Technology Futures

This blog entry from Harold Feld is a little dramatic, but not much, considering how high the stakes are. Congress, with special attention to Senator "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens from Alaska, has crafted a bill cleverly called the "Community Broadband Act of 2006." This little piece of wolf in sheep's clothing purports from its name to be pro-community, but basically prohibits communities from making direct investments in broadband.

I'm told by people that know a lot more about the politics of this bill that it will probably never get passed, but I'm somewhat less worried about it than many others, mainly because I think there are other options to complete municipal ownership. A regional nonprofit or broadband coop offers a lot of advantages, especially for communities that do not have a public electric utility.

What does concern me is the lack of attention that Congress has for the users of broadband. This bill is essentially a sellout, with a complete lack of balanced dialogue in Washington about the long term implications of the policies embedded in this bill. As my good friend Gene Crick remarked once about Texas ("...Texas has the best laws money can buy"), this bill represents the best law that money can buy. A short note to your elected representatives would be in order.

Here is an update on the legislation from Feld, who is tracking this closely. Some changes have been made that move it a bit closer to what communities need (but not close enough, in my opinion).

I have been traveling a lot lately, so I have had the opportunity to try out a lot of WiFi hotspots. The good news is that most hotels now have some kind of WiFi available. Business travelers can stay almost anywhere and count on having some kind of Internet access. I have not had to use my Earthlink dial up account in many months. Many "budget" hotels have some kind of free WiFi, with service about what you pay for it (nothing). Service at the far end of the hall in the hotel may be poor, and speeds may be pokey. The more expensive hotels tend to make you pay extra for service, and as time goes by, I begrudge this less and less because the service is usually much better. Many hotels have gone to wired access (Marriotts, most notably) to provide more control--you can't sit in your car in the hotel parking lot and poach free WiFi access with wired in-room connections.

Public WiFi hotspots, if anything, have become harder and harder to find. Many businesses that were experimenting with this service a year or two ago seem to have dropped the service--it costs money. Places like Starbucks and Barnes & Noble have service agreements with national providers like T-Mobile and AT&T. But access is still expensive. The going rate for 24 hours of access is still around ten bucks--extortionate since most travelers probably are only connected for an hour or less. Monthly subscriptions are still hovering around $40. This would be reasonable if the big outfits allowed roaming, but they don't. None of the big companies have enough hotspots in enough places to justify the expense, and few can afford to carry two or three $40/month fees just to check email on the road for ten or fifteen minutes.

Community WiFi projects are also struggling, like the St. Cloud, Florida project, where few people use the free service because of quality and access issues. WiFi looks cheap on the front end, often because wireless vendors have financial models that obscure the ongoing costs and take rate issues. If you do a true life cycle comparison with a fiber effort over twenty or thirty years, fiber is not just competitive, but much cheaper. And the real issue with wireless is that it does not provide the speeds that most homes and businessses will want or need in just three to five years. Design Nine is working on several fiber projects right now where we are working with financing specialists to develop some new and innovative ways to build fiber networks. As these projects progress, I'll keep you informed.

Should communities avoid WiFi projects? Absolutely not, but you need to know why you are doing it and how you are going to pay for and manage it over the long term. And you should not rely on wireless vendor promises of "build it and they will come." What St. Cloud has found out is that many people (perhaps most) are willing to pay for more expensive wired broadband connections rather than free but inferior WiFi. As I have been saying for a long time, communitywide wireless projects have to be approached very very carefully.

A coffee shop in Washington state had a guy arrested for using their "free" WiFi signal for three months without buying anything. The alleged WiFi poacher apparently just sat in his car in the parking lot nearly every day and used the Internet access without buying anything.

The shop finally called the cops, who told the guy to leave. When he returned later, the cops were called again and this time, they charged him with theft of services. The law here is murky, but it is a good example of how poorly many WiFi hotspots are managed. With different software or hardware, the store owner could limit the amount of time any one person uses the service per day, or could simply block the MAC address (a hard coded network address in each computer) of that computer.

Thinking about setting up a hot spot? Get good advice before jumping in.

DaimlerChrysler has been late to the hybrid electric car game, but the perennially third place firm may end up winning the game over the long run. DaimlerChrysler recently bought Global Electric Motorcars, which makes the street legal GEM e4.

The GEM e4 is just the opposite of cars like the Prius, which are expensive to buy and expensive to own when you look at total life cycle costs (replacement batteries, needed every 3-4 years, cost thousands of dollars). The e4 seats 4, is street legal, and is fully weatherized. The car achieves it's low cost of operation by using less expensive car batteries, and has a range of about 30 miles, with a top speed of 25 mph--plenty of speed for around town driving. They are charged by plugging them into any 120 VAC outlet for a few hours.

The car is not legal on highways, but much of our driving is short trips just a few miles from home. The GEM vehicles start with prices as low as $7,000, and a well-equipped four seat model is under $10,000. They are much more practical than electric and gas scooters, the Segway, and other "open air" vehicles. Most people don't want to be caught out in a rainstorm or go to work with their hair and clothes flying in the breeze (me included). Alternative vehicles, to be popular, have to be able to get us from point A to point B with a minimum disruption of our appearance--you just can't show up for a business meeting soaked to the skin or covered with snow.

These NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) wont' replace our highway driving cars, but they can cut the cost of getting around town dramatically.