A little more than a year ago I was working for the Online NewsHour. As a desk assistant for Extra, the NH’s website for students and teachers the sexiest part of my job was writing articles aimed at tenth graders. Aside from the articles I wrote about the state of modern meat packing industry in lieu of The Jungle’s 100th anniversary and farm to school programs, my crowning achievement was my article about cities providing WiFi.
In a very real way my article, ‘Cities Go Wireless’, was the impetus for the Fulbright application that I am currently working on. One of the interviews that I conducted for the article was with Sascha Meinrath, the visionary leader of the community based wireless movement. Through him I learned about Wireless Ghana, an organization that his CUWIN helped set up. While worth mentioning this is partially tangential, as both CUWIN and Wireless Ghana are NOT municipal wireless networks.
The whole genesis for this post is a great post at Wired [dot] com’s Tech Biz: IT blog. Titled ‘What ’s Behind the Epidemic of Municipal Wi-Fi Failutes?‘ this article breaks down the very real challenges of setting up municipal wireless networks. While I am not surprised that some of these public-private ventures are failing, I am surprised by the 180 degree turn in the perception of their success. Last year it seemed like cities were poised to prosper, especially with companies like Google providing the backing. Now this is obviously in doubt.
Earlier this year I attended the International Community Wireless Summit, where I met all sorts of incredibly cool people. In addition to Sascha I met many other leaders in this growing movement. Their by the people for the people attitude is just one thing that distinguishes this movement from the Muni WiFi crowd, but I believe that it is one of their strongest weapons against the corrupt telecoms.