It was close to midnight Tuesday when the Berkeley City Council got around to the very last item on its agenda, a seven-page memo that discussed the possibility of creating a city-wide wireless network such as the one proposed in San Francisco.
Berkeley resident Tom Hunt waited through the long meeting to argue that wireless Internet connections are far less reliable than fiber links. If the city wanted to spur local connectivity, he suggested, why not go all the way and promote a wired solution.
"If they put a lot of Google wireless on telephone polls you’ll have great access on your stoop," Hunt said in a phone interview Friday, maintaining that wireless can only penetrate one or two walls before it looses its oomph.
Hunt and others in this muni-wire camp -- notably East Bay Internet engineer Eric Dynamic, whose e-mail on the topic spurred this item -- take their inspiration from an article by technology commentator Robert X. Cringely who summarized the thinking of Internet engineers who say:
". . . (W)e build and finance public infrastructure in a public way using public funds with the goal of benefiting economic, social, and cultural development in our communities. So why not do the same with the Internet . . . The obvious answer is for regular folks like you and me to own our own last mile Internet connection."
In response to Hunt’s comment Berkeley City Council officials directed city information technology director Chris Mead to add some consideration of a muni-fiber project to the next installment of the municpal networking plan.
In a brief call Friday, Mead said he expected to put a next draft before the council later this year. He offered a quick contrast between muni wifi as a "cheap and quick" solution whereas muni-fiber would be "expensive and long-term" but with a potentially bigger payoff.
As Berkeley officials mull the alternatives no doubt they’ll want to pick the brains of their counterparts in Palo Alto. That city started a municipal fiber project some years ago. But a Palo Alto Online article published last summer reported that:
"The council voted 5-1 to have the city staff study partnering with a private company to provide high-speed Internet access, telephone service and cable television to residents and businesses . . . The proposal came on the heels of the council voting to end a trial run of creating a fiber-optic network. The 70-home trial proved to be a technical success, but the staff believed there are too many legal and financial hurdles to recommend creating a city-owned and city-operated network throughout Palo Alto." |
