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Subject: Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Committee

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  • From: Terri Buckner <tbuckner AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: Chapel Hill Information Technology Advisory Committee <chtechcomm AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Chtechcomm] New Orleans debate on muninet
  • Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 13:02:40 -0400

For the full report: http://www.freepress.net/news/11445 (from the Washington Post)

Sky Dayton, who founded Internet provider EarthLink Inc. and more recently has focused on wireless ventures, said the area need not bother reconnecting all its downed lines and should instead rely on existing cellular networks and additional systems known as WiFi and WiMax, which provide high-speed Internet access.

Dayton said the cost of such a network would be relatively low — “a rounding error in the context of rebuilding a city.” A series of small, electronic devices on top of buildings or lampposts and take signals from central towers and push them around to houses, offices or other “hot spots.”

Such networks can also deliver Internet-based telephone service.

Several municipalities around the country have launched, or are considering building, government-owned or -operated wireless-Internet networks, so lower-income citizens can access the Internet more affordably. Those efforts have met with fierce opposition from the major telephone companies, which have successfully lobbied in several states for laws prohibiting governments from operating such networks if they compete with private industry.

Dayton, who heads a consortium between Earthlink and SK Telecom Co., a leading mobile-communications firm in South Korea, said municipal wireless-Internet networks should be public-private partnerships.

Jeffrey A. Citron, chief executive of Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading provider of Internet phone service, sees an opportunity built less around alternative technologies and more around opening up competition.

“I’d come up with a plan for a trenching system” for major thoroughfares in New Orleans while the city is largely empty and undergoing repairs, he said. High-speed, fiber-optic cables are hugely expensive to lay, so the dominant phone companies have typically been the only ones to do so.

Citron said the city could dig the trenches and make them available, for suitable fees to help cover construction costs, to any carrier that wanted to lay cables to provide services — including voice, digital television and Internet access.

With more companies potentially competing, Citron said, prices would come down.





  • [Chtechcomm] New Orleans debate on muninet, Terri Buckner, 09/17/2005

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