PORTLAND, Ore. – Nigel Ballard spends much of his free time trying to make Internet access free for everybody.
The admittedly cheeky and even a bit geeky Ballard, who is fond of wearing a “Got Wi-Fi?” T-shirt, is an adviser to the Personal Telco Project, a determined volunteer team of computer wizards setting up free wireless Internet hot zones around Portland – including cafes, bookstores and even city parks.
Their goal is to blanket the city with areas where people can take their laptops and get on the Internet free of charge, or make whole neighborhoods Internet accessible from desktop computers. It’s a vision shared by some city government leaders, including Erik Sten, a city commissioner.
“It has some groundbreaking possibilities for people who are stuck on the wrong side of the information society divide,” Sten said.
Ballard would like to see everybody cross that divide.
“I believe that myself and others with communications and technical skills have a certain social and moral imperative to try and redress the imbalance in some small way,” Ballard said.
Wi-Fi – wireless fidelity – is the term applied to a narrow range of frequencies that can be used to transmit computer data over relatively short distances. But with enough antennas to relay signals, it can reach low-income neighborhoods that lack Internet access, help to improve education, make the city more attractive to businesses, and boost civic participation and communication, Neff said.
Philadelphia has already installed wireless nodes in 150 of its 265 schools with plans for access in all of them. The hope is to reach most of the nearly 80 percent of the 210,000 public school students whose income is so low they qualify for school lunch programs – and whose families are unlikely to afford Internet access at home, Neff said.
The cost of installation is far cheaper than copper telephone wire, fiber optic lines or cable, but business models to pay for operation and maintenance still have to be worked out, said Julie Ask, a wireless technology analyst with JupiterResearch.
“When it comes to cities like Philadelphia, there have been lots of announcements but there have not been a lot of detailed plans about how they’re going to execute Wi-Fi,” Ask said.
Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos Networks in Sunnyvale, Calif., says there are three basic business models being followed as cities consider Wi-Fi networks.
A city will install the network, and operate and maintain it for police and fire departments, or city agencies doing field work, such as building inspectors, and then allow public access for a small fee. Or a city will operate it as part of a municipal utility, such as an electric or gas company, Sege said.
The third model is awarding a franchise to a private company that will provide service.
“At some point it’s all about the dollars,” Sege said. “I can build a broadband Wi-Fi network to cover the entire city of Philadelphia for about $30 per home. To do it with cable or DSL is going to cost 10 to 20 times as much.”
The growth of a national wi-fi infrastructure is likely to go through “this messy period where all kinds of players are trying to figure out how to use it and how it should be organized,” said Christian Sandvig, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor who specializes in telecommunications technology and public policy.
Sandvig noted that both the telephone and the radio and television industries went through similar phases of disorderly competition until a national infrastructure was established, including farmers who strung their own telephone lines in rural areas, or pioneer do-it-yourself ham radio operators in the 1920s and ’30s who provided technical innovations for entrepreneurs to create new broadcasting companies and networks.
As wireless director for Portland-based Matrix Networks, Ballard manages wireless network installation for a wide range of customers, including colleges, marinas, hotels, convention centers, golf courses and research labs.
His volunteer work has frequently piggybacked on his commercial jobs, allowing him to set up Wi-Fi access nodes whenever he can find volunteers or convert businesses to his cause.
One of his latest projects was the Portland International Airport, which now has both free Wi-Fi access and a business-oriented service that charges a fee.
The Port of Portland paid for installation of public wi-fi while a private carrier, Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile, offers Wi-Fi at a United Airlines travelers lounge.
“Even though it could be a revenue generator, the Port agreed to public Wi-Fi,” Ballard said.
Dual access at the airport is a good example of coexistence between free Wi-Fi and fee-based services for Joe Sims, vice president and general manager of Wi-Fi “hot spots” for T-Mobile, based in Bellevue.
Sims said Ballard and his band of volunteers are trying to provide basic service to the community while fee-based wi-fi providers such as T-Mobile are focusing on the specialized needs of businesses.
“Our success is being predictably in the places you go as a road warrior,” Sims said, “and then making sure the service is secure, reliable, very high quality.”
Business customers want to know where they can find a wireless “hot spot” and be sure their connection is protected from potential hackers or electronic eavesdropping, Sims said.
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