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03/06/2007Municipal Wi-Fi Networks Must Pay for Themselves
By Gabriel Vizzard
 LastMile Communications CEO Gabriel Vizzard sees public- and private-sector collaboration, including edge-of-network content delivery with rich media and advertising, as the means of ensuring a sustainable broadband-wireless ecosystem for local communities.
As wireless-communication infrastructures flourish, all levels of government, particularly municipalities, are looking to the wireless Internet as an efficient, cost-effective means of delivering relevant local services.
Broadband networks can assist with mission-critical applications, such as public safety or emergency response, and leverage IP technologies to greatly improve the speed and flexibility of communications. Services aimed at improving tourism, education or government-worker efficiency can help foster economic development.
With the successful implementation of broadband-wireless strategies in cities such as Corpus Christi, Texas, deployments are expanding to many more communities, such as San Francisco and another 42 cities in Silicon Valley.
Despite these encouraging signs, municipalities often find it hard to truly visualize the full scope of what wireless implementations have to offer. The challenges they face are numerous. How expensive are these community networks to build and maintain? Can they help bridge the digital divide with free Internet access while providing sufficient return on investment? If so, how? Plans often begin to get bogged down in political bickering over matters of funding before a unified vision can be fully achieved. Consequently, many community network projects lose momentum and fall flat. How can this be avoided?
While these problems cannot be ignored, it is important not to be too despondent. As Corpus Christi proves, barriers can be overcome. The prerequisite to getting community wireless initiatives off the ground and ensuring they stand the test of time is to clearly define the business case for network implementation.
This requires not only city leader but all possible stakeholders in the project, including the private sector. A whole range of private bodies, from service providers to local businesses, will likely have a role to play in the implementation of the scheme and will all have important insights and key areas of knowledge to support the business case.
A common business case for the public sector requires finding the right mix between affordability and maximized functionality. Additional important factors municipalities must consider include support for the widest possible audience — both in users and devices — efficient use of bandwidth, and integration with existing technology infrastructure and/or standards.
By working with the private sector, municipalities can more clearly visualize the true potential for the network. Drivers including CCTV, mobile-workforce management and remote education all may involve or be driven by the private sector, and yet offer many benefits to other political stakeholders and the general community.
While a variety of financial models can be considered, the common denominator in all of them is an engagement with the commercial sector. Simply put, wireless networks must help pay for themselves.
Many of the current models involve the introduction of paid services such as public broadband access. The local advertising model, however, is gaining increasing attention as a viable way to support both the local community and its broadband-wireless network.
While the Internet has become known for advertising based upon intent, search engines often lack the local relevance that is critical especially to people on the move, who may, for example, be able to find the name of a pizza delivery company but not the branch their particular neighborhood. There is a real need for users to be able to access information relevant to their intent as well as their location, which in turn provides a great opportunity for content providers and advertisers to monetize mobile content.
Yet, access technologies cannot achieve such symbiosis without a content delivery solution. Only the latter can bring the interactivity and precision of Internet advertising into the real world by leveraging geography and demographics to help ensure maximum return on advertising dollars.
Finding the right financial model while enabling mobile users to enjoy rich media and find the right information, wherever they are and whenever they want, is no longer a dream but a reality. It is no longer a matter of vision but a matter of implementation. Through the use of local advertising and the deployment of a wireless content delivery solution, municipalities and businesses can work together to provide citizens and consumers with a community network that will thrive and evolve into a widely used and highly sustainable ecosystem.
Gabriel Vizzard is CEO of LastMile Communications, an innovative provider of secure, edge-of-network wireless content delivery solutions.
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