The Governator and State Legislature in Cali must be giving up on the unfulfilled promises repeatedly made by AT&T and the cable guys. The left coast will soon be providing taxpayer funding to bring broadband to the nearly 1.5 that can’t get service. Government tends to not do things very efficiently, but it’s a fair bet thet’ll get it done sooner that a duopoly. I’m betting the duopoly lawyers will use the courts to delay deployment as long as possible.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced he has signed Senate Bill 1191 by Sen. Elaine Alquist authorizing community service districts to provide broadband services to their residents.

“We live in an age where technology drives everything we do and to remain competitive and connected in the future we must expand broadband access today,” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “This legislation will help connect California’s cities to each other and to the world by growing our digital highway.” (Government Technology)

Massachusetts taxpayers will soon be subsidizing the same carriers who are not providing universal broadband coverage to provide said coverage. With the population density even in rural Mass, one would think a determined service provider could work this out without public funding. Unfortunately without competition, there is no incentive.

The measure was approved 144-0 on Monday afternoon. Rep. Denis E. Guyer, D-Dalton, earlier filed an amendment raising the bond bill’s funding to $40 million.

“The additional $15 million in funding will allow us to reach further in our efforts to provide broadband access to both unserved and underserved communities, rather than having to choose one or the other,” said Guyer in a statement. “This is incredibly important for my constituents and the commonwealth as a whole.”

Many of the communities Guyer represents have no access to high-speed Internet.

The bond bill was unveiled last August by Gov. Deval Patrick as a way to encourage investment in broadband capacity in rural and suburban areas.

The legislation would create a broadband incentive fund for developing public and private partnerships to invest in broadband infrastructure tools like conduits, fiber and wireless towers. The fund would be managed by a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

Some 32 communities statewide have little or no Internet access, primarily in Western Massachusetts. Other regions are locked into monopolies with no choice of provider. (iBershires.com)

The city of Wilson, NC grew weary of waiting for Time Warner Cable to deploy reasonable priced, world class broadband. Their solution was to do their own overbuild and offer fiber to the home service. I comes as no surprise that  the TWC Evil Eye is protesting rather than building a competitive system.

IndyWeek has an interesting read on the North Carolina city of Wilson, which is providing all of its residents with fiber optic triple play services via a company named Greenlight. Greenlight offers symmetrical connections from 10Mbps ($34.95) up to 100Mbps ($299.95), something that obviously doesn’t make local competitor Time Warner Cable very happy. (Broadband Reports)

A city governent should be the competitor of last resort. Unfortunately, the cable and telco duopoly has lobbied long and hard for protected franchises and right of ways that may not be used by competitors. In many cases, the local municipality may be the only entity that can deploy last mile connectivity under these laws and rules.

It’s obvious that we need wholesale changes to laws governing right of way and franchising of fixed line services. Sadly, federal and most state governments are blissfully willing to do the duopoly’s bidding, keeping equal access to potential customers out of a competitors reach.

Well Time Warner mght want to hold off on turninig off the UseNet servers. They got a bigger fish to fry. The City of LA just slapped TW with a nice fat law suit for bad service and failure to comply with the contract terms that won them the territory.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office plans to sue Time Warner Cable Inc. today, alleging that the company caused “major havoc and distress” when it became the No. 1 pay TV provider in Southern California two years ago.

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said Wednesday that Time Warner violated state law by making false and misleading statements to subscribers. The 25-page lawsuit, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times, claims the company violated its franchise agreement with the city by having subscribers spend hours on hold with customer service representatives and allowing excessive repair work delays.

“Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents were ripped off,” Delgadillo said in a statement. “Time Warner must be held accountable for its promises.”

Which begs the question of the Lede. How is this different than Dallas, Houston, Beaumont, etc? Lack of interest by the powers that be is the only rationale for the difference. But regardless this should be an interesting lawsuit to watch.

Linky.
Legal brief.

Oklahoma City has just turned up a Muni WiFi network that covers 555SqMi of the city. The downside? It is a closed system not open for public consumption. But even at that the project was funded out of capital infrastructure funds and capital improvement money. The network is to be shared across multiple deptartments.

Oklahoma City says it just turned on the largest city owned and operated municipal Wi-Fi mesh network in the world.

The wireless mesh network covers 555 square miles with 95% coverage in the city’s core, the city said. However, unlike dozens of other municipal Wi-Fi projects, the Oklahoma City network is only available for use by city staff such as police, fire, first responders. The city plans to eventually expand the use of the network to animal welfare, code enforcement and utilities.

The network, which took two years to build to the tune of $5 million, was paid for with public-safety capital sales tax and city capital improvement funds.

“Our state-of-the-art wireless communication system allows city government to be more efficient and provide a higher level of service to our citizens,” Mayor Mick Cornett said in a prepared statement.

Time will tell if Oklahoma City’s network will shut down as rapidly as other cities’ networks have been shuttered across the country. Indeed, Oklahoma City’s distinction may be its choice to limit the network to just city employees.

That last sentence is key. Too many cooks in the soup spoils the broth. Other cities need to look at how OC managed the politics and kept on mission. Also take note that they deployed the whole thing for less than $5m.

RCR article.

You’ve seen this said time and time again on this blog, if you want to do get Wifi working in your city either the city needs to build it using existing funds to do an existing job like meter reading or internal IT, or they need to stay out all together. Successful Wifi networks either public or private have been built as funded projects either with a specific job to do or as a community supported project, not as franchises to be taxed and micro managed. More proof lies in the demise of MetroFi.

In what is proving to be yet another high-profile Metro Wi-Fi failure, MetroFi, a San Jose-based startup that raised over $15 million from Sevin Rosen & August Capital, is close to shutting down, according to WiFi NetNews and MuniWireless, two blogs that follow the MuniFi industry closely.

MetroFi is trying to sell its citywide Wi-Fi networks in Portland (Oregon), Aurora and Naperville (Illinois) and Santa Clara, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Foster City and Concord (California). MetroFi founder, Chuck Haas, says he is also exploring the sale of MetroFi itself to a third party. (GigaOm)

Well we should say Earthlink is closing its doors to the Muni deal it had with Philadelphia. We will go on record that we think that Muni WiFi is still a viable model. But the business arrangement that was sign on to was flawed. The presence of Philly politics did not help much either. But we report it here all the time the success stories of smaller cities are having with Muni. The concept and technology are valid.

We concluded that the private franchise model was suboptimal and that Philadelphia’s solution was problematic in a number of ways. At the time, we received good press coverage and a helluvalot of blowback from certain constituencies (who continued to assert that everything was on track).

Now that we’ve made it to May, 2008, Wireless Philadelphia is on its last legs. While many of us are still working to salvage something from this mess, reading through the New America Foundation report, it’s amazingly how eerily prescient it is. Ironically, the solution we proposed was exactly what has been on the table for the past couple months — but, as with far too many innovative ideas, this one got mired in the muck of Philly politics and, perhaps, personal egos.

Sadly, the mainstream press continue to demonstrate a remarkable ignorance by tagging this failure as a failure of “municipal wireless” — the reality is, the Philadelphia model is a corporate franchise granted to Earthlink — much of the problem stems from the fact that the municipality has no control or ownership over the network and Earthlink has demonstrated no accountability to the local community. Conde Nast’s Portfolio gets it completely wrong — heading their story, “Another Municipal Wi-Fi Plan Dies” — which is a particular shame since I’ve spoken with the article’s author, Sam Gustin, previously and he knows better.

Sad state of affairs. Now maybe a proper community-enterprise set up can occur. But ya got to get the politics under control.

Linky.

A state that will never be known fro low taxes or careful government spending may also be known for the state that killed the internet tax free zone. Most states require sales tax to be collected if the etailer has a physical presence in the state. As it is proposed, not in New York. If successful, other states will soon follow suit.

Governor David Paterson is expected to approve it. The new bill is called the “Amazon Tax” and it closes a loophole for online retailers who get sales through affiliate programs. A lobbying group representing local retailers argued that the previous exemption created an unfair advantage for online retailers.

“This is a first step—but a critical one—in our ongoing battle to level the sales tax playing field between New York retailers and the out-of-state Internet giants that have, for years, capitalized on an unfair and unintended competitive advantage driven solely by tax policy,” James Sherin, president CEO of the Retail Council New York, said in a statement reacting to the bill’s passage. (Gadgetell)

What the New York legislators are too stupid to realize is that large states like New York actually benefit from the sales tax moratorium, as sales are also made to buyers in other states by New York etailers, creating a tax free balance , and most likely a gain in New York’s case. We live in an era where the reach of government from the feds to local extends too far into our lives, along with the taxes to support it. While I contend New York has experienced a net gain in revenue from on line sales, any opportunity to de-fund the monster should not be passed on. I hope New Yorkers will see the light and cry foul before a small tax free zone disappears for them. Any complaining retailers can fix their alleged problems by developing an online presence. Failure to keep up with changes in the marketplace has nothing to do with an unfair tax advantage.

No foil hats in Augusta, they’re about to roll thier own Wifi network. The city is the right size, the business model makes sense, and the current generation of equipment makes is easier and cheaper than ever. We give them good odds for success.

Using a grant from the state of Georgia, the city will be spending more than $500,000 to build and deploy the WiFi network over a highly populated area. With most of the deployment costs covered, the city is only looking for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to operate, market and maintain the network.

“We have reviewed wireless RFP’s from all over the country,” said Gary Hewett, Augusta’s assistant director of information technology, in a statement. “We believe that our ‘build it and they will come’ approach is a model that will work.” (Channel Web)

Community WiFi is a unique animal and not because of technology. But the politics of it require some adroit community buy-in. Lacking that any project is headed for failure –

Most media have it wrong. Municipal wireless networks across the United States didn’t stumble in 2007 - high-profile cities where deals fell apart, such as Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, were not going to finance, own or operate their respective networks. These weren’t municipal networks at all. The business model that faltered in 2007 was the “private corporate franchise” model based on the deal that Philadelphia and EarthLink agreed to in 2006. It was, in fact, the free market that failed last year - not governments in their traditional role as the builders and maintainers of critical infrastructure.

Regardless of the author’s assessment it was labeled ‘Muni Wifi’. I’ll leave it at that. Now lets repeat what IS important to a Muni Rollout –

• Get the City Planning Commission front and center on the effort. Forget the mayor or city council. The planning commission if they aren’t behind it can kill an effort faster than cheetah taking down a gazelle.
• Get the buy-in from the major corporate entities — top employer(s), Chamber of Commerce, business civic groups.
• Have the various tech head groups in the area volunteer to help with design and implementation.
• Identify a small group of normal citizens so that there is grass roots buy in.

Notice I have not included any of the carriers or folks like Earthlink. At this juncture WiFi technology is very mature. 13yo’s can have a node installed faster than it takes them to create a Facebook page. Folks like FON will gladly consult in the initial planning. But you need that Planning Director to clear the red tape for the necessary permits.

Link to full article.

PS: Think that WiFi is not mature? Consider this WiFi hotspot HOW-TO. Its a cooked technology, serve it hot and let the people get it done.