Committee recommends against citywide wireless - for now
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BY DEENA WINTER / Lincoln Journal Star
After watching other cities try to blanket themselves in wireless Internet — and increasingly falter in the process — a committee has concluded Lincoln should hold off.
The committee recommends against establishing a public wireless network, saying its multimillion-dollar costs would be a burden on a strapped city budget.
A citywide Wi-Fi network would allow users of laptops and other wireless-enabled devices to log onto the Internet almost anywhere.
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* To read the entire WI-LINC Commission report, go to www.lincoln.ne.gov, keyword wilinc.
* To see a map of Wi-Fi zones in Lincoln that offer wireless access (as of December), go to www.lincoln.ne.gov/maps and select Wi-Fi Zones.
The WI-LINC Commission was set up in September 2006 by Councilman Jonathan Cook, a software developer, to see whether citywide Wi-Fi would be practical.
Its work took longer than expected — a report was expected by the end of 2006 — but that gave members time to watch other cities.
As of August, 92 regional and citywide networks were at various stages of implementation, and 455 cities and counties were considering joining, according to MuniWireless.com.
But some cities — such as Houston, Chicago and San Francisco — shelved or scaled back plans, often because cities are having to take on greater expenses than they’d hoped.
The WI-LINC Commission estimated it would cost as much as $27 million to install a wireless network across all 90 square miles of Lincoln. That doesn’t count operational costs.
The WI-LINC Commission was led by Ken Doty, president of Triadix Inc., an information technology company.
He went into the study with the belief the city needed a network, he said. But now, “we firmly believe that there isn’t a need.”
“We are already hot,” he said. “We are very, very hot as a city.”
And he ain’t talking Pamela Anderson hot. He means the city has plenty of “hot spots” — open wireless networks — in such places as coffee shops.
“It’s really pretty impressive,” said Terry Lowe, systems coordinator for the city’s information services division. “You can get it anywhere from the Hi-Way Diner to Hy-Vee.”
They’ve compiled a map of hot spots and put it on the city’s Web site, although there are likely some they don’t know about.
The city offers free wireless in City Hall, public libraries and at Government Square Park at 10th and O streets.
It’s been just over a year since the city lit up the park, but Lowe said initial monitoring indicated few people were taking advantage of it.
The commission recommended the city help integrate the sometimes-overlapping systems in such areas as the Haymarket District, Antelope Valley and Interstate 80 interchanges.
The commission also recommended designating a wireless coordinator, and it recommended the city build a registry of all city hot spots.
A major obstacle to citywide wireless is Nebraska’s ban on government entities’ providing a retail sales point for telecommunications. Even if Lincoln provided free wireless, it could face a legal challenge by the telecommunications industry.
So unless state law changes, as is the goal of a petition drive, the commission concluded it would be a “fool’s errand” to develop a system without the ability to charge fees.
But some say the problems with municipal wireless initiatives are being overblown.
The movement continues to grow even though some cities have re-evaluated their plans, said Mike Perkowski, CEO of Muniwireless LLC, a media company that covers the wireless industry and operates MuniWireless.com.
The big attention-getter in the press has been “the very ambitious and probably in retrospect unrealistic goals of being able to put in a citywide, border-to-border wireless network quickly and cost-effectively.”
Some cities are scaling back plans from blankets to zones. Phoenix, for example, is setting up a hot zone in a large downtown swath, Perkowski said.
The Lincoln commission concluded Wi-Fi technology is becoming outdated and is hopeful about the prospects for the emerging Wi-MAX, a wireless broadband network with better coverage.
While Wi-Fi has a maximum range of a few hundred feet, WiMAX can reach three miles or more. Lowe expects cell phones and laptops to start showing up with WiMAX chips as early as next year.
Sprint has announced plans to set up WiMAX towers covering as much as 65 percent of the nation by 2010.
Lowe said it’s possible the city could some day “light up” Lincoln Electric System’s unused fiber optic lines, or dark fiber, and put WiMAX to work for government use.
Doty said the debate certainly won’t end with the commission’s recommendation, because even though a citywide system isn’t viable today, it may be in a few years.
Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.
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