Many American cities- San Francisco is the most well known example, but Philadelphia and some others are also planning it- are planning to roll out free wireless broadband networks covering the entire city.
If you have an opinion, please answer the following questions:
- Is this a waste of public money? Shouldn’t municipalities be more concerned with providing water, police and fire services, garbage disposal and so on?
- Would your answer to question 1 change if the city in question was Bombay or Bangalore or Belgaum or Patiala? Why?
Update: For question two, I don’t really care about the relative waste of public money, or that San Francisco can afford to waste public money. What I’m asking is if internet access is an essential municipal service in the first world and not the third (or two-point-fifth) world.
I think it’s a bad idea to have a monopoly wi-fi provider in a city. I think it is an even worse idea to have a monopoly wi-fi provider in a city whose main motive is not profit, and who does not therefore strive to give customers the best possible service to keep them happy. I think it is the worst possible idea to have a monopoly wi-fi provider who does not care about profits, and whose operation of a wi-fi service will divert funds and effort from other, more crucial activities, that were its responsibility anyway.
But Kunal, you are descending into a Typical Pompous Libertarian Rant, and creating a – dare I say it- strawman of monopoly service. The service provided by the municipality is not necessarily the only service.
It will be a waste of public money – should critical basic services (water, garbage disposal etc) do not have adequate coverage. Besides that point I do not see how it can be defined as a waste of public money (assumption being free wi-fi is a public good essential in the same general category say, street lighting). The only concern would be the inefficiencies that may arise in case of a sole provider.
And please don’t turn this into a cartel issue. Think commonsense before incorporating cartel philosophy into everything.
Of course not. It’s only a waste of money if it’s not done properly, which is more likely in case 2 than case 1. If it provides a reliable connection, then so many things can be done using wireless networks including traffic management, setting up secure kiosks and connected services that don’t die when they dig up the streets (yes, happens in SFO too). Apart from that it might be able to provide the PDA/phone/laptop equivalent of a 911 number – considering that 911 numbers have to hit a queue.
It will also provide people with the ability to remote control devices from anywhere. Also, provide terrorists with the ability to remotely detonate bombs years after installation, and from a different country. Not that they don’t have it right now, but the current model has a higher bar.
But I think it’s a great thing, and even better for service providers who can offer premium services at a cost (I’m sure reliability is going to be an issue at peak
I don’t give a rat’s posterior about whether this puts me in a cartel or a non-cartel or whatever. I don’t want to deal with strawmen – what do they do, use part of themselves when they sip a coke? Also I think this whole cartel argument, for or otherwise, is hilariously pompous! Look at yourselves!
XC-135, I have my doubts about Wi-Fi being a public good in the strict sense of the word. Non-rivlarous: bandwidth is finite and when one person uses bandwidth the congestion (s)he creates prevents other people from experiencing the same quality of service. Non-excludable: if you’re offering it for free, you’re not excluding anybody but that does not meen you cannot exclude people from enjoying access (through passwords or any other means).
Deepak, the examples you’ve given are for a private wireless network on which you can run the municipality’s services and boost it’s productivity. I’m talking about a network which anybody in the city limits can log on to for free and use for internet access. A network can be used for both, of course, but I’m talking about whether offering free internet access to everyone is a waste of public money.
Also, my earlier comment about Pompous Libertarians was intended to parody comments made about libertarians by unlabeled junta. But my point about it not (necessarily) being a monopoly still stands.
You are absolutely right in saying that city ownership of a wi-fi ownership does not necessarily imply that it will be a monoploy. It is possible that the city governments will allow private companies to compete with them for a piece of the wi-fi pie, without using their monopoly on coercion to drive competition out, in theory. *In theory*. Communism works, in theory
Coyote has a good analysis of the whole municipal wi-fi thing here http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/07/more_government.html
Also, an instance of a government wi-fi provider driving out private competition (although this one had a paid service) http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/08/proved_right_at.html
>>”But Kunal, you are descending into a Typical Pompous Libertarian Rant, and creating a – dare I say it- strawman of monopoly service”
You’re curtailing my freedom of expresion!
Hey Aadisht,
I was talking about a municipal owned wireless system too. A 911 service system would have to be municipal owned wouldn’t it? And nothing prevents the municipality from paying a private wireless provider a flat fee for free access to all citizens – that would perhaps be just a wee bit costlier than setting it up from scratch and going through the tendering,installation, testing and maintenance processes.
The private provider can place value added services for a cost, on the same network, for additional revenue. Meaning, movie streaming, pay per view etc.
So what I say applies to both a public wireless system that is free to access, and to a private network. But remember, if there is a barrier to enter – a fee – that means there is no way public services can be truly public, like a 911 service. Any one with a wireless device should be able to call 911 (or access the wireless equivalent of 911). The Police would be able to “Track” wireless equipment if it moves anywhere in the city, even if it reached an area where a certain provider didn’t exist!
I didn’t say it was a monopoly at all – heck, I believe such a system would PROMPT private players to start providing services – either on top of the existing system (“Secure your wireless connection”) or as a complete add on to the system, like in media content. It’s like owning a road and restricting access, versus making the road public and free – the road is a public need, we know now. We didn’t when tar roads started to get popular.
Also this so attractive to tourists and conferences of course. Imagine conferences – a big conference would choose its location based on availability of free wireless broadband.
So why is it a public waste of money then? No comparisons to “we could use that money elsewhere” because that elsewhere, when appropriately broken down, can be made to appear as a waste of money. And as far as “is the money well spent?” – it’s just like a highway. No body accesses free wireless just because it’s free. They need to get somewhere. To email, to content, to applications. Or to the police.
So why not make the wireless access as important as other infrastructure?
I’m likin’ this more and more now.
– Deepak
Oh and forget my acerbic remarks about your cartel comment. I’m fairly sick of what seems to me to be a waste of time.
Wait a second. If people were arguing about Cartelians and non-cartelians on a municipal provided free wireless broadband internet – *THAT* is a waste of public money.
Deepak, so am I likin’ this more and more. 🙂
Clarify this please- when you say the access is free, but services are provided by private parties at a cost, which ones are you talking about?
Free: Government-to-citizen (G2C) services, 911 access, etc
Paid: wireless security, streaming media, location-based services (I guess these are options)
So where are you going to put your no-frills web and email access? Behind a proxy server you need to pay to access, or as free as the G2C services the municipality is providing anyway?
Well, you can call 911 from a phone provided by a private service, can’t you? That’s the way it’s worked for quite a while now, so I don’t get why you say that it would have to be municipally owned.
Secondly, when you have the city paying a private operator to provide services for free, but I don’t see how that could not be a monopoly. Heck, the private sector contractor would probably insist on that being a part of the contract if the city didn’t already move to ban competitors.
Thirdly, I don’t see how the taxpayers are getting value for their money here. The municipal wi-fi provider will likely be inefficient, because where the hell are the incentives for the operators to make it inefficient? A private operator operating in this cut-throat business will HAVE to be efficient, and provide value to its shareholders, or it will go under. A municipal provider has no such incentive, the poor schmucks who provide their revenues (ie taxpayers) have no choice but to pay up, or face jail time.
Aadisht,
The no frills web and email access will stay free as provided by municipal services. Sure, some fancy operator can provide a fancy email service that it costs to access. For instance if I wanted to set up email on my domain deepakshenoy.com then I might need to pay someone somewhere (i.e. hosting an email service might be unviable in this setup) but if I wanted to access gmail, hotmail etc. it would still be free.
Kunal,
First: I didn’t say it HAS to be municipally owned. Just like roads do not HAVE to be publicly owned., but it makes more sense to, since it’s infrastructure. Wireless access *is* infrastructure, IMHO.
A private operator can be forced to provide free access to a 911 style service, I agree. That doesn’t remove the fact that a 911 style service can be part of a municipally provided wireless access service. My gut feel is that a 911 style G2C service won’t even happen unless the municipality owns or controls the service.
Second: I think you’re reading too much into this. A government contract to provide wireless access is akin to the Government subsidising Northwest/AA and/or GE reinsurance. That doesn’t mean a Southwest or Swiss Re is not allowed to play, or to offer lower prices. Nobody “forces” a non-compete, especially if the government says we won’t disallow a no compete. For example, there’s no rule against private roads.
Third, I agree that governments can be inefficient. And I agree that the benefit is lost if inefficiencies are rife. But the same argument applies to roads, right? Like in Bangalore, we have an administration which considers good roads sacriligious. On the other hand, the roads in California are a fair degree better and well maintained, even without a toll. No incentive in both cases, but the municipal corp did better where the benefits were fringe (votes, revenue from taxes, civil lawsuits).
I believe that wireless internet access (or internet access per se) is more like a road than like airplanes (or trains in the US). There’s no reason there can’t be private participation. Just that government paid maintenance makes more sense for it to actually blossom.
Everyone’s all hung up about access: the real deal is in the content, not the access. All internet access will be commodity (and currently is) even if the govt. does not appear in the picture.
Kunal:
are you talking about financial efficiency or operational efficiency? Because the municipal government can always enforce operational efficiency through quality of service guarantees, in the form of fines if rollout does not cover a certain population/ area, or uptime does not stay above 99%, etc.