Earthlink ( and a little bit of Google) selected for San Francisco
Just got a call from a reporter asking for comments
1) It has become apparent that Universal Indoor coverage and especially above the second floor has not been addressed.
2) As we approach the 100th Anniversary of the 1906 earthquake, why isn't the solution created to be reliable after an EarthQuake?
3) How will an ad supported network with ad revenues going to an outside vendor affect local News Media as well as Participatory Democracy for citzens who will get less local political coverage due to cutbacks on beat reporters.
4) Contract length of 10 years plus 8 years is ridiculous - with Technology changes - it should be more like 4 years max.
Outstanding:
The RFP was created with:
1) No Needs Assement
2) No Financial Analysis
3) No serious Community Buy-in
4) No interest in a solution owned by the city
Interesting work being done in Austin Texas:
http://www.austinwirelesscity.org/
Comments
You have caught serious holes in the San Francisco’s Muni WiFi RFP. This is how I view your four concerns:
1. Indoor coverage really needs to be a separate proposal with separate grades of service and security as paid options. Currently I think achieving the required inside coverage is unrealistic.
2. I also agree with your network survivability concern. I would like to remind SF and all muni wireless cities that the reason they were getting into this business of wireless cities was to solve public safety communication interoperability problems and create networks that can survive catastrophes. If you need reminders I have radio correspondence from the Oklahoma bombing and 9/11. Hard to find correspondences from Katrina. There wasn’t much working accept a few WiFi zones with satellite Internet backhaul.
3. Watch out for advertising supported search services. These can suck the local advertising revenue right out of your local content providers. I don’t think your city officials want to loose their local newspapers, TV stations and radio stations, do they? Then of course I could talk all day on the right of privacy issues with theses services now knowing where you are and what you were looking for. WiFi radios are more geo accurate than GPS. Let customers pull information from local portals. This is non obtrusive and gets the same results.
4. A 10 year contract? We will be using 802.11z by then. The reason we are 13th in the world in wireless broadband deployment is because there is no competition to cable and telephone companies. Let’s not make the same mistake with broadband wireless providers and let them control us for years with no competitive motivation for technology upgrades.
There are a few more holes but you caught the big ones. Keep up the good work as an oversight group to these RFP’s . We are all watching San Francisco.
Posted by: Larry Karisny | April 6, 2006 07:27 AM