The Time Has Come To Free New York City...San Francisco's Sunnydale Housing Community WiFi Deployment shows Us How...

Recently, Meraki announced its partnership with One Economy to bring wireless broadband access to low-income families around the world. Meraki products combined with One Economy's deployment, training, and educational services will help residents in low-income communities improve their lives.

One of bigger joint projects is the Sunnydale housing community in San Francisco. You can see a video of the Mayor of San Francisco (Gavin Newsom), One Economy Senior Vice President Dave McConnell, and Meraki CEO Sanjit Biswas announcing the start of WiFi service at the Sunnydale community:



I hope that the leaders in NYC are taking notice. We CAN provide ubiquitous WiFi in NYC. Co-op City in the Bronx, lefrak city in Queens, the need is there. Sky-Packets, Meraki, along with the Town of Babylon have set the tone...let's keep it moving.

WiFi as a means to offer Muni-"over the air" applications? Cablevision is banking on it.

A recent study conducted by the Dell 'Oro Group believes Cablevision's recent increase in subscribers is mostly attributed to the cable company's roll out of WiFi in its service area. Cablevision reported a more than 70% growth in subscribers during the fourth quarter. This equates to the largest growth for any cable operator in the US during that time period.

"Cablevision's Optimum WiFi service is rekindling interest in municipal WiFi applications among other large service providers," said Ben Kwan, who is analyst of wireless LAN research at Dell'Oro. "For this and other reasons, we believe municipal WiFi applications will become an increasingly important growth driver for the service provider mesh market in 2009."

The more free WiFi the better--but the key word here is Free. As it stands, Cablevision offers its Optimum WiFi service free to its subscribers only. It would be hard to reconcile in the minds of tax payers that tax dollars are going into supporting a private company in which the only way they are allowed to get "FREE" WiFi is to be a PAID subscriber. Outside of gaining more subs, Cablevision is hoping to "double dip" with the installed networks in order to provide services to the Muni's. The implications of having Muni-over the air applications running on a private networks would also imply that as the company goes, so does the municipality. A municipal WiFI should be about empowering the end-users and the muni becoming more independent of private sector.

The ideal solution would be to balance the use of the private sectors data networks (back hauls) and the public sectors implementation of SaaS solution like the one provided by Meraki Networks.

Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi

Lessons From The San Francisco Video Surveillance Study

A study conducted by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society reveals that the surveillance cameras installed around San Francisco have
certain limitations and negative results. Specifically, in certain areas, the surveillance cameras failed to deter crime. There where some aspects that where overlook during the installation process that can and should be leveraged when installing Wi-Fi IPCAM:

1. Make sure the right department has access and controls the IP Cam. oddly enough, it’s not the SF Police Department in charge of the cameras in SF, rather, a cluster of agencies are overseeing the project. This leads to communications conflicts and diluted accountability.

2. Attorneys and police officers not trained to use the footage; You have the footage now what? Who owns it? Who does what with it? A plan on what to do with the footage should be in place before the IP-CAM are installed.

3. Poor quality of the video: SF video cameras are set to film only three to four frames per second (movies shoot between 25 to 30 frames per second); This leads to a question if the right quality is even available when footage is needed in say a court case.

The study is pretty detail and we have provided here for download!

Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi

Could The Recession Rekindle Momentum and Need for Public Wi-Fi Networks?

Last night, as I flicked through channels trying to find something to watch on my over sized flat screen, I ran across a new NetZero commercial. Yes, that NetZero, of the dial-up kind. It seems that as the recession kicks into high gear, the need for alternate or legacy internet connectivity has revived, somewhat, those pesky ISP's Earthlink and NetZero. End-users consumers are either trading down from broadband to save money or delaying their move to high-speed services.

Last month, EarthLink began pitching "Connect for Less," an offering that pushes dial-up service for $7.95 a month, or about 25 cents a day. In December, NetZero introduced a $9.95-a-month plan. Both providers are marketing the offerings as a way to save money.

Historically, one of the obstacles in deploying Muni-WiFi networks has been public support. Amist the recessionary cloud perhaps there is a sliver lining. Although the efforts of EarthLink and NetZero reflects an economic down-turn, in the same breath the market for dial-up services is still declining. EarthLink's dial-up business lost 173,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter in 2008 , while NetZero lost 86,000 subscribers. With the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the publics need of getting something a little quicker then dial-up, and the publics need to pay a little less to log on, this may be the right time to re-introduce or implement that Wi-Fi Mesh network.

There may never be a better time for Municipalities, Goverment Agencies and local Business District to gain public support (and funds) on WiFi deployments then now...

Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)--Calling all Municipalities!!

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will begin holding meetings beginning on 2 March 2009 to discuss the implementation of the Broadband Grant Programs under the Broadband Data Services Improvement Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). A couple of interesting notes about today's meeting was that although creating and establishing "The pipe" is the major focus (that's to say getting people on line and using data) applications are not excluded. WiFi Meters, IPCAM (over WiFI), security applications, just to name a few, have a stake in the ARRA. It's important that as we build out WiFi networks, that they are build with the expectation of user growth and potential applications that can be used over the WiFi network.


Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi

If Closing The Digital Divide & Increasing Broadband Penetration Is The Goal-- Should it Matter Who Installs WiFi?

A bill proposed out of Pennsylvania is out to make sure that the private sector (specifically Tier one Telcos and Cable companies ) would not allow local government to build out a Public WiFi network like the one being built in Babylon Long Island. It's all very dubious and fortunately past attempts to pass such a bill have failed. The interesting part is that often the public sector has no choice in the datalines (backhauls) available, thus the private sector is generally invovled either way. The NTIA is about to give grants to local governments and private entities (as well as non-profits) for broadband projects based on the Obama stimulus plan...Do you think that the telecom and cable incumbents want to see the public sector creating broadband options? Maybe, maybe not.


Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi

McDonald's WiFi Deployment a Model for Municipalities?

A recent article in guardian discusses how offering free WiFi services increased customers "traction" at local McDonald's. The global recession, and peoples need to be connected plays a role for sure-but the availability (and affordability)is crucial. What if we could "Mesh" all McDonald's restaurants in the New York City area? Taken it a step further-What if municipalities can "Mesh" existing government/public own building and facilitates (i.e Public libraries, Schools, DVM office, etc)? Most of these facilitates already have some type of "backbone" or data pipe coming into the building. All that would be required is to strategically place the proper gateways and access points in designated areas. Something to think about....


Steve Amarante
Sky-Packets
www.sky-packets.com
1+888.850.0245
Better living Through WiFi