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Digital Houston: The Fairy Tale Continues
By Larry Hendrick | May 21, 2006
It is time for me to wade in write on the Houston Muni WiFi event the Mayor held earlier this week with area bloggers. Here’s an audio recording of the entire telephone conference. There are several points the Mayor made during the telephone conference, and he repeated them often. It stressed the reasons the City of Houston is playing such a prominent role in this initiative.
- They want to drive down the price of Internet Access.
- The want to bridge the digital divide.
- They want to create more competition.
- They want 640 square miles covered, so the city can use this service.
- The DSL and cable companies are greedy.
- The DSL and cable companies will try to prevent it from happening.
I will address each of these in order (although they overlap) starting with the first one … high prices.
Mentioned most often in the conference call was the need to “drive down” the cost of Internet access. Currently Internet access is available for less than ten dollars per month, and DSL (high speed, always on, unlimited access) is available to over 90% (and probably more like 95%; can’t find that stat) of Houston for $12.95 each month through the Yahoo partnership with at&t. How far do they plan to drive the price down? Does anyone remember how much Internet services sold for three years ago? Two years ago? Last year? So, is it higher now or lower. In case you don’t know, the price of high speed Internet service has dropped 73% in the last two years in the City of Houston at both the low end and the high end, speed wise. Seems like competition and free enterprise are working just fine, if you ask me.
The “digital divide” is a classic offense when a government entity wants to invest in technology. As I recall, the last big push to bridge the digital divide brought the citizens of Houston … SimDesk. Now how many millions of dollars was that, and how many people were looking for work after this divided bridge was crossed? When asked about also bridging the divide with computers, the mayor made it clear the city supported the efforts of all the non-profits that were raising money and placing computers in schools and libraries. Since Houston’s schools and public libraries already have free Internet access and computers for the digitally divided, it looks like this is accomplished.
(I’d like to add a personal note to the digital divide offense. I think the time and energy that is going into this project would be better spent working with the local school districts, teaching the under-privileged to read and write so they can fill out applications for employment when they graduate. The numbers of students that can’t accomplish this is astronomical. If they could get jobs, they could buy their own Internet access and not depend on the city to save them.)
The Challenge? Covering 640 square miles. When asked about other cities’ successful implementations examined, Richard Lewis, CIO for City of Houston, cited a two-square mile successful implementation in San Francisco. Two down, 638 to go. They also said they estimated 18,000 modules to cover the 640 square miles, but I don’t know how they arrived at this number. As reported in the news this week, Google is reeling from the fact that they underestimated the number of access points on the San Francisco project. The other cities mentioned, Oklahoma City and Spokane, are interesting. OKC’s Muni WiFi is for public safety (city employees) only, not public use, and the WiFi covers only a portion of downtown OKC. Outside that area, the communication system reverts to traditional technology. Spokane, Washington covers 100 blocks of downtown with WiFi technology.
The strangest statement the Mayor made was that the DSL and cable companies might try to derail this process and he prefers this not to happen. Let me see if I have this straight. Private companies that derive their very existence from providing a service (that is already controlled by the government) shouldn’t be allowed to express their concern for this effort by a government entity to take business away from them by endorsing a “favored” company? What is wrong with a company defending its livelihood? They have the right to take every means within the law to protect themselves from a self-serving government that attacks them at every chance, as long as they are operating within the regulations set forth by the government agency that regulates their prices.
Let’s look at a little history. A few decades ago, the cable companies approached the cities and said that if they could get exclusive access to the cable rights, they would undergo the costs of running cable to every neighborhood. The cities jumped all over this and granted exclusive rights to one company, thereby killing any possibility of competition. Now these very companies that still have exclusive rights, are the villains in this theater? The cable companies still answer to the city council, yet they are the bad guys? Now the city is saying exclusive rights to one company will increase competition for Internet services in Houston.
The City of Houston plans to grant exclusive rights to one company for an initial ten year period with two, five year extension options. This equates to a twenty year contract to provide this service. What does this ultimately mean? More competition? Not quite.
Let’s suppose, that in one year, a technology comes along that is the perfect equipment to provide 100Mbs service for a twenty mile range from each base station (it’s already a ratified standard waiting on equipment manufacturers). A private company approaches the city with the desire to rent access to city property to deploy this product and sell services for profit. They offer the city a large sum of money to do this, but the city has to say … Sorry, no can do, we gave it to this other company in exchange for providing us service for our meter readers and police department, but we’re happy with our 5Mbs throughput system and it will get faster with the next upgrade in four years.
This article is not meant to address the technical challenges of this project, but be assured that the City of Houston is very much a guinea pig. At this time, there is not ONE example, with even half of the area to cover, that can be looked at and declared a success, total or partial. Every implementation of this type is either not started yet, or under used because the level of service does not meet expectations.
Bottom line … you want to know what is really at work here? The city wants to play with have these services and they have to come up with a way to justify it to the voters. Using competition and the poor for their desire to implement this is nothing but a smoke screen. The people of Houston and the businesses of Houston are not clamoring for this, only the geeks even know what the discussion is about.
One final question about this subject. Will the one company installing the equipment be allowed to compete against the wholesale vendors for end users? If so, will they be “regulated” in retail pricing to keep them from selling it to end users at the wholesale price?
Topics: WiFi |
May 22nd, 2006 at 12:33 am
[...] Digital Houston: The Fairy Tale ContinuesCurrently Internet access is available for less than ten dollars per month, … Does anyone remember how much Internet services sold for three years ago? … In case you don t know, the price of high speed Internet service has dropped … [...]
May 25th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Hey! Who invited you to pee on the fire? Rain on the parade? Pass gas in the elevator? Forget the keg at a frat party? Poop on the party? Elect bush as president?
May 28th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
John, I’m not sure you want an answer to your questions. It feels like you just needed to rant. Do you feel better now?
June 8th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
[...] Digital Houston—The Fairy Tale Continues [...]