Municipal Wi-Fi generally refers to the perception of turning an entire city or region into a wireless access zone to make wireless internet access a universal service (Delta and Matsuura 17). Municipal Wi-Fi is in most instances deployed in large parts of the municipal area or the whole of it by employing a wireless mesh network, which uses hundreds of outdoor routers on utility poles. Recently, there have been struggles for municipal Wi-Fi on whether it should be pursued or not, since the efforts to provide it free has proved futile. This leads to the question whether the municipal Wi-Fi should be pursued. If so, should it be left to the private sector, the government or both? This paper seeks to answer these questions.
In some instances, private firms have worked closely with local governments to construct, operate and finance these network services. In other rare instances, governments have provided these internet services alone or outsourced them to private firms. But for all the three forms, that is governmental, private and collaborative, internet access is allowed to the public either free or at a subsidized fee.
Wi-Fi services are economical to the community, since they provide internet services as utility to the whole community rather than concentrating on a few individuals. They are also much cheaper than having individual businesses and households paying private firms to acquire internet network services, which are in this case availed to the community at no cost or very low charges. Apart from its economic advantage, Wi-Fi technology is also capable of enhancing a municipality’s management and public safety, especially when used directly. In addition, Wi-Fi is viewed as a social service to people who cannot afford high speed internet services like DSL, which are mainly offered by private firms (Aurigi and Cindio 118).
Wireless networks are also capable of withstanding harsh climatic conditions and a good example is the case where the Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It was only the wireless mesh network that had not been destroyed. The other communication systems had been broken down, and this makes Wi-Fi highly reliable in carrying VoIP traffic and other important data (Russel 1).
Free networks have their disadvantages, which brings up the question of whether or not Wi-Fi should be pursued. For example, operating and regulating the network can prove difficult when smaller number of clients using the network consumes majority of the available capacity. The next issue concerning these networks can be seen in the high costs of running and maintaining it, which led to its withdrawal in the cities of Philadelphia and Houston (Nichols 1).
The second problem associated with free internet services is that the Wi-Fi is limited by the power in which the Federal Communications Commission’s parameters allow it to operate on (Giannattasio 140). These parameters dictate the nature of the power envelope and the spectrum range for the municipal Wi-Fi and other unlicensed wireless technology services. These spectrum parameters were made free by this commission, which made wireless technologies available for anyone to use, from cordless phones to baby monitors. However, this led to congestion and limited the strength of these services.
In addition, a high frequency of this spectrum is absorbed by everything including trees, walls and even cars, therefore limiting the extent to which they can travel (Giannattasio 140). Furthermore, the Federal Communications Commission proved that Wi-Fi is unsuitable for wide area use since the strength of its transmission is limited to one watt (Giannattasio 144). The consequence of this is that Wi-Fi signals are reflected, scattered or even diffracted due to the many obstacles that absorb them and therefore they require very dense installations for them to be reliable.
Due to these challenges, customers of these services are forced to sit near a window or a room with a window, facing the pole with the Wi-Fi transmitter, to get signals from the base stations. Use of Wi-Fi technology is also faced with a big technical challenge of interference from other wireless devices that attempt to transmit signals using the same spectrum. This interference is brought by the fact that wireless networks run on unregulated spectrums and many devices such as microwave ovens, mobile phones, and Bluetooth utilizing devices, can interfere with its transmission. Interference is a major problem that greatly impacts the network performance since it causes some packets of transmission data to be dropped. When retransmitted, these packets increase the error rates. When the error rates increase, the routers sending the packets are slowed down to compensate for the loss.
Municipal Wi-Fi’s are usually expensive to construct and maintain, and that is why a collaborative agreement between the private sector and the local government is necessary for the success of these services. In this collaborative approach, the private internet service providing companies work closely with the local government to construct and operate such a network. Once it is operational, both parties can share the financing costs and make the service free or a charge a minimal fee for maintenance purposes. The network is supported by the service fee and advertising charges, which are provided for by a monthly per user charge strategy.
The problem with private firms providing this service alone is that it will be too costly for the company to maintain and this could trickle down to high service fees to the end users. In addition to the high costs, the private firms maintain a single account for each of its users and this allows the user a limited amount of portable service, which is normally used when traveling. In some instances, these services are not available in some parts of the municipal since the private firms try to limit the extent of their services. This limitation is disadvantageous to the traveling user.
The problem with the government solely providing the service is that it will be of low quality since the state tries to cut on revenue expenditures. This low quality nature of the services stems from the fact that the internet is just like any public infrastructure and requires maintenance, which requires money. Furthermore, for city dwellers to get high quality wireless internet, they have to pay for it. It can also be slow due to overuse and network overload. The overload could force the local government to invest heavily and consequently spend more revenue on infrastructure in an attempt to maintain the existing service level. In the end, the state would have incurred losses instead of profiting from the program.
Despite the high costs of operating and running these network services, municipal Wi-Fi should still be pursued but in this case with a collaborative agreement between the public and private sectors. Though its cost is higher, wireless internet is much cheaper than fiber and cable options. It is estimated that using fiber would cost approximately three thousand dollars to serve one household and only twenty five dollars when using wireless technology (Aurigi and Cindio 124). This cost can be brought even lower to around ten dollars when the local governments collaborate with private service providers to ensure free internet to their constituents.
In conclusion, municipal Wi-Fi should still be pursued, despite its high maintenance and operation costs, and the extreme network overload that can be experienced when using it. Apart from having the capacity of withstanding harsh climatic conditions like the Hurricane Katrina, Municipal Wi-Fi also provides free accessible internet to the constituents. The high cost of operation can be minimized if the government and private firms collaborate to provide Wi-Fi services.
Works Cited
Aurigi, Alessandro, and Fiorella Cindio. Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. Print.
Delta, George, and Jeffrey Matsuura. Law of the Internet: Volume 1. New York, NY: Aspen Publishers, 2011. Print.
Giannattasio, George. A Guide to the Wireless Engineering Body of Knowledge (WEBOK). Hoboken, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 2009. Print.
Nichols, Russel. “How to Make Municipal Wi-Fi Work.” Govtech.com. Govtech.com., 2010. Web.