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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (25851)	3/19/2008 2:55:06 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Hi Ben. You noted: "[W]here the muni networks are concerned, we have found that rural communities are our best opportunities. It's the places that can't get anything but dialup that jump at a wifi mesh where the bandwidth can be backhauled in." A very timely observation, thanks. It was only today that I was discussing with a colleague the problems associated with bringing fiber to under-served areas, on the one hand, and how difficult it is to bring wireless coverage to ares where fiber, in the form of "broadband", already exists in abundance. To fuel my perspective on the situation, I referred to an article I'd read earlier in the day in MuniWireless.com about suburban Long Island where the author describes how Nassau and Suffolk Counties have had to abandon their grandiose plan consisting of blanketing some 700+ sq miles with WiFi due to a host of reasons, not the least of which being Verizon's and Cablevision's successful near- saturation of the island with faux "broadband". See: Support for Long Island muni Wi-Fi vanishes, March 14, 2008 by Carol Ellison: tinyurl.com ] So you wind up with an in-between situation of a sort, almost a Catch-22, if you will. On the one hand, where fiber can't be cost justified, wireless, as you noted, is seen as a solution. When fiber is justified and installed in abundance, it becomes a source of discouragement to bring in wireless. Now, the latter scenario may seem to beg a cause that is pretty near moot, but the fact remains that citizens living in fiber-rich communities still go wanting for open wireless connectivity, save for the pay-fer hot-spots in cafes; residential "donors" who leave their residential routers wide open; and, maybe where someone can get close enough to a municipally owned building, such as a library or school. The wireline folks have no incentive (and every disincentive) to provide "open" wireless in the form of WiFi (and probably WiMAX in the future) in such cases, hence the nature of my earlier-alluded-to discussion. FAC ------