[MLB-WIRELESS] FW: [ptp-general] Activists Bring the Digital Frontier to NewCommunities

[Winder]

Just what all of the worlds poor need. The internet.

But I guess with the internet, they can sell thier PCs on ebay and use the
money to buy food ;)

Regards,
g at z.




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au
[mailto:owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au]On Behalf Of Dan Flett
Sent: Thursday, 6 January 2005 7:35 PM
To: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] FW: [ptp-general] Activists Bring the Digital
Frontier to NewCommunities


A rather long but interesting article posted on the PersonalTelco list.

-----Original Message-----
From: general-bounces at lists.personaltelco.net
[mailto:general-bounces at lists.personaltelco.net] On Behalf Of Darrin
Eden
Sent: Tuesday, 4 January 2005 10:31
To: general at personaltelco.net
Subject: [ptp-general] Activists Bring the Digital Frontier to
NewCommunities

Activists Bring the Digital Frontier to New Communities
(Part 2 of 2)
by Michelle Chen
January 2, 2005

<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Chen0102-2.htm>

A laptop and an antenna might not signify political activism to most,
but in the Digital Age, they might soon become indispensable vehicles
for social change.

With the rapid growth of wireless internet technology since the 1990s,
the allure of using unlicensed airwaves to enable widespread high-speed
internet access has created new alliances and new tensions among
grassroots nonprofit organizations, government agencies and
corporations, all of which have a stake in developing wireless
technology, or "WiFi." Wireless networking -- which allows for
decentralized, sharable internet connectivity at low or no cost to the
user -- has the potential to connect millions to the internet -- even
remote and poor populations. This is an empowering prospect for
community organizations and corporations alike. And where there is
power, a struggle is never far behind.

Resisting the tide of corporate consolidation in the communications
industries, noncommercial, grassroots networking initiatives have
managed to flourish in recent years. Networking activists take diverse
approaches to connecting their communities. While some prefer to remain
small and view citywide network grand plans with skepticism, others
seek to forge a triumvirate of government, nonprofit and corporate
resources. Some see great opportunity in partnering with behemoth
telecommunication companies while others take a more anarchistic
approach, building networks with second-hand machinery and homemade
software.

The power of the broadband access movement, activists say, is in the
fluidity and flexibility of their projects. Community networks run on
volunteers and donations, and grow only as big as their constituencies
demand.

In his analysis of the public interest in an open internet, Mark
Cooper, director of research of the Consumer Federation of America,
called this low-key approach a "robust network" model, which ensures
"rapid and efficient technological innovation" through localized "open
architecture." Simply put: leave it alone and it will take care of
itself.

For the Portland-based nonprofit networking group Personal Telco,
working digital democracy magic on local neighborhoods grows from a
natural desire for "improving quality of life." The group's president,
Darrin Edin, reflected, "We just assume that internet access is the
baseline to be a productive member of society."

Personal Telco (PT) has set up over 100 wireless access points in small
businesses and public spaces across Portland. Anyone within range of
these "nodes" or "hotspots" who has a wireless card in their computer
can connect to the internet. PT is now working to penetrate residential
neighborhoods through grant-funded networking projects. The goal
driving their work is to impart both the hardware infrastructure and
the technological know-how to make networks self-sustaining, "so that
each neighborhood [project] is driven by the people that actually live
there," said Edin.

All of the computers, equipment and service plans PT has provided have
been contributed by public and private entities, including the city
government and corporations like computer processor giant Intel. "From
end to end," said Edin, no consumer "spends a dime on this thing. It is
all donation-driven."

Edin is confident that consumers and the technology itself are flexible
enough to circumnavigate monopolies. "Smarter," more sophisticated
access technology will allow for more efficient sharing of frequencies
and decreased reliance on cable and telephone connections. "The grand
vision 
 is to effectively connect all these wireless access points
together," he said, "eventually forming a citywide network that never
touches copper or cable."

Grassroots Networks Confront Big Brother and Big Business

Noting recent initiatives taken by some municipalities to establish
public internet services, some grassroots networkers warn that just as
big business should not meddle with the growth of community networks,
neither should government.

Ben Serebin, director of the community internet project NYC Wireless,
contends that since there is currently "no business model that's been
successful with WiFi [for] commercial, citywide deployment," it is
"highly unlikely" that a municipal government could devise a
cost-effective plan. As long as hotspots in parks and cafés offer free
services, the demand for fee-charging wireless internet access will
wane, whether it is government-run or corporate. Moreover, Serebin
questions whether WiFi is really the government's domain: "Why would we
want our taxpayers' money just to replace an [internet service
provider]?" he asked. "It's not like we get electricity for free."

Similarly, Matt Smith, founder of Atlanta FreeNet, a volunteer-run
networking group, suspects that Atlanta's municipal network, launched
earlier this month, will actually limit people's choice of service and
may not even be financially sustainable. Known as FastPass, the Atlanta
project is a joint venture between local government and Biltmore
Communications, one of the area's major wireless broadband providers,
and will provide low-cost service plans for public hotspots. Smith
predicts that most fee-charging wireless services will find themselves
unable to compete with the spread of free hotspots in cafés and outdoor
recreational areas, and the government's scheme faces the same fate:
"Nobody's going to turn down free access if it works."

Since their launch in 2001, Atlanta FreeNet has gradually cultivated an
alternative network by helping businesses and groups set up public
hotspots and educating local communities about the benefits of WiFi.

In Smith's view, without government help, the market can "fix itself,
and not to the benefit of the companies trying to make a buck." His
group offers a more flexible "amenity model," which starts with a
baseline of free internet access, but individual access points within
the network are free to offer fee-based premium features to users, like
better connection quality or the option of making internet calls via
mobile phone. In a café, for example, WiFi would be an extra perk that
would simultaneously help sell coffee and promote a host of wireless
services in the time it takes to down a latte.

In Texas, the nonprofit Austin Wireless City takes a more proactive
approach to engaging both the commercial and political establishments.
By setting up free hotspots around the city, the group acts as a
facilitator, connecting local groups to government representatives and
corporate service providers. "We kind of diffuse the natural suspicions
that they have of each other," said the organization's president, Rich
MacKinnon.

Both the Austin Wireless City and Atlanta FreeNet have created
self-sustaining networks in which each hotspot proprietor pays for its
own service, which is then offered free to individuals. The economy of
scale ensures that "costs are divided a hundred different ways," said
MacKinnon.

Crossing the Digital Divide

Still, while local hangouts and bookstores may benefit from the
cost-sharing plans managed by non-profit ventures, much of the lower
economic stratum of society remains literally out of WiFi's range. The
proprietor-driven model promoted by groups like Austin Wireless City
runs on market incentives, catering primarily to enterprises for which
launching a public node, or wireless access point, is a financial
investment.

So, although a local café can offer WiFi "on the house" to lure
laptop-toters away from the rival franchise that charges customers to
check their email, a community center in a low-income neighborhood will
not have much demand for this kind of traffic. Consequently,
commerce-oriented community wireless ventures have yet to make an
impact in places where wireless access is not viewed as a trendy way to
stimulate local business.

MacKinnon of Austin Wireless City said that although his group is
working on expanding the scope of their network, poorer communities
simply lack the resources to set up high-speed connections. While the
costs of computer hardware are less of a problem because of the wide
availability of hardware donation services, it is difficult to persuade
struggling low-income housing residents to collectively "pledge to pay
a 30- to 50-dollar broadband bill every month," MacKinnon said. "Those
venues are in need of funds."

A few years into the wireless revolution, community groups have
observed that the spectrum free-for-all has left the distribution of
benefits in flux. Low-income communities still struggle with the
Digital Divide between networked haves and technologically barren
have-nots.

According to the household surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life
Project, about one in five adults with less than a high school
education are connected to the internet, compared with more than eight
in ten college-educated Americans. While 43 percent of people with
household incomes of less than $30,000 per year use the internet, 84
percent of households making more than $75,000 are online. According to
the latest Pew survey, a significantly higher percentage of whites
reported going online compared to blacks and Hispanics.

But once underserved groups do gain internet access, the impact is
noticeable. A 2003 analysis by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing
Studies revealed that internet access projects in low-income
communities led to quantifiable improvements in local quality of life,
education and employment.

Recognizing the potential of broadband and wireless to help shrink the
Digital Divide, nonprofits are working to deploy comprehensive
high-speed networks that penetrate into areas lacking even basic
dial-up access.

A national nonprofit organization called One Economy is installing
high-speed connections in affordable housing complexes in eight cities,
from San Jose to Washington, DC, and aims to network 5,000 households
by the end of 2005. The organization emerged from the public housing
advocacy movement and founded its networking mission on the idea that
low-income housing is a vital laboratory for exploring ways of
integrating economically disenfranchised people into an increasingly
technology-based society.

Vice President of Program Services Mark Levine said that One Economy's
network infrastructure relies on a mix of fiber-optic connections
within buildings and wireless connections between buildings, allowing
"every household [to] share that access, which gets the price down for
a family to a fraction of what it is on the market."

As a content provider, One Economy provides its clients with a
multi-lingual web portal called The Beehive, a national networking
service One Economy says is used by some 500,000 visitors each month,
connecting to online resources ranging from personal finance advice to
homework help. The residents have taken rapidly to the services, said
Levine, which "points to the power of what low-income people do once
they get online. They can do a lot more than just chat rooms and
download music."

Most of One Economy's projects lack the bells and whistles of the
coffee shop circuit. Vice President of Access Services Dave McConnell
has observed that "most affordable housing organizations are looking
for the simplest, the sturdiest, and the least expensive solution" --
and WiFi's limited indoor range of 100 to 300 feet per antenna makes it
less viable for apartment complexes. Currently, about 10 percent of One
Economy's projects utilize WiFi technology, mostly thanks to hardware
donations from Cisco Systems, but this proportion is expected to grow
over the next few years. McConnell added that as the technology becomes
more widespread, "wireless applications will be touching a lot of
affordable housing."

Unlike free-spectrum activists seeking to bust telecommunications
monopolies, One Economy is not opposed to corporate partnerships if
they facilitate important projects. The organization has attracted
high-profile sponsors like Intel and Verizon by offering new marketing
opportunities with a philanthropic sheen. But one limitation is that
the feasibility of WiFi in affordable housing depends largely on
corporate generosity. "We're involved in over 100 projects right now,"
said McConnell, "and I know I can't get a Cisco donation in every one."

Until nonprofits like One Economy have the financial backing to delve
into WiFi independent of corporate benefactors, their efforts to plug
the Digital Divide will assume priority over the broader policy debates
that consumer advocates have taken on. "We're agnostic about what the
ultimate internet provider is," said Levine. "We just want to get the
buildings wired up."

But there are signs of convergence between the economic justice issues
of internet access and the grassroots networking movement. SoCal
FreeNet emerged last year in San Diego, California as one of the rare
WiFi initiatives that focus on both low-income community broadband and
grassroots, minimally-commercial networking.

Using recycled computers and sharing a few connections to an
independent access provider, SoCal FreeNet volunteers have been scaling
walls and running cable over rooftops to install low-cost networks in
San Diego neighborhoods. Volunteers recently provided WiFi access to
more than 140 apartments and surrounding areas in Barrio Logan, an
impoverished, largely black and Hispanic enclave.

Vice President of Research and Project Management Michael Mee said that
political clashes like the conflict between municipal authorities and
Verizon in Philadelphia (see Part 1 of this series) would not hinder
their ventures. "We're below the radar of most of that stuff at the
moment," he explained, having cornered a market that for now seems
unprofitable to corporations. Because SoCal FreeNet's target clientele
lacks both money and infrastructure for premium broadband service, said
Mee, "the telcos aren't interested in serving them, anyway."

The demand for wireless services generated by nonprofit groups
representing local communities has been overwhelming. "We've got our
finger in the dyke right now," said Mee. "If we wanted to, we could
easily be completely overwhelmed with wireless work for nonprofits."

But Mee acknowledged a disconnect -- albeit a shrinking one -- between
the explosion of wireless technology and efforts to narrow the Digital
Divide. To build up credibility and skills as an organization, Mee said
FreeNet volunteers must supplement their housing work by networking
with local coffeeshops catering to gadget-laden hipsters. Advocates for
low-income access argue that the group's energies would be better spent
on communities that lack even basic internet connections. Mee recalled
an email from a community group complaining that grassroots networkers
like FreeNet's team are focusing too much on "running around providing
wireless to yuppies with laptops" instead of communities totally devoid
of any network infrastructure.

Mee is optimistic that as high-end public spaces become saturated with
WiFi, the trend will be to move into "communities that will really
benefit." These populations in turn are beginning to advocate for their
technological needs. The community-based nonprofit sector, in his view,
"is only discovering
 this whole other world."

Community networks may have the greatest effect on rural areas, where
internet usage is lower than in cities and suburbs. The La Cañada
Wireless Association (LCWA), a WiFi cooperative serving 75 households
in isolated New Mexico communities, has evolved in its two-year history
into both a full-scale professional wireless service and an experiment
in community empowerment. Starting up with a $5,000 capital investment,
the cooperative has pooled funds to purchase high-speed T-1 lines that
can connect up to 40 computers to the internet, and volunteers provide
installation services.

Members are inspired to share both cost and revenue communally, said
founder Bob Knight: "Rather than supporting a large corporate entity,
they're basically supporting themselves." The local cable company's
refusal to allow line-sharing on its high-speed connections -- whereby
more than one household could use the same account -- also
inadvertently magnifies the appeal of LCWA's no-frills service, which
offers lower prices and better connections.

As a cooperative, LCWA generally avoids bureaucracies, corporate or
political. The most interaction they have had with local authorities
occurred when the state Attorney General's office investigated the
group's nonprofit status -- right after a major cable company tried to
break into the local market and failed. Happy with their modest but
steady progress, the coop plans to expand into households that are not
even connected to the region's electricity grid, bringing wireless
internet to homes that have never known wire.

In Illinois, the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network's (CUWiN)
strategy is to create a macro-network of access points and combine it
with new software applications that not only bring the internet to
residents, but create a kind of local intranet as well. When CUWiN's
pilot projects are officially launched in early 2005, community members
will be able to broadcast live streaming audio and video from local
venues, instantly download news from the Urbana-Champaign Independent
Media Center, and log on to Chambana.net, a homegrown hosting service
that will run over one hundred local websites and email lists.

Recognizing that mere connectivity is not enough, the grant-funded
CUWiN project aims to close the technology gap through education,
making community members stewards of their own communications
infrastructure. "The best training models," noted Sascha Meinrath,
CUWiN's president, "are really to just give the resources to people --
you know, let them figure out what best fits their personal needs."

Who Will Claim the Wireless Frontier?

The question of WiFi's manifest destiny centers on if and how wireless
connectivity will wind up in the hands of the people who need it most.
The coming months will bring pivotal political debates on how to
regulate, or deregulate, the future of internet communications.

The longstanding framework for national spectrum policy has been based
on the distribution of supposedly "scarce" bandwidth among public and
private interests, like television networks, radio stations and the
military. But according to Meinrath, more efficient wireless
technologies have rendered this "incredibly wasteful," industry-backed
paradigm obsolete. "Our policies are decades behind our technologies,"
he said, "and we're really suffering for it."

Yet recent actions on the federal and state levels show that
policymakers are beginning to tune in to the potential of technological
advances and listen to the demands of community wireless advocates. As
a national organization, One Economy has helped pass legislation in 20
states and Washington, DC to pre-wire new affordable housing projects
for high-speed access. This year, the Media Access Project and the New
America Foundation have been successfully lobbying the FCC for the
liberation of underused analog television spectrum for wireless
services, which would greatly expand the range of wireless networks.

Experts also foresee WiFi technology growing increasingly sophisticated
in coming years. A new technology called WiMax, promoted by Intel,
could boost the range of a network to as far as 30 miles. Though the
system has yet to be implemented on a large scale, tech industry
watchers are hailing it as a potential watershed in extending wireless
coverage across the globe.

But activists stress that industry heavyweights only welcome innovation
that they can sell. Companies typically protect their products through
intellectual property rules and software encoding that prevents
tinkering, leaving grassroots developers "stymied in terms of creating
new functions" for equipment, said Meinrath. CUWiN's tech team is
currently working to "reverse engineer" commercial hardware, unraveling
the protections built into products to tailor them for the local
network.

Whether the next big thing in WiFi is the handiwork of hackers or
corporate strategists, the general movement seems to be toward "ad hoc"
or "mesh" networking, which minimizes or eliminates the role of
hardwired phone and cable systems that currently serve as the
"backbone" for most wireless networks. The components of a mesh network
are mainly its interlinked users -- as signals ricochet through a
"dynamic" web of mobile devices. An ad-hoc network is in its purest
form totally amorphous, with essentially no stationary base at all, and
grows organically, like a digital fungus.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen, a researcher with the Disruptive Design Team at
Trinity College in Ireland, said this decentralized format is
"something that the mobile phone companies and the big telecoms hate,"
since it "gets rid of all of their towers, because the people
themselves become the nodes."

The new waves in technology and policy serve only to feed the primary
current driving the growth of wireless networking: the momentum of
people power. As Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy
said, "you can't put the digital genie back in the bottle." Across
cultural, economic and demographic spectrums, different groups are
discovering a common wavelength, redefining community for the
Information Age.--
The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/
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