A Stitch in Haste

Yet another city is planning to offer “free” (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized) municipal wi-fi Internet access:

True to its spirit of innovation, the City of Dayton [Ohio] is moving forward with creating a wireless environment that would allow residents and visitors in open spaces within the city limits to access the Internet from their portable computers and related devices at no cost. ... “Our public/private partnership with HarborLink [the wi-fi service provider] in this testing phase will prove the concept of a free service to our citizens,” Hill said. “HarborLink will basically offer some advertising to the end user to offset the cost that would normally have been passed on to the user. This allows the service to be offered at no cost. The City will be leveraging access to areas on City-owned facilities and in the rights of way to allow installation of the access points. The City will also be providing the backhaul connectivity to the Internet. Quite a small investment for such a great possibility.”

Hill said the City would provide minimal financial commitment to the project in the form of Internet accessibility costs via the City’s existing network. He estimated that a few spots in the downtown test area would be activated during the holiday season, with the remaining infrastructure put in place over the next several months. The majority of the test area should be active and accessible to users by April 1. Hill emphasized that this WiFi effort will target open, outdoor spaces and not compete against existing wireless providers who serve business and residential customers.

Gee, neat-o. Or is it? Truck and Barter extrapolates:

My first guess is that the $5K a year the city "pays" now will skyrocket before long. Either the idea will grab so many people the system can't handle the load (imagine all those businesses deciding the skip paying for private broadband access for a couple of years, then trying to run webcasts through the same line every one at every fast food joint is trying to use to download the new Nelly single) and the city will be on the hook to expand it even more, or, and I think more likely, it will experience the same result as wifi spots in other downtown locals that see highly variable traffic that doesn't exhibit much of a demand, meaning that the advertisers may not realize a benefit for what they've paid out. In fact, I don't see the argument that swayed these "advertisers".

In the case of heavy demand beyond just the local kids surfing blogs and Friendset, I'm not sure how patient people would be with a heavy does of advertising. Personally, I'd pay to get a clean line and avoid having even more ads pouring at me. If the demand isn't heavy, who's going to see the advertising?

From the city's plan, it looks as though the advertising comes in the form of branded pages (such as log-on, and possibly frames?). Who pays attention to those, I'm not sure. And I'd predict a hack to be out in about 24 hours. The big plus I do see for the advertisers, however, is that the general audience is so oblivious to protecting computers from viruses and intrusion, that it won't dawn on people that without pricey software (or expert users versed in good open source stuff) this is the electronic version of licking the floor in a public restroom.

I’ll add my own hasty stitches:

• The idea that this service isn’t competing with private companies is ludicrous. There’s no reason to think that, if there truly is a demand for wi-fi in “open spaces,” then private companies wouldn’t pay to get access to them, so they could then sell access to customers. More likely is the idea that private companies just haven’t gotten to deployment in these open spaces yet. Or, alternatively, that they’ve been blocked from doing so by the city itself.

• Remember Y2K? The biggest concern toward the end, and the systems that required the most remediation, were state and local government systems. Their IT infrastructures, like most of their infrastructures, had been allowed to stagnate for decades. Since when is the government, at least local government, the vanguard of technology? Any city that deploys a wi-fi network will be stuck with it long after the technology is supplanted. It will become either increasingly irrelevant or increasingly expensive (i.e., to the taxpayers who inevitable subsidize it).

Either way, not so “neat-o.”