http://www.nypress.com/19/14/news&columns/feature.cfm
NEW YORK: NOT-SO-WIRED CITY
Thanks to the big telcos, we lag in installing a wifi overlay
By Louise Radnofsky
In the beginning, there was warchalking. As the oft-related story
goes, in 2002 web designer Matt Jones decided to take his laptop,
with a newly acquired wifi card, on a walk around London. From the
"cloud" of coverage created by overlapping unsecured wireless
broadband networks in city offices, he found he could connect to the
Internet. Then, drawing inspiration from the signs marked by hobos
during the American Depression, Jones began to chalk up symbols to
tell other would-be Internet users when they had arrived at a
"hotspot" location.
Four years later, the idea of being able to gain a wireless
connection to the Internet anywhere has exploded. Philadelphia will
become the largest single population to implement a network later
this year. Sixteen other American cities have already awarded
contracts to companies, almost all of them small and independent, to
provide free or low cost wireless broadband for public use.
New York City lags far behind all of these municipalities.
"Politicians [here] don't know the difference between a server and a
waiter," said Andrew Rasiej, who ran for public advocate last year on
a platform of providing municipal wireless broadband. "This is a city
that made most of its money in the Industrial Age, and the people who
control most of its power structures are Baby Boomers who don't know
much about technology."
The city inched closer to municipal wireless broadband last December
when the City Council passed a bill creating a special taskforce to
advise Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on technological options for
"unwiring" New York, but this has stalled in the new session.
Impatient activist groups have taken matters into their own hands.
NYCwireless has installed wireless networks in Bryant Park, Union
Square Park, Tompkins Square Park, Bowling Green Park, City Hall
Park, and South Street Seaport. The group also maintains a database
for users to identify neighborhood "hotspots." And in keeping with
the original, co-operative sentiments of Jones' activity, the group
provides open-source software, free of charge, to any apartment
building or block that wants to build its own "mesh" wireless network.
For around $5,000, a tech-savvy apartment resident can attach a
"router" to a physical Internet connection in the building, and plug
in two or three access points at electrical points on each floor of a
typical six-storey building, according to NYCwireless Executive
Director Dana Spiegel. These access points transmit wireless signals
to residents on each floor, creating a "mesh": a network that has no
identifiable center—or owner—because each computer added creates more
paths of connection.
Organizations like NYCwireless can afford to give away their creations
—often enhanced versions of other groups' work across the country—
because they've entirely bypassed the hefty research and development
investment costs of the major telecommunications companies. "It's not
this black box, über-technology that requires zillions of dollars to
do," said Sascha Meinrath, project director of the Champaign-Urbana
[Illinois] Community Wireless Network, whose software was developed
by part-time volunteers sitting around drinking coffee and testing
ideas.
To many, the municipal wireless movement challenges the very concept
of ownership: making a traditionally privately held utility available
to everyone for next to nothing. Spiegel said communal networks
brought people together. Discussing the recent New York Times
feature, "Hey neighbor, stop piggy-backing on my wireless," Spiegel
said, "That's completely wrong. It should be, 'Hey neighbor, it's
great to finally meet you.'"
Unsurprisingly, the giant telephone companies have made no secret of
their hostility to the new technology. They are currently lobbying
intensely at a federal level and in 15 states to pass laws banning
municipalities from providing free wireless broadband, citing anti-
monopoly concerns. Several traditional companies, including New York
City's main Internet providers Verizon and Time Warner Cable, impose
non-sharing policies on users.
Spiegel pointed out that there was no law against sharing an Internet
connection. NYCwireless recommends ISPs that do not restrict use in
this way, and instructs users how to set up security software to
prevent harm to computers on a network.
Groups like NYCwireless see wireless broadband as bridging socio-
economic divides as well as bringing smaller communities together.
While Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has openly dismissed Internet
access as a priority for low-income communities, NYCwireless
secretary Laura Forlano describes a home broadband connection as
helping users to find jobs and retail bargains. "Everyone knows
public libraries are crowded and can only offer limited time online,"
she said. "If you're a single mother, you may only be able to go
online at midnight."
Of course, first that single mother needs a computer to take
advantage of the broadband connection around her—and to be able to
read the information that she finds online. Washington, D.C.-based
not-for-profit OneEconomy bulk-buys and refurbishes cheap computers
for low-income communities in New York, and also runs TheBeehive.org,
a Web site that offers simple English and Spanish information about
money management and school choice.
Christian Sandvig, assistant professor of Speech Communication at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sees community wireless
challenging the very content of the Internet. "A lot of the ways
these services are currently offered [by traditional telcos] create
consumers beholden to existing media outlets," he said, because they
prohibit users from uploading content as quickly as they download it.
On many communal mesh networks, users can host their own blogs, Web
sites and even radio programs.
Will telcos eventually succumb to this grassroots pressure, perhaps
eventually bidding for municipal contracts themselves? Sandvig finds
potential for reconciliation in the history of the spread of
telephones in rural areas, where users organized into local co-
operatives and ordered insulators and climbing spurs to scale
electricity poles and install their own telephone kits. "There was
the idea that the telephone was something you built yourself," he
said. "It doesn't mean it stayed that way."
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