At 09:45 AM 10/1/2007, Charles N Wyble wrote: >Peter Benjamin wrote: >> At 09:38 AM 9/29/2007, you wrote: >>> Ah yes I saw this article. It was fairly interesting. >>> >>> As for it not working when out sourced to the private sector, that's a >>> fairly blanket statement. >> >> When the administrative overhead of private firms needs to be >> paid for as well (think executive salaries, rented office space, >> health plans, etc), then that appears to have a cost increase of >> 100% or more. > >Well. I am quite cheap. And in good health. And not an executive. :) > >What I was saying, is that I think a lot of time and money could be >saved by going with a vendor who is an expert in this sort of thing, to >do a feasibility study and design a solution that the city could then >roll out.
There are no "experts" in rolling out muni wifi. Not with 5 years experience. Any firm doing the feasibility study is reading reports from other cities' successes and failures, itemizing the list, visited some of the city's officials (junkets), and summarizing the successful methods. No city the size of LA is on the list of successes, so, ..., this feasibility study... is it going to be feasible that it will even have an included method that would actually have a chance of succeeding here in huge LA? Let's hope so. And let's make our proposal! >> The key i think is to avoid "free" and think "highly discounted" >> where it would be "free" to those who qualify, while the other >> subscribers would have to subsidize the discount levels. This >> could easily be done with high bandwidth users watching on demand >> full frame/full motion movies at 10 meg/sec, would pay for something >> that DSL/cable broadband can not deliver. > >Very true. One way I could see this working, is using a Library card as >an identifier. From what I have heard, recent federal law requires some >sort of "barrier" in place to identify the access point as open for >public use, and a form of acceptance from the user. Something as simple >as an e-mail address (which doesn't even have to be verified) could be >sufficient. From what I understand, this was in response to some of the >court cases surrounding access of free WiFI without the owners >permission. For those who run free access points and leave them wide >open for others to use. > >I don't have time to find the relevant information or links on this at >the moment, but if someone dug that up it would be quite useful :) I'm thinking our own id system, and give free email addresses to them to sign up with. Email is part of being on the net, and without a free wifi email address, just surfing the web, is not being fully enabled/empowered on the net, as also having an email address. With spam filtering. >> I just do not see any effort in "itemizing" the possible >> revenue streams, which are well over a dozen, including >> both low and high cost items (movies are high, ISO images >> are low), where QoS and accounting play the most important >> infrastructure part of the enterprise. > >Certainly. Things like Voice/Video/TV over IP immediately spring to >mind. Pay per view etc. An itemized list would be nice, by protocol that can be "accounted" and recorded by the software responsible for billing. >> >> >>> I think that system design/architecture, componet analysis can and should >>> be done by the private sector. The roll out should absolutely be done by >>> the local govt. Especially in Los Angeles with the various unions and so >>> forth. >> >> What is a "roll out?" > >Physical deployment of access points and back end infrastructure. So easily said. ;-) > How does local gov do it? > >Well. They would schedule workers to take their little cherry pickers >out, and hook up the access points to the light poles. :) Who trains the workers? Who trains the trainers? Makes the training material? How many classes would be offered? How large is the class size? Where are the classes offered? Who selects the cabling to run up the light pole? It must last 20-30 years. The city's GIS system would be used for scheduling installations? I'm thinking the "light pole" solution is a very bad one. Anyone know why I think this? >> If they pay for the initial set up, who pays and >> runs the operation year after year? The city or >> a private firm? With tax dollars, or some ratio >> of tax dollars with revenue? > >Probably some combination of the above (with several small private firms >each getting a share of the contracts and revenue). Is the feasibility firm moving this way? How many firms? 3? 10? 20? 50? Most likely, imo, is 5-8 firms, max. And I do not like that number. It will not be a long lasting solution, as most of those firms will drop out, imho. The overhead will eat up their profits... Thus, my direction is strong, and looking for supports, know how people, or people to sign up to be a small operator of a base station from their home or office, and get some revenue. >> >> I think that is why LA choose to use a feasibility firm approach. >> To get many ideas/approaches. Here in LA I firmly believe that >> the private individual, small firms, can do this job, and make >> a 25% profit doing so, while larger firms will fall flat at >> no profit, or negative cash flow (admin overhead costs). > >I fully agree. I am already in contact with numerous city officials and >employees on this. > >If you are interested in my progress, please see my blog at >http://jackshck.livejournal.com > >and my WiFI project page at >http://www.knownelement.com/red-badger/ Let us know when you update these web sections. 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