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10/03/2007

Tempered Enthusiasm, Realism at Wireless Cities Congress in Cannes

Two hundred and sixty-one people attended the 2nd annual European Wireless and Digital Cities Congress last week in Cannes, France (26–28 September). Some who also attended the first congress noted that the tone of this year's event was different. Apparently there was great excitement last year about municipal wireless ushering in a new era of cyber-urbanism, with citizens and government always connected, digital divides conquered, politicians promising free access without tapping into the treasury, etc. But few of those attending last year had actually built a network — which may explain their unbridled enthusiasm.

Open Spectrum Foundation logo This year, in contrast, there were large numbers of projects at various stages of implementation, and a high degree of consensus on what works and what doesn't. The realities and risks had come into focus, along with proof of the benefits and feasibility. Many speakers tried to stop the mood-pendulum from swinging too far back, from euphoria to gloom. For example, when Dato' Chang Ko Youn, a Malaysian government official, asked Chris Vein, CIO of San Francisco's Wi-Fi project, if he agreed with The Economist's recent harsh assessment of municipal Wi-Fi in the US, Vein replied:

"The hype about Wi-Fi in the US being dead is wrong. There have been changes in the relationship between vendors and city management, the organisational models and the funding. The earlier idea was that the vendor would take all the risk. Now the understanding is that that's not a partnership, and cities have to put some skin into it, too. But the commitment to wireless cities is undiminished."

That seems even more true in Europe. Paris' deputy mayor Daniele Auffray impressed everyone with her city's plans for ubiquitous internet access. Free Wi-Fi in 400 public spaces (with solar-powered access points built into park benches) is just the tip of l'iceberg. The main idea is to exploit Paris's huge mesh of underground tunnels (vividly described in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables) for optical fibre. The goal is to bring fibre-based broadband into 80 percent of Paris's buildings by 2009, relying on private entrepeneurs to lay the cables. Several speakers pointed out the importance of fiber backhauls for wireless networks, to keep up with the public's growing appetite for download speed.

Many speakers said the most important lesson they had learned in the past year was that good public-private partnerships are essential, since most cities lack the ability to design and maintain large telecom networks on their own. This was affirmed by Gregor Heilmann's new survey of municipal Wi-Fi projects in 17 European countries. Heilmann, a graduate student at Newcastle University, found four organizational approaches in wide use: public authority, private ownership, community networks and public-private partnerships, with almost half of all projects in that last category. According to Heilmann, community networks gain:

technological and organizational problems when they are extended over a city area. Networks solely owned by public authorities are confronted by legal enquiries, and municipal Wi-Fi networks operated and owned by private companies have so far not shown that they can realise a return on investment. [Public-private partnerships thus] seem to offer better perspectives....

Many project managers also stressed the need for goals beyond offering residents free Internet. Helping the city's mobile workforce was another frequently cited justification, with many good examples, from social workers consulting the records of past meetings while en route to the homes of distressed families, to building inspectors checking cadastral registers on site, to parking-meter management and video surveillance. Jon Lane, head of British Telecom's Wireless Cities Programme, noted that giving field workers access to existing applications is usually the first impulse. But then thoughts turn to retooling the applications for nomadic access, and then to creating wholly new applications impossible with only desk access. Chris Vein of San Francisco argued that municipal wireless should be understood from the start as a way to drive the process of reengineering government services and workflows.

Increased efficiency and cost savings for government are significant enough to justify public funding. But the European Union has rules against using public funds to subsidize activities that compete with commercial services like Internet access provision. Unfortunately, these rules are interpreted in response to specific projects, so cities cannot be sure what is allowed until they present a plan — which the EC's Directorate General for Competition can modify or block, as it sees fit, undoing months of effort and adding months of delay while the case is considered. (See my earlier article on municipal Wi-Fi in Spain.)

I chaired the Congress's session on regulation, funding and strategy. The organizers wanted this panel to break the pattern of Powerpoints prepared ahead of time, followed briefly by discussion and questions from the floor — if any time was left. Recognizing that the audience was full of people as experienced as our panelists and earlier sessions had been stimulating but short on opportunities for audience participation, the organizers said skip the presentations and let the audience shape the discussion with their questions and comments. Dave Carter, head of Manchester's Digital Development Agency, stood up right away to ask (this is a paraphrase): What can be done to rescue state aid for city nets from DG Competition's narrow-minded restrictions?

The debate that followed was intense, one of the Congress's highpoints, though the climax didn't come until later in the day when Prague's IT development chief, Jaroslav Šolc, said cities must work together if they want better guidelines from the European Commission. Everyone had been eager to hear from him because DG Competition's Wireless Prague decision (May 2007) was the first to deal directly with state aid for free municipal Wi-Fi. To get EC approval, Prague's offer of free public services had to be so reduced that building the network now seems almost pointless — and getting that far took 11 months of negotiation. For a moment, it looked like Šolc was going to announce a campaign to reform state-aid rules, but he merely suggested that a good place to discuss such a campaign would be in the Eurocities' Knowledge Society Forum.

Just then, lightning struck the building (a fierce storm was raging outside). The lights, microphones and video projector went dead, and the auditorium plunged into darkness. Power was restored a few seconds later, but it was hard not to imagine this as Zeus warning the cities not to challenge the state aid rules — or maybe it was a warning for the cities to work together. That's the trouble with signs from the gods. They're so hard to interpret.

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Robert Horvitz
Jaroslav Solc took exception to the way I reported his presentation at Wireless/Digital Cities, and I do not want him to be blamed for my interpretations. Apparently he is more unhappy with the telecom operators who complained to DG Competition about "Wireless Prague" than with the restrictions on service needed for EC approval. "Simply, the opponent is not [the] EC but some operators with lack of understanding for cooperation with cities on muni wireless infrastructure and potential for new services," he wrote in an email after reading my story. Second, when I said the restrictions are severe enough that building the new network may be "pointless," that was my opinion, not Mr. Solc's. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding.
06:24 PM, 10/04/2007

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Tempered Enthusiasm, Realism at Wireless Cities Congress in Cannes

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