Ad-Supported Municipal Wireless Networks and the Future of Cities: Three Issues Missing From the Current Debate

Anthony Townsend, Research Director at the Institute for the Future and founder and former director of NYCwireless, writes about some of the things that aren’t being discussed in many (all?) of the current municipal wireless plans:

From Philadelphia to San Francisco to Portland, plans for municipal wireless networks are on the drawing board in hundreds of cities across America. These ambitious projects are driven by both push and pull forces. On the push side, Wi-Fi technology has rewritten the economics of deploying broadband access in densely built cities. What used to require tearing up streets and deploying costly cables now can be achieved my mounting antennas on street lamps every hundred yards or so. On the pull side, minority communities and small businesses that have been bypassed by DSL and digital cable buildout are mobilizing and demanding equal access to the vital economic lifeline that broadband networks represent.

While the speed with which local governments are moving to exploit this opportunity is admirable, IFTF’s research has identified several areas where insufficient energy is being devoted to explore the long-term consequences of design and implementation decisions. While the working life of today’s Wi-Fi technologies may only be five to ten years, the infrastructure and governance models put in place today are likely to shape a whole generation’s worth of urban wireless networks. If cities fail to think ahead, they may find it more challenging to leverage wireless infrastructure for digital inclusion, economic development and public safety in the future.

There are three key areas that deserve special attention:

• Guaranteeing citizens’ role as content providers
• Finding a balance for location privacy
• Enabling the Internet of Things

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