Overseas Wireless Deployments Offer Lessons for U.S.

How we measure success is as important as what we are measuring. On March 19, 2008, the FCC dramatically revised its broadband data collection, in essence, finally giving in to mounting evidence that current assessments have been woefully inadequate. Previous data collection may have allowed politicians to declare "mission accomplished" - that universal affordable broadband is available throughout the United States - yet the fact remains that large swaths of the United States have fallen behind a growing list of other countries in broadband provision.

Within the U.S. context, wireless networks have often followed a familiar trajectory: utilizing hyperbolic and misleading rhetoric in making promises to local communities; obfuscating the state of actual deployment and the real-world service levels provided; and ignoring success stories that point to innovative business models overseas that are unheard-of in the United States. Sylvia Cadena, coordinator of WiLAC in Ecuador, points out one of the most overlooked areas of innovation in this realm, "[Rather] than municipal networks, we look more for community networks, which although [they] are affected by the same context, do not depend on the political will, but the organization and hard work of its members."

In fact, these community networking organizations have been the groups that pioneered large-scale wireless networking technologies - eight years ago, when there were few companies deploying wireless networks, dedicated groups of technology experts, programmers and community organizers were developing and deploying wireless technologies in London, San Francisco and Urbana, Ill. Today, the networking technologies of these groups have matured to the point where relatively astounding community networks have been deployed using the wireless systems developed by this global network of open source programmers.

Growing Up
Dana Spiegel, president and executive director of NYCwireless, has followed the maturation of these technologies and their real-world deployments throughout North America. "The interesting and inspirational networks are the ones that grew out of community wireless initiative," she said. "In particular, Austin, Texas, and Montreal are great examples." Both cities formed public-private partnerships, but the foundation has been locally based nongovernmental organizations, not private, for-profit companies, Spiegel said, "These cities were smart enough to recognize that their best chance of success was not only to build upon the work of local volunteers, but to involve them intimately in the creation of the local nets. This creates an incentive for other local activists and volunteers, and ensures there's a direct connection to the people who are going to be the early adopters of these nets."

Anthony Townsend, a community wireless movement veteran and research director at the Institute for the Future, also looks "mostly outside the U.S." for innovative projects. "The work of Ile Sans Fil in Montreal is probably the most interesting because it's a great example of a community network that has effectively graduated to become the municipal network. Something similar is going on in Austin, Texas, as well," said Townsend. In both cases, innovative business models have been developed to use local expertise and empower community organizations to deploy and manage the networks.

Richard MacKinnon, president of Austin Wireless, also investigates overseas community wireless deployments and said he's "inspired by the work of Ramon Roca and Guifi.net in Catalan." Guifi.net is a grass-roots initiative formed to overcome the shortcomings of telecom incumbents who failed to adequately serve local communities. "This community wireless network was created to provide connectivity for scores of rural villages that were underserved by Telefonica," he said. "‘Underserved' is code for when an incumbent service provider declines to provide service or provides it at monopoly prices," MacKinnon continued. "Guifi.net developed a business and technological model and taught people how to take control of their economic destiny away from Telefonica."