these Mesh Networks-big demand for bandwidth and high latency, on many of these 1 & 2 Radio nodes, will bring these networks to their kness and require major on going upgrades/expansion of these Networks. These systems need very robust backhaul pipes and need multiple radios assigned to this function if they are to survive, meet the big demands and be profitable.
b. As these poorly designed Mesh network continue to suffer the commercial markets will shun their use and look more to the emergence of the new WiMAX networks (both Fixed and Mobile)for their Portable/Mobile and PTMP Fixed services.
I am not convinced the new 3G Cell carriers Narrowband (Max 1Mbps)can compete with the demands these users will have for full time real Broadband links, especially in major metro markets (vs rural areas). The Mesh and Cell networks will more then likely compliment each ove rthe long hall via convergence (FMC).
Someone that is not influenced by advertising on their blog sites needs to do a serious review of the technical reasons these Mesh networks are struggling and or failing to deliver. The rest is Politics and misrepresentaiton of these systems design capabilities.
Jacomo
Here are few additional points to keep in mind:
1. These networks were oversold by the first-to- market providers and vendors, in that they are primarily designed for Outdoor Portable and select Mobile coverage. In short they caved to the Social/Digital Devide requirements and the politicians need to provide everyone coverage and were disapointed when indoor coverage was weak and or more expensive.
2. Without the City as Anchor and a large commercial subscriber base these 1st Generation networks are and will continue to fail.
3. The Muni and some of their Consultants focused to much on the provider and not enough on the equipment these entities selected (deployed 1 & 2 Radio Mesh nodes)and that is hurting their business case now and will continue to as the demands on these networks increase. Just wait until users demand the P2P, Video and Music Sharing, commercial VPN services-these all need symmetrical services (solid return path) while in portable/mobile mode. MultiPlayer gaming will also have a major impact on overall performance.
4. If Earthlink does not change its approach in hardware selection and deployment, its focus on only the major cities will kill their business case instead of helping it. For 2 reasons:
a. Backhaul between nodes is critical to the long term survival of these Mesh Networks-big demand for bandwidth and high latency, on many of these 1 & 2 Radio nodes, will bring these networks to their kness and require major on going upgrades/expansion of these Networks. These systems need very robust backhaul pipes and need multiple radios assigned to this function if they are to survive, meet the big demands and be profitable.
b. As these poorly designed Mesh network continue to suffer the commercial markets will shun their use and look more to the emergence of the new WiMAX networks (both Fixed and Mobile)for their Portable/Mobile and PTMP Fixed services.
I am not convinced the new 3G Cell carriers Narrowband (Max 1Mbps)can compete with the demands these users will have for full time real Broadband links, especially in major metro markets (vs rural areas). The Mesh and Cell networks will more then likely compliment each ove rthe long hall via convergence (FMC).
Someone that is not influenced by advertising on their blog sites needs to do a serious review of the technical reasons these Mesh networks are struggling and or failing to deliver. The rest is Politics and misrepresentaiton of these systems design capabilities.
Jacomo
Pros:
- Much cheaper than Cable or DSL at $21.95, and doesn't require having to deal with phone or cable companies at all, which is a blessing. I use my cell phone for all calls, and pull HDTV off the air with an antenna, so it is a large money saver.
- It's very fast, maybe I'm lucky and live really close to an antenna, but inside an apartment I receive 4 bars, and downloads average from 150-250k/sec which is on par with DSL. Multiplayer games (world of warcraft, xbox live) have worked well.
Cons:
- It requires you to re-login at the website after inactivity or a computer reboot.
- I am somewhat concerned about security, with having to log in to a webpage before I can use the rest of the internet, are they tracking my internet usage? Is it possible for some one else connected to the network to somehow eavesdrop? They want you to use their connection client, which takes over Windows wireless networking and didn't seem to work to well.
- Their websites specifically say the service is for use on only one computer. I have gotten around this by setting up Internet Connection Sharing on my laptop when it is in the docking station, this works well and I have 3 computers and an xbox 360 all on it at the same time. They should definitely provide a way to connect it to normal routers, because many people have multiple computers and if it can only be used on one laptop without high technical knowledge, it is never going to be able to compete with cable or DSL.
- One day last week, the service was down for an entire day, calls to Earthlinks tech support said it was an "outage" and that it could be out all day, which it was. Trying to get a credit was too painful to bear, as I kept getting transferred to Earthlinks dial-up department which had no clue what I was talking about.
- They seem to hide the fact that you can get it for a cheap monthly rate, doesn't seem to make much sense.
Hopefully this provides people with some first hand information about the subject.
Louis