Opening KeynotePaul Butcher is Marketing Manager, State & Local Government, for Intel Corp. He delivered the opening keynote at the W2i Digital Cities Convention (West) on Tuesday, October 11, 2005. * * * Mr. Butcher said the trend in municipal wireless is “really capturing our imagination about what is possible. What we’re trying to do is enable a market to happen that will allow us to accomplish our wildest dreams and goals.”
He noted a change in the dialog over the past year from talking about “the pipe” to changing people’s lives. Area broadband-wireless networks free people from their desktops and office processes and give them back time in their workday. “The pipe enables it,” Butcher said, “but the pipe is like a piece of electrical conduit. It’s those software apps that give us a chance to impact people’s lives.”
Looking Back
Butcher referred to the November 2003 Wireless Internet Institute conference co-hosted with the City of Atlanta and to an early WiMAX-type deployment in Houston County, Georgia, spearheaded by Greg Richardson and Matt Stone, now of Civitium. In March 2004 a statement of work went out to a number of systems integrators, one of which was addressed to Richardson. Intel had promised Houston County some support in the direction of a WiMAX project, and Richardson approached him. Butcher said he wanted to see a 10-page summary with a business plan recommendation for WiMAX technology in the Houston County area. The assessment should include: • executive summary,
• state of the technology,
• what a first-half 2005 deployment would look like,
• customer service model,
• assessment of the service provider capability in the area,
• legislative actions that would support development,
• technology issues,
• dirty air from the air-force base,
• infrastructure requirements (towers, etc.),
• recommendation for financing options including private ownership and possible public bond options,
• recommendation for ownership model, and
• recommendation for management model.
“As I look at what’s happened over the past year and a half, we got it almost right,” Butcher said. “That’s really the crux of what most of these assessments are doing, as we look at what we want to accomplish in a community.”
He pointed to initiatives moving forward in San Francisco, Portland, Philadelphia, and hundreds of other communities. He observed that new Requests for Comments (RFCs) are taking the best understanding from previous efforts and spurring improvements. And he credited Dianah Neff, CIO, Philadelphia, “for starting this whole thing. Certainly, Philadelphia wasn’t the first, but it was the biggest first.”
Digital Communities
Intel has changed the name from “digital cities” to “digital communities.” “A community is many things,” Butcher said. “It extends beyond the city to a county. So communities rang a bit more true for us.”
He reiterated that it’s not about the pipe but the solution sets. As many as 50 percent of local-government employees are out in the field on a regular basis, which is a vast opportunity for the deployment of applications under wireless clouds.
Butcher noted that Corpus Christi “is doing an amazing job deploying a wireless cloud on the backbone of an automated meter reading project for water and gas utility.” He identified the value to first responders and the return to the community in lives saved (versus hours saved in a day), and the benefit to small business and for citizens. He argued that saving two hours a day in a police officer or social worker’s job, that that’s a savings for the community and the taxpayer.
“There’s value in these wireless clouds,” Butcher said, as well as an opportunity to bridge the digital divide. “As purveyors, and even consumers of technologies, we have a responsibility to focus on solutions for those who are on the fringe.”
He told a story about his son’s recent preparation for a school debate and the ability to quickly download 40 pros and cons in five minutes and study them. “Compare that with a student with no connectivity,” Butcher said. “That individual, if he stood up against my son, probably didn’t know about the 40 pros and cons and probably didn’t get to spend the afternoon studying this debate.” At the same time, by consuming technology, his son was broadening the digital divide, “and that speaks to why we all have a responsibility to move in the direction of digital inclusion.”
Things in Three
Butcher identified milestones that can be described as “Big Three’s.” 1. Three RFPs/RFCs: Philadelphia, San Francisco, Portland. Philadelphia is working with Earthlink. San Francisco received more than two dozen responses to its RFC/RFI. Butcher said that teams or triads of service providers, system integrators, and equipment manufacturers are pairing up to respond to RFPs. “The realization is that no one company can do this on its own. As teams, they’re banding together as a market, making proposals on these RFPs, and that’s a good thing.”
2. Third major business model. Butcher called Google’s response to the San Francisco opportunity “a shock that’s been felt around the world. It adds to the momentum in this space.”
3. Three major equipment manufacturers: Cisco, Nortel, Motorola. “That these three companies, these long-time telco equipment manufacturers, are entering into this wonderful mix, suggests that there is momentum in this space. There is an opportunity to move forward.”
Natural Disasters
Butcher discussed the importance of broadband wireless to natural-disaster recovery and medical emergency. He noted the significant impact to infrastructure and the loss, during Katrina, of paper-based medical records. “Entire populations have picked up to different parts of the country,” he said. “If I go to my doctor’s office, he’s got four or five charts on me, but it’s all paper based. That’s the kind of information I’d like to have stick with me.”
Butcher noted the huge role of communication during disasters, with millions of people affected and aid workers coming in. Wireless can deployed quickly to aid relief efforts and enable people to reach out to and find loved ones. Butcher also noted the nearly $1 billion in damage to Bell South’s copper plant in the region and the time it will take them to rebuild.
“What we saw out of Katrina was the ability for multiple teams to bring in standards-based equipment—Wi-mesh, pre-WiMAX—within a week. It speaks to the strength of standards-based technology, the fact that not only is there one company behind this technology but thousands, and behind that there are millions of engineers, not only creating solutions, but able to install those solutions through a strong channel of distributors and resellers and value-added suppliers.”
Butcher identified the value of flexible broadband-wireless infrastructure for disaster-prone areas considering their options for rebuilding. “If we’re going to reinvest copper and wire-line technology into these areas, as large companies spending millions and billions of dollars on that infrastructure, can we be assured that the population is going to move back? Maybe not.” He said the decision is at the local level, because cities own vertical assets, or they can work with the utility who owns them.
“Katrina has caused new dialogue to happen,” he said. “If we look at homeland security, those funds are moving not so much in the direction of 911 but in disaster recovery.”
Butcher said the behavior and view toward broadband wireless is also changing among the major telcos. For the first time in a number of years, he has been able to sit down with executives from several large service-provider companies to talk about what municipal wireless represents not only as an opportunity to the community but to businesses and large telcos.
“I think Katrina, unfortunately, was an event that has catalyzed behavior at the state, federal levels and also within the large telcos. Whether it will amount to anything, we’ll see.”
Summary
In conclusion, Butcher said “we’ve gone from awareness to momentum to behavior.” He noted a few concerns: 1. Supply and demand. Are there enough communities stepping up? He said he was increasingly turning his attention to the demand side and whether there could be 100 RFCs or RFPs on the street by next year. “We’re at a teeter-totter point a critical point when the market is going to move forward, or stall, and I wonder if the answer is making sure there’s enough RFPs to enable this market.”
2. Small communities. While lauding the momentum among larger communities, Butcher also pointed to small communities, those that could again get left behind. “There are other business models that are appropriate for these communities. Maybe ‘anchor tenant’ isn’t right for everybody. Maybe a utility model is right for smaller communities. Every community has to determine what’s right for it.”
3. Spectrum. Unlicensed spectrum is not enough, he said, nor is it the ideal spectrum for this space. “As you get up above 5 [GHz], the ability for that signal to propagate through buildings and around corners and what-not is just not there. What we really want is lower spectrum available for multiple parties out there. What we need is more spectrum that’s suitable for these types of deployments.”
4. Software. Butcher noted that Oregon has attracted many Linux practitioners and reiterated the potential of deploying thousands of applications and tools. “Take ten minutes and look at all the things that are around out there that could be done better, more efficiently and effectively, if we had a tool that was enabled by a wireless cloud.”
5. Disruptive technology. “Is this a revolution or an evolution?” he asked. “My opinion is that it is a revolution. The reason is simple. There are entities that stand to lose if this happens, if they continue down the same course, and they are throwing resources at fighting it. The fact that it’s being fought points to the fact that it’s a revolution. Otherwise, it would merely evolve.”
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