The Greater Houston WiFi (Phone) Conference
Last night saw a sizable amount of the Houston blogosphere (an "elite" group if you believe a few certain bloggers out there) on the phone with Mayor White discussing the planned rollout for Houston's citywide. Here's what's being discussed among the participants:
- Bobby @ Progressive Texan has the liveblog with what could very well pass for the minutes of the entire convo.
- Lyn @ Houston Democrats has another good overview of the questioning.
- Larry @ Business Unusual has the audio of the event.
- Kuff has a decent executive summary of the event.
- Perry @ Brains & Eggs left somewhat unimpressed. We'll have to chip in and get the dude a laptop so he'll see what he's missing.
- Sedosi is "cautiously optimistic" about the proposal.
- Laurence still has a few concerns that may or may not come to pass. And yes, it was hilarious listening to him mention his blog by acronym instead of by it's full title.
- Matt @ Houstonist has a few of the general points covered.
- Muse Musings focuses on the tourist aspects of the idea.
- Dwight @ The Chron offers some updates with a few points of interest that came out of the event.
- Others joining in without a wrapup: Matt Bramanti from LoneStarTimes and Mattsapundit, Ryan Goodland from BOR, as well as Tory from Houston Strategies who contributed a score of excellent questions.
UPDATE: Tory Gattis finally adds his two cents, and while I'm at it, I'll add Ryan Goodland's post linkage here.
I joined in to listen, myself. Among the points of interest, I'm now more curious to know the details of the public safety aspects of the program. While I can certainly understand the need to wait until the network is built and established before investing in new technology that affects public safety, I think there ought to be more offered in the way of projections on this subject.
It would, I think, be incorrect to view the idea of citywide wifi as a freebie for the city. The emphasis on the current proposals are that the city offers up their infrastucture for free/low cost in order for a provider to build the network along things like parking meters, utility right-of-ways, and other forms of city property. In exchange, the city gets free wifi service that helps replace things like the $600,000 cost for mobile computing and communication. Richard Lewis mentioned that some of this cost was for things like Blackberry costs, so I'm curious to know how much of that $600,000 actually gets shaved off? To the extent that folks are using their Blackberry as just a fancy phone, I don't see that number going to $0.
Back to the public safety aspects, I'm now curious to know the timeline before we'll start to see some new investment that aids this category. What range of cost are we looking at? What's the nature of the first wave of upgrades? Personally, I'm less sold by the public access elements of citywide wifi. Ryan Goodland properly noted that a sizable reason for the digital divide was a hardware issue. The mayor did respond that the response to this would (wisely, I think) likely be addressed by non-profits rather than government. That doesn't strike me as a major swing of the sledgehammer toward breaking down the divide. However noble the size of the break is, color me doubtful that this is going to be a major effect of the current plan.
Things like quality of life and aiding the business environment are also somewhere down the list for my own interest. The mayor did mention that the Greater Houston Partnership lists citywide wifi as critical to Houston's growth. A word of warning, though ... I'm not sure that it's a strong selling point that there's a bunch of businesses seeking something tantamount to a handout - even if it is something that represents an evenhanded handout to small and large business alike. Quality of life, I can at least understand personally. And driving the cost down to as little as possible is certainly worthwhile. But I'm guessing that that merely ramps up the special interest attacks that will once more come in the lege. SBC isn't going to sit idley by and they're pretty much the biggest lobbying gun at the head of the legislature. Still, in order to combat this, I'm doubtful that the strongest selling point is promising folks that they'll be able to ditch their cable modem or DLS in exchange for a (possible) $10 pricepoint item by way of the citywide network. Considering that DSL is foreseeably reaching dialup pricing, we're splitting hairs there. Cable prices, I'm less familiar with. But I suspect the competitive response there would just be to re-price the bundle of television, phone, and modem in a way that allows people to compare another $10-20 cost for their cable modem to compare to the citywide network.
I may be something of a lone ranger on this, but that leaves public safety as the critical issue for my interest. I think there are several worthwhile ideas out there for how a citywide network can allow for improved information for fire, police, and EMS. Maybe there's a poll that shows some single-digit percentage of folk interested in stuff like that, but I'll stand by my claim that this ends up being the biggest segment impacted by the idea. So how soon will we see fire trucks outfitted with technology that allows them to look up blueprints of buildings on fire? What other items are on the horizon for increasing police officers' ability to do their job? Properly evaluating the costs associated with the necessary new investments with the benefits just strikes me as the best way to see if we're getting the best possible result from this. The first step, of course, is to build the network. That, I'm down with. But as we move along, more details need to come forth. I think the worst end-result would be to have this sold as a freebie for the city, only to see secondary costs come as an unexpected surprise and serve up a backlash down the road.
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Politics-20068 Comments
Greg: I started out writing a comment in response to the digital divide question, but it got pretty long so I turned into a full blown post, which you can read over at BOR here.
Also: you kind of guilted me into posting anything by including me in the same sentence as Lone Star Times. That thought alone probably spurred me to write something as well.
Hey, whatever it takes, Ryan!
;-)
Dude, I have had a laptop longer than Kava Kanes had wi-fi. Remember we live-blogged the City Council candidates Q&A there last year?
After getting stroked a couple of weeks ago on the Gas Tax Holiday and now this, just color me skeptimistic about the value of information dispensed on conference calls.
There'll be some news here at some point, but it'll be a few years from now. I'll be happy to read the news right here.
BTW, by way of comment on your own post (I've yet to register for an account on BOR ... I'm holding out for an "elite" 6-digit account number):
I do agree that there are many worthwhile efforts in the non-profitsphere doing great work in ensuring that PC availability reaches as deeply as possible, Technology For All being one of the best I'm aware of. But, to expand my point a bit, I think that at some endpoint, when we look back on what citywide wifi means to a city on the whole, I think the public safety aspects have the most means by which to show substantive and meaningful improvement.
To compare the three aspects: public access, public availability, and public safety, let's look at the ceiling for each area ...
Access: keeping this in the context of your point, we've not really gained anything substantively. If there's a part of Houston without internet connectivity, it's got to be newsworthy since they'd also not have phone service. Granted, if we want to cast aside dialup for now, there might be more of a case. But then, we're splitting hairs a bit - is the real divide over connectivity at all or at the connection speed by which we're all able to connect? I'm sure a citywide wifi plan will make worthwhile improvements in ensuring a good speed for all involved, but what's the net gain of that? It's hard to truly capture in a measurable way. Eventually, most/all major cities will have citywide wifi or something comparable. In light of that, this doesn't add a competitive advantage to Houston as a magnet for employers ... it basically just keeps us in the game.
Availability: This is clearly where I think your point meets with the city's plan the strongest. But even if we assumed that somehow, a free PC would arrive at the door of everyone who currently could not afford it, does that ensure usability? Even if we train them? I'm not sure that it does. There may be some incremental gains in usability out there, but I maintain that the biggest driver for this is age, not affordability. Younger people are going to be more likely to carve out enough dough for a computer just like they've been more likely to do so for a cell phone. Again, I don't wholly discount the gains to be found here. But again, I think they're going to be marginal when we look back 20-30 years from now.
Safety: Granted, I've followed this area a bit more. But I'll excuse that by virtue of the fact that I've long felt this to be the great avenue of opportunity by building citywide wifi. When you've got blueprints that can be accessed anywhere on the road between a fire-station & the scene; when you can instantly plug in a video feed of a fire so that a supervisor or commanding officer can oversee it from a distance (much like network-centric warfare operates), I think you're looking at a whole new way of doing business for a critical aspect of our society.
It's not that the other two aspects will be entirely negligible in my mind, it's that the differences in the net effect of the three stand in rather stark contrast as I see them. That's not to say that fire, police, & EMS will be quick adapters or that the resources will be there to upgrade. But the potential is certainly there.
Pdid ...
So, are you sceptical just because it was discussed over a conference call, or because of the merits/demerits of the idea itself?
Unlike the Gas Tax Holiday, this isn't just a PR offensive to draw a contrast with the party in power. This is an idea that has already been moving forward, most evidenced by the fact that today is actually the day when the rubber meets the road ... er, I mean the RFPs meet the envelope opener.
Greg: I don't disagree that public safety could benefit tremendously from a municipal WiFi network. Fort Wayne, IN has a system that lets their police officers access, instantly and paperlessly, a national fingerprints database from their patrol cars. I read one idea about attaching small cameras to the helmets of firefighters that could relay pictures back to a firetruck outside. I just didn't address public safety because my post was mainly about bridging the digital divide with municipal WiFi, and would have been too long otherwise.
I'm not sure on what evidence you're basing your claim that training can't help people use the internet. TFA has a number of great programs that they've been spearheading. I don't have any numbers on their success rates, so I suppose you may have a point here. But I can tell you from personal experience that computer rooms they set up at the Astrodome last year had a lot of users of varying ages who got help from their support staff. If you have some evidence that says differently, then I'd like to see it, but if it's just your gut feeling, I guess we should both wait to pass judgement.
As for you network-centric warfare comment: fighting a war is a fundamentally different business than fighting a fire or sending data from an ambulance to a hospital. I remember a story my defense policy professor told me last year about one battle in Afghanistan where a small bunker with a few Taliban in it was hit with several of the most powerful bombs with the most sophisticated targeting systems repeated times, yet the Taliban managed to survive. It was the Northern Alliance soldiers on the ground that ultimately helped win the battle (the name of which you probably know better than I do). Technology is a wonderful thing and it can help a lot in increasing efficiency in city parking meters or cop cars. But it can't replace a lot of good people on the ground in Iraq. War is just different that way, and if you disagree, we'll just have to agree to disagree here.
You kids today ... it's all about war with you ;-)