Winston-Salem Journal: "WinstonNet Inc., a nonprofit group in Winston-Salem, said yesterday that it has chosen three telecommunication companies to install a free wireless broadband network throughout Forsyth County."

I have been trying for ever so long to get Greensboro's "leaders" interested in something similar. I have not gotten anywhere.

The big foundations seemed interested, but weren't.

We have a mayor who still jokes about being a luddite. It's not funny.

Please, please spare me a comment saying a few blocks of Elm Street and the eventually-to-open downtown park are wireless. Forsyth freaking County is getting lit up, our cute little wireless row is not the same thing.

Comments

[David Wharton]

Do you think it's possible that services like Verizon broadband might make W-S's initiative obsolete in just a few years?

[Tom]

There is no telling what will be obsolete in a few years; however, Verizon broadband is not even available in Guilford County according to Verizon's website. I'm with Ed, we need to be proactive and not be content to wait on the phone companies, etc. to lead the way. I live in the county, have had a land line since I built my house over 30 years ago and it has only been in the last year that the phone company has even managed to offer DSL in this area. If it weren't for the recent county-wide glut of housing development, there would still be no DSL in this area. Not a very good track record in my opinion. Cable isn't a white knight either but the vendors didn't fall asleep at the switch like the phone companies did.

[beth]

Maybe if the city provided "free dial-up" with extremely long extension cords, we could call it even? :)

[darkmoon]

Not sure about Verizon, EVDO/WiMax dual phones are set to roll in a year or two. Speed wise, that would blow anything WiFi can handle. Price will similar I assume.

I just posted my analysis of Wireless Winston. They don't tell you much, and while it's a good venture, I'm wondering what exactly would deem this necessary. It doesn't even go into whether or not it's a free/paid service (and I believe this was left off because it will be paid with a few free spots, but that's just an assumption).

[darkmoon]

Also, according to press release, it's city limits. Eventually Forsyth County, but it's not yet. WSJournal didn't read it closely. RFP was for city first with county as another phase.

They have a good idea, although about 5 years late, and I'm still unsure of the impact it would have. It's been shown that there is fairly little impact except as slight marketing gimmick in other cities that have gone unwired. In fact, many places are pulling it due to little use since land-based broadband is just better in general.

While I've been fighting the "we need more wireless" battle since 2003 or so and getting nowhere, at LEAST SynerG did do the downtown. While Ed says to spare him on the downtown thing...

Guess what. That smaller project should give you an idea of what sort of resistance you would meet for a larger scale. Having gone through the exact issues for that install, I'd imagine that GSO would meet 10-100x that type of thing for a MAN. W-S wireless committee shows that they have no RF or WiFi experience there since they listed some pretty incorrect info (as per my analysis). But I'm still glad they're at least trying and having so much corporate support with it.

[WillR]

How about Chapel Hill? When the Town's Tech Board pushed for Wifi (among other tech improvements), the Council dissolved the board and passed on forming a task force focused on muni-networking.

Waiting for the telcos? What a mistake. They have no interest in promoting technologies that'll break their lock on the communications market. The telcos have a long history of overcharging and underdelivering.

Besides economic development, bridging digital divide, etc. , a muni-network can reduce GSO's communications cost-structure, allow GSO to make their own tactical decisions on technology deployment, streamline service delivery and offer capabilities not currently available (like supporting an on-site inspections process).

[Ed Cone]

DM, point taken -- when I say spare me the downtown GSO stuff, I don't mean to denigrate the good work here, or (as you point out) the important lessons to be learned about implementation vs ideal -- I'm just saying the scope and scale of GSO's effort to date are incremental, not visionary, and it's all we get anytime soon then it's not really comparable to more ambitious projects.

[darkmoon]

I'm going to point out that bridging the digital divide via WiFi is great. Unfortunately every single install funded by eNC (who basically champions digital divide issues in NC) are using 900Mhz systems that I've seen. I suppose a couple could be WiFi since I haven't paid attention to it lately.

Also, digital divide isn't exactly the talk that we should have in urban populated counties. From talks with TWC, I've found that they do provide (at least last I remember) low-cost/free broadband to low-income. Not sure if it's a government funded thing or not, but it is taken care of in cities. *shrug* I'd be curious as to why the 90+ other (classified as rural) counties in NC aren't providing coverage via this type of technology though.

[darkmoon]

Ed - Very true. Believe me. You and I both have failed in convincing those "luddites". heh. What can you do though? The city just won't buy into it. When it comes to tech visions, we play second fiddle to W-S usually.

I suppose we could try to link it to the buzz word these days, "biotech". But all in all, it's been pretty blah in this city. Maybe this will kick it up a notch. I still prefer us to chase after something similar to 3rivers project in Philly and spin off corps that do these things.

[WillR]

darkmoon, when NOLA went dark it was WiMax + Wifi taht saved the day - not 900mhz, cell or other traditional comm. tech.

Ubiquitous IP-based communications (WiMax) is part of NYC's plan for catastrophe. Turns out the geeks could throw a signal downtown Manhattan using off-the-shelf tech than the mega-corps during 9-11 and this caught the attention of NYC's leadership.

[darkmoon]

I agree. (although technically WiMax didn't exist in NOLA). For catastrophe though, you're missing one key component. Usually in a disaster type situation, there is no power. So regardless of your off-the-shelf components, unless you run it from mobile footprints, there isn't any way to power it. I suppose you could jerry-rig a solar, but it's still a tough gig. Moto had a backpack infrastructure unit deployed for 9-11 if I remember correctly.

The issue that we've been dealing with (in GSO) is basically...

Where are the geeks? I've been trying to set up a Seattle Wireless/personal telco since 2003. It's gone nowhere. Not in the Triad at least. Heck, Greensboro Linux User Group only amasts about 8-10 people per meeting if that.

Everything can be done with off-the-shelf stuff, but not enough people to even attempt or support it like Portland or Seattle. I've always called it the Southern technology timewarp. Here, it's about 3-5 years behind.

I'm actually surprised that Chapel Hill where there are a lot more college students and younger people and just larger area in general would have such a problem with it.

[WillR]

In a recent "survey" I did of the downtown area, it was obvious that private Wifi in-fill is happening. At the same time, as you can see from Brian and Anton's Chapel Hill Wireless both commercial and other entities are offering free coverage.

That said, it's no replacement for a municipal effort.

And this isn't just about wireless - this is about a lack of a sound tactical and strategic plan for integrating common technology-related techniques into the operation of our government.

Two examples.

One, Chapel Hill/Carrboro's bus system just implemented a real-time passenger information project. The tech was from NextBus. We could've used the same $900K+ to purchase a non-proprietary system extending free Wifi coverage into our neighborhoods and offering convenient coverage along the 24 routes to first responders/police.

Here was a strategic opportunity to meet our goal of bridging the digital divide, yet our leadership dropped the ball on this because most didn't invest the time to understand the difference.

Two, fibre outlay.

Turns out we're in-line for a NC-DOT retrofit of our signaling infrastructure. They're laying fibre to the 100 intersections in town with computer controlled lights. Chapel Hill can "tag along" with this project for next to nothing ( < $70K ). That web of fibre passes through every commercial area and most of our residential. In fact, most folks will have a tap within 1000 yds. of their homes.

But forget about using fibre-to-the-door - we could ditch TWC and provide a level of service to our internal operations we could never afford before (video conferencing, integrated VOIP, etc.).

We're probably going to miss this once in decades opportunity.

[darkmoon]

Hrm. Isn't DOT infrastructure strictly for state use? I'm pretty sure there's a law about it somewhere regardless of what access you have. A long long time ago, I looked into why K-12 and edu had to use the fiber when there was a better ring surrounding it and I was told that K-12/collegiate had to use certain fiber lines. While I haven't researched it in a while, I believe state type fiber is in similar standing.

So if I'm correct, you could tap it, but you couldn't provide it. Not to citizen use anyways if it's strictly built for some other use.

Again, could be wrong.

But I get what you're getting at. We miss opportunities left and right. It's one of the reasons the South is behind a lot of the times. They really don't care about being first-adopters, or even right in the middle of the pack. They usually do last adoption (if they do at all) and spin it like it's some great wondrous thing since sliced bread. Oh well. Sounds like you and I both have the same issues.

[Terrell]

Well, I can comment on the Greensboro DOT fiber channels. There is a plan in the works to use those fiber channels for a municipal wireless mesh network. Within the next couple of years you will access points marking some of these intersections in a small test phase and then later it will be rolled in to a huge mesh network. As it stands now, this will be used for city business, and for good reason. That is another discussion for serious legal situations, especially dealing with private customer and personnel information which can not tie into a publicly open system.

Also, the Police here are rolling out of their 800 and 900MHz data communications system and move over to some form of wireless system with a VPN if necessary back to the city network. All of your truck crews and other personnel with the need will be using this network in the field. And because applications such as high end GIS work that is done in the city, much of the bandwidth will be before intra-city communication, not surfing the internet. So a public system will have to be private.

Also, the MIS department of Greensboro is rolling out free un-filtered (there is a reason not to filter the traffic) public WiFi at ALL of the Greensboro Public libraries. So Greensboro, as a government entity, is working on it. And I would rather let them (or for other local gov'ts) setup and control the wireless system that is developed instead of some private organization with their own agenda. At least the people could still have some control over a city owned system.

As for a few other points, companies like Clearwire will probably fight such a plan to the bare-knuckles as they'll lose out on such a system, but hey, it is a dog-eat-dog world. Either way, we'll have to pay some how. EV-DO has been "turned on" in this area which means Verizon broadband is here and that along with Sprint Broadband will continue to be foolishly expensive. DSL, for something that has been around for several years now in Greensboro will get cheaper, and Cable will probably stay about the same price, may be a little less, and only get faster (we're already up to 5Mbps on the downstream, still at 384Kbps on the upstream).

[Terrell]

Made a few typos up there, but I think you all get the idea of what I'm saying.

[WillR]

Thanks for the report Terrell. It seems someone in GSO understands how to get two bangs for one buck ala DOT fiber.

I advocated for a NPO to manage our network with the town being the anchor tenant of the system. One of my concerns was censorship or other restrictions. I, and others, felt a business model based on NPO ownership would create a firewall between government (and their proclivity to snoop/control) and the community. A NPO could both operate the system under common carrier statutes - avoid potential litigation issues and also request a FCC license for licensed WiMAX spectrum (if that was the direction we went).

A shame about the 900mhz rollout. That tech is crap.

[darkmoon]

Like I said before. I've approached Library IT (main branch) back in 2003. The public library effort is just a response to WinstonNet. The public safety network is already known also (built by Tropos).

Although as far as WiFi is concerned, I think the government is "working on it" is just a bandaid on a bigger PR issue they're trying to cool off. The fact that they ignored me in 2003, but Mitch responds to the RFP basically shows that it was a PR issue than a technology adoption issue.

Either way, the City didn't step up when it had the chance the way Winston-Salem has. Is it a bad thing? I don't believe so since in my opinion, municipal wireless is pretty much more of an amenity than a PR thing. Business users will already have EVDO/HSDPA access.

EVDO has been on for the last year or so in this area. And in actuality, it's not that expensive when you consider where it's accessible. Dependent on the user.

[Billy The Blogging Poet]

It's a shame that North Carolina with all its cities like Greensboro, ranks behind West Virginia in WiFi access. Did you know you can drive almost the full length of West Virginia and have free Wifi almost statewide? Small co-ops have popped up all over West Virginia to provide free Wifi almost everywhere.