http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/my-take/wireless-internet-municipal.html
In the United States, ranked about 20th in broadband connectivity, widespread wireless Internet only goes so far.
The scoop: Earthlink recently announced it was discontinuing operation of its municipal wireless service in Philadelphia. Is city-wide Wi-Fi in the United States a pipe dream? Glenn Strachan, a consultant and activist for wireless connectivity solutions in other countries, gives us his take.
Earthlink's recent decision to close America's first major, all-wireless city, and perhaps all its installations, seem to be the death blow to the municipal wireless movement.
But ubiquitous wireless in the United States has been feebly stumbling along for some time now. Once the leader in broadband deployments, the country has fallen to either 19th or 24th place, according to various statistics, and has been surpassed by Estonia and South Korea.
In my opinion, America has the wrong view of broadband. It doesn't see the connection between broadband deployment and national economic gains. It doesn't consider, the way other countries do, that the people in rural communities, not just large cities, can leverage access to the Internet into business opportunities that generate income.
Take Romania. It barely had any type of affordable city or rural connectivity five years ago. But today, it has extensive connectivity that has helped facilitate the growth of the software development marketplace. There are now over 20,000 Romanian programmers who write computer code for companies all over the world.
Let's look at Estonia. When it regained independence in 1991, the prime minister realized that jobs based on information and communications technology would help move the country into a first-world status.
Since that decision, and with the full support of government, broadband wireless services are available in 66 percent of Estonia; people can ride a bus from Tallinn to St. Petersburg, Russia, and access the Internet through Wi-Fi. Wireless kiosks are located throughout the country, allowing people to purchase tickets for bus rides, airlines, movies and plays plus a host of other services.
Estonia is the home of Skype and is a net importer of computer technologists that have fueled the economic growth of the country.
The United States Agency for International Development supported Macedonia to provide Internet access to all schools throughout the country. The project, called Macedonia Connects, accomplished this task by anchoring its broadband-based Internet services in secondary schools and created enough demand to ultimately reduce the costs of Internet access to a level that most people could afford.
Consequently, Internet penetration rose from 4 percent to 34 percent in three years, and people throughout the country are generating income through small- and medium-sized business activities via the Internet.
What lessons can America learn from these countries and others?
First, there must be a champion in the federal government for the deployment of broadband covering not only urban settings, but also the most remote locations. My friends at the FCC will say that the Universal Service Fund is supposed to do this, but the fund is going into decline as consumers bypass traditional phone service providers for broadband phone. And although the fund provides money to schools and libraries, it doesn't support rural consumers.
Broadband access is the new digital divide. Estonians, Slovenians and Macedonians have better access to the Internet than people living five miles outside of Northampton, Mass. Those who do not have access to broadband will never fully benefit from the new Web.
While urban areas and suburbia are well served, large swaths of the USA still remain unserved despite the large dependence on dial-up Internet access. The United States must realize that broadband creates economic growth; it is a vital tool that all must be able to access.
Glenn Strachan has 30 years of computer and networking expertise. Presently, he is overseeing a nationwide broadband wireless project in the Republic of Montenegro and has worked on other wireless connectivity solutions in other countries, including Macedonia, Romania and Uganda. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.
