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« State of Municipal Wireless Report | Main | Aruba, Maybe Trapeze Go Open Source »

March 10, 2005

Rizzo: Party Like It's 1999, Philadelphia! And Chicago Raves

Councilman Frank Rizzo suggests Philadelphia re-activate Ricochet network: I'd like to ridicule Rizzo here as I have elsewhere for making statements that have little technical merit and use dubious background research that comes from paid-for policy institute reports. But I can't. This is a very interesting idea, reactivating the former Metricom's ubiquitous low-broadband-speed network as an experiment.

While a modern infrastructure is needed for Philadelphia's public-safety purposes and for their broadband proposal, reactivating Ricochet would allow the city to start immediately on bridging the digital divide at an extremely low cost. It's a way to test how the market and citizens respond to faster-than-dial-up. There's very little risk, and the company that owns Metricom's assets appears eager to be involved.

But one comment in the story can't stand. Steven Schwendemann, "a vice president for Ricochet Networks Inc., a subsidiary of YDI Wireless," said, "WiFi cannot go through walls." That's a very interesting statement, and I imagine he said in more depth that Wi-Fi can't easily penetrate indoors from distant access points without additional equipment than built-in Wi-Fi adapters. In many mesh Wi-Fi installations, high-gain interior access point/bridges are used to solve that problem.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the city thinks about muni-Fi: the city's early estimates are under $20 million for a network somewhat similar to Philadelphia's upcoming proposal request. Unfortunately, the local alderman who wants to study the idea made this crazy statement:

"If you looked at 500,000 Chicago households that presently are accessing the Internet and multiply that by $20 (a month), that could be a huge amount of money," the alderman said.

Right, but you'll be offering speeds far below the wired broadband providers--and you probably should not be trumpeting the idea that your goal is to steal customers from existing providers, which is a pretty unlikely proposition.

But the good news is that the Heartland Institute is based in Chicago on LaSalle and would thus be forced to leave the socialist city (and its socialist public roads, public lights, public electricity, and public police) into some bastion of democracy elsewhere. Maybe Texas?

2 Comments

When I first read the article I had a similiar thought, treat Ricochet as a demo environment. As I thought about it more though I came to the conclusion that doing this would be akin to doing a market survey for the demand for selling Harley's by renting mopeds - apples and oranges. The city has already done some pilots in Love Park and the like - they have determined that the desire for access is there.

I then thought, "Well, maybe I'm not thinking this all the way through... let's look at how Ricochet is doing in SD and Denver. Neither of those places have wireless broadband - that I know of - so maybe we will see if there is an appetite for Ricochet." So I looked. With a combined population of approx 1.7mm Ricochet has an aggregate user base of 7,000!! (http://www.terabeam.com/corporate/about.php - read to bottom of the page.) Does anyone find this a bit odd - in today's insatiable drive for broadband that they could only get .41% market share??

There should also be concerns about the status of the wireless transmitters that are scattered around the city. If they haven't been used in 5 years, and I doubt that anyone has been maintaining them, what percentage are broken and need to be replaced? Over a couple of years, that could be the majority by now. What is the plan for that? What is the cost?

There is also the problem that they would need to distribute propriatary CPE since Ricochet was designed before there was 802.11. (I still have my original ricochet modem though!)

I also don't remember Philly ever being turned on as a ricochet city. I would tend to notice that since I am originally from Philly (though I agree with W.C. Fields' tombstone commentary on Philly and Im glad to be living in California now :-)

And is this the same Frank Rizzo who was the hardline Philly Police Chief/Mayer, Nixon loving, Police Horse backing into protesters of my youth? Is he still around and giving Philly a bad name?