A turf war over Wi-Fi WIRELESS

Robert Clark
International Herald Tribune
01-10-2005
For any road warrior who has lugged a laptop in search of a Wi-Fi hot spot, it sounds like a no-brainer: link all the local hot spots into a single citywide network. That is what officials in Philadelphia thought, too, when they decided to provide low-cost wireless coverage across the entire city.They chose a wireless ''mesh'' system, which allows the Wi-Fi cells to provide continuous coverage by sending data to each other. The usual architecture has each hot spot connecting back to a central switch or router. The mesh concept is new, but it is already becoming a popular way of delivering affordable broadband to urban communities.Yet it is not universally popular.Philadelphia's $10 million project clashed with a plan by the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, to speed the adoption of broadband Internet access across the state by providing financial incentives for telecommunications companies. Rendell's package, signed last month, rewards commercial service providers, and in particular the local giant, Verizon, for extending high-speed links to schools, rural towns and other designated communities. But the bill outlaws city-built networks unless the telecommunications companies themselves decide not to build them. Only through a last-minute deal, in which Verizon waived its right of refusal for Philadelphia, was the bill able to become law.Fourteen American states have passed similar laws favoring carrier-provided broadband over municipal wireless, according to Nicole Young, a senior policy analyst for the National League of Cities, which represents municipal governments in Washington.She said the telecom industry had ''lobbied aggressively'' to prevent cities from offering noncommercial broadband services.''This is of serious consequence to cities, towns and rural areas where the deployment of broadband services has been postponed or forgotten by industry,'' Young said, warning that the effect would be to ''discourage municipalities across the country from even considering the option of building their own wireless networks.''''This is a very, very contentious issue,'' said Ron Sege, president of Tropos Networks, the company from Sunnyvale, California, that is supplying the Philadelphia network.He estimated that more than 100 communities worldwide were using mesh technology in some way and said carriers felt threatened by this. Mesh can cover a whole town for just $16 per user, Sege said, or half the price of the local digital subscriber line broadband technology provided by many phone companies.Ozgur Aytar, a senior analyst at Pyramid Research, said municipal mesh networks could prove a real threat to the regional companies that dominate local phone service in the United States because the mesh networks can carry low-price voice calls using VOIP, or voice over Internet protocol. These companies, known in the industry as regional Bell operating companies, or RBOCs, are trying to lure customers with the so-called triple play strategy, combining video, Internet and voice calling under one contract.Combined with competition from cable companies and others, mesh networks built by local governments could be ''an assault that the RBOCs cannot sustain,'' Aytar said.Peter Jarich, wireless infrastructure analyst at Current Analysis, said heavily regulated carriers like Verizon were wary of setting a precedent. ''The last thing they want is to have someone compete on their turf,'' he said, ''someone who is not a competitor and is not subject to the same regulation.''To some extent, we think the whole wireless mesh business model is really going to cause a redefinition of what an operator is,'' he said Universities and enterprises also are building mesh networks, he said, adding, ''Should we regard them as operators, too?''Carlton O'Neal, vice president for marketing at Alvarion, which makes equipment for wireless broadband networks, said technology was shifting power away from traditional carriers.Information technology managers are being asked to deliver higher bandwidth at lower cost year after year, O'Neal said, adding that an increasing number were building their own wireless networks. ''Ultimately, you don't pay companies for phone lines when you can do it yourself.''

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