SCN: Free wireless

[Steve]

(Michael Behar, Washington Monthly)---On a recent crisp sunny 
day in Manhattan, I strolled up to a faded wrought-iron bench in 
Tompkins Square Park, flipped open my new Sony Vaio laptop, 
and as I sipped a cappuccino, began downloading my email. While 
new messages zipped into my PC at speeds many times faster 
than a dial-up connection, I scanned the day's headlines on 
CNN.com, then clicked over to E*Trade to eye the market. 

In a handful of New York City's parks, coffeehouses, and other 
public areas, many are doing the same: getting online, surfing the 
Web, and checking email. And, like me, they're doing it wirelessly. 

What's more, they're avoiding the aggravations typically associated 
with getting high-speed Internet: no more waiting months for DSL 
providers to switch on service or for cable providers to upgrade 
your building. Wireless broadband is happening now, and best of 
all, it's free. 

Sound too good to be true? It isn't. A few blocks away, someone is 
paying for our broadband access (the catchall term for high-speed, 
high-capacity Internet). A typical broadband connection pipes so 
much bandwidth into a customer's home---more than any one 
person really needs---that my benefactor is happy to share the 
excess with whomever cares to use it. He does this by beaming his 
standard DSL broadband signal through a "wireless base-station," 
a device about the size of a paperback novel with a stubby black 
antenna. 

Base stations are designed to send a broadband signal a few 
hundred feet, which would allow you to receive a wireless Internet 
connection in most of the rooms in your home. Recently, however, 
a growing number of broadband customers have discovered that 
they can boost the range of wireless signals several miles with 
homemade antennas fashioned from no more than an empty 
Pringles potato-chip can, or scraps of metal, wire, and tinfoil. 

Yet what started as a clever technique to share bandwidth with 
friends and neighbors has grown into a national grassroots 
movement called Free Wireless. Today, legions of tech-savvy 
hobbyists have formed what amounts to a "broadband militia" and 
they are spreading something that many people these days want 
but still can't get: cheap, fast access to the Internet.  

Broadband isn't merely a neat high-tech option, like a CD burner, 
but a potentially transformative technology with the power to 
jumpstart the American economy. The stock market boom of the 
late 1990s was fueled in large part by the promise of a dazzling 
array of new applications that broadband would enable---
everything from seamless video-conferencing and downloading 
movies-on-demand to online doctors' visits and court appearances. 

One reason tech stocks were bid up so high is that many of these 
applications were ready to be deployed and needed only universal 
broadband to do so, something everyone figured was imminent. 
Only it wasn't. Today, 90 percent of American households still don't 
have broadband (fewer than 10 million people do). Many believe 
that the key to ending the recession is spreading broadband to all 
those potential customers, which would give high-tech companies 
a delivery mechanism for their products and allow these new 
industries to take off.  

Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is happening. After rising 
steadily for the last five years, the number of new broadband users 
has slowed. 

The good news is that the necessary foundation for universal 
broadband has already been put in place. In the last decade, 
investors spent $90 billion laying the fiber-optic cable networks 
that became the "backbone" which would bring broadband to the 
masses. 

The bad news is that today, 97 percent of it sits unused. That's 
because the telecommunications industry hasn't been able to 
bridge the gap between this fiber-optic backbone and people's 
homes at a price that the public is willing to pay. 

In fact, while the price of most technology falls, the price local 
phone companies charge for broadband is going up. Those price 
hikes are the natural result of the phone companies' monopoly, 
which has allowed them to squeeze out small competing Internet 
service providers, or ISPs.  

The cost and hassle of providing broadband to the residences and 
businesses of people who want it has become too big an obstacle. 
In order to get most forms of broadband from the backbone to your 
home, Baby Bells and cable companies have to upgrade their 
networking gear, swapping out older technology for equipment that 
can handle data traveling in two directions. And in neighborhoods 
that lack decent landlines it means laying wire from this new 
backbone to each individual customer at an expense of about 
$1,500 per home---a fee few Internet users are willing to pay. 

For broadband providers to foot the bill, they'd have to invest 
another $100 to $300 billion in infrastructure costs---impossible in 
today's depressed tech market and a sobering realization that's 
triggered an abrupt halt to broadband expansion. As ISPs go 
under, consumers are left with few choices for faster Internet 
service.  

Fortunately, the recession is finally forcing Washington to pay 
attention. The Bush administration says that broadband expansion 
is a top economic priority. It assembled a high-level "tech-team" 
that has met dozens of times with executives and lobbyists to 
discuss broadband. 

In January, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle D-S.D.) included 
universal broadband access in the Democrats' economic-revival 
plan. Broadband got a further push a week later when the 
technology industry launched a major lobbying effort to establish a 
national goal of creating 100 million new broadband customers by 
2010. As The Washington Post put it recently, "broadband is a 
new battle cry in Washington."  

But there's a problem: There are many ways to deliver broadband 
to users, but Washington only hears about the ones touted by well-
funded lobbyists for the phone, cable, and satellite companies, all 
of which are competing fiercely to become the preferred 
broadband technology and control and profit from the mass 
dissemination that everyone agrees will one day come about. 

None of these options, however, has a prayer of getting 
broadband to the masses quickly and cheaply. Worse, the big 
Internet providers are asking the Bush administration for vast tax 
breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors to help them. 

The truth is that there's only one way to spread broadband cheaply 
and quickly: wirelessly. But that's the one method not being 
seriously discussed in Washington.  

The idea of wireless networking is not all that new. Long before 
Free Wireless emerged, several breeds of wireless technology had 
attained consumer success. 

Remember the HAMM radio craze in the 1970s? Or how about 
infrared direct access, also known as IrDA? In the early 1990s, 
most computers and laptops came equipped with IrDA, which 
allows you to transfer data between machines. (Got a Palm Pilot? 
Many PDAs use it to beam messages between handheld devices.) 

The broadband offered through Free Wireless operates similarly, 
on a small chunk of unlicensed spectrum the FCC set aside in 
1993, which goes by the clunky name of "802.11b." Originally, 
802.11b---also called "wireless fidelity" or WiFi---was designed for 
home networking, allowing you to simultaneously link several 
computers to a single Internet connection. Place a base station in 
your den, connect it to your modem, and it will generate a wireless 
network throughout your home---sort of like a baby monitor.  

When technology designed to utilize 802.11b arrived, the idea 
once again was to use it as a low-cost, in-home wireless network. 
For about $300, you can buy Apple's Airport Base Station, which 
will beam a signal to any nearby computer equipped with a $100 
Airport card. 

The pitch for Airport and similar devices is that mom, dad, brother, 
and sister can all surf the net simultaneously. On a standard, 56K 
dial-up connection, that's about all it's good for; there isn't much 
extra bandwidth to siphon off for additional users. 

But as the number of folks with DSL, cable modems, and T-1 
broadband connections grew, the extra bandwidth meant they 
could now share their super-fast Internet connection with dozens of 
other users without any noticeable loss in speed. Since 802.11b 
works through walls, around corners, is rarely corrupted by 
interference, and can, with a makeshift antenna, have its range 
extended thousands of feet beyond the base station, hackers 
quickly realized there was no reason to limit the signal to their 
home or office.  

By the middle of 1999, Free Wireless pioneers had discovered 
how to boost and retransmit their broadband signal up to several 
miles beyond their base stations. That meant a single user could 
pay an Internet service provider for a DSL, cable, or T1 
connection, then broadcast access to it to everyone in their 
building or, in rural areas, to neighbors miles away. 

Today, city blocks once doomed to temperamental AOL dial-up 
connections are enjoying lightning-fast 802.11b-powered 
networks. While lawmakers bicker over how to spread broadband, 
engineers, computer scientists, and various geeks and hobbyists 
the world over are one step ahead, setting up wireless broadband 
networks in at least 25 cities, including New York, San Francisco, 
Boston, and Denver, as well as in remote regions of Alaska and 
Maine. It's also popping up in South American, Europe, Asia, 
Australia, and Canada.  

One thing that everyone can agree on is that broadband spurs 
innovation. To understand how, look no further than your local 
college campus. Colleges and universities were some of the first 
places wired for broadband access. 

In the late '90s, at Northeastern University in Boston, a freshman 
named Shawn Fanning decided to take advantage of the 
bandwidth at his disposal and created a program to trade 
electronic music files with friends. The result was Napster, which 
launched a revolution in how the Internet is used. It's no 
coincidence that many of Napster's heaviest users were college 
kids with broadband access; Napster created such high demand 
that many schools banned students from swapping music files 
because their servers were overwhelmed.  

It's this kind of innovation and subsequent demand that has 
business types so eager to spread broadband. While lobbyists and 
telecom conglomerates arm wrestle over ownership and policy 
decisions, Free Wireless is demonstrating why the excitement over 
broadband is justified. 

"I find that nearly everyone I tell about it comes up with some new 
idea, application, or use of the technology," says Anthony 
Townsend, a co-founder of NYC Wireless, one of the nation's 
largest and fastest-growing Free Wireless networks. "We have had 
artists who want to use 802.11b for interactive sculptures, 
community activists who want to use it to bridge the digital divide in 
poor neighborhoods and public housing projects, and many other 
ideas we would have never thought of alone." 

Within days of the attack on the World Trade Center, when phone 
lines and cables were severed, NYC Wireless members 
established an ad hoc high-speed network at Ground Zero, linking 
rescue workers and survivors to the outside world.  

Beyond coffeehouses and parks, the Free Wireless movement has 
been critical in bestowing broadband on regions where geography 
renders landline Internet access impossible. 

In Owl's Head, Maine, for instance, Jason Philbrook, founder of 
Midcoast Internet Solutions, employs a version of this technology 
to beam wireless Internet access to some of the most remote 
regions of his state. Midcoast charges for its service, placing it just 
outside the definition of Free Wireless. But it demonstrates the 
amazing possibilities for wireless broadband in areas where 
traditional ISPs would be loathe to invest.  

More ambitious plans are also afoot for 802.11b. The Swedish 
company SAS has announced its intention to use 802.11b on 
Boeing 737 commercial airliners to give passengers in-flight 
wireless Internet access. Delphi is equipping cars with 802.11b-
compatible dashboard entertainment centers. 

In January, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las 
Vegas, Delphi demonstrated 802.11b-ready cars that can 
download music wirelessly from a home network to an MP3-
compatible audio deck, which will let you load up your car stereo 
with MP3 tunes for a long road trip or even trade songs wirelessly 
with other cars during a traffic jam. The possible business 
applications for wireless broadband are practically limitless, 
something the Free Wireless movement is helping to demonstrate.  

There is considerable dispute within the Free Wireless movement 
over who, if anyone, should pay for Internet access. Many Free 
Wireless pioneers envision a return to the utopian ideals that 
marked the early days of the Internet: an organic, dynamic system 
that would bind communities with free, unregulated access. 

One such person is Drew Ulricksen, who last year founded the 
Free Wireless advocacy group, Wireless Anarchy. "The beauty of 
WiFi," says Ulricksen, "is that with this technology we don't need to 
pay anyone for last mile access---we can do it ourselves." 

Ulricksen's views are balanced by those of a more realistic camp 
that champions the idea of wireless broadband, but recognizes 
that, if there's ever going to be a broadband revolution, somebody 
has to pick up the tab.  

A few of the more entrepreneurially minded have begun collecting 
money for the service. Sean Berry, a Unix systems engineer in 
Menlo Park, Calif., pays about $80 a month for his DSL service, 
which he beams to friends and neighbors who chip in to cover the 
monthly fee. Berry's collective points toward an innovative 
business model, since the cost to each user is a fraction of what 
they'd otherwise pay.  

The debate between the "free" and "fee" camps is a friendly one. 
Less cordial is the growing dispute between small entrepreneurs 
and the telecom companies who are becoming increasingly upset 
that their broadband is being resold. 

So far, this hasn't been much of a problem, since the Free 
Wireless movement is so small that most ISPs haven't explicitly 
forbid them. "It's largely off their radar map," says Townsend, of 
NYC Wireless. 

But that won't be true for much longer. Andrew Johnson, a 
spokesman for AT&T, likens the actions of entrepreneurs such as 
Berry to cable theft and threatens to disconnect any customer 
caught sharing their connection. In fact, AT&T has begun to 
conduct regular neighborhood fly-overs in search of rogue signals 
being transmitted from its customers. 

But AT&T can't catch everyone, particularly in urban areas where 
an 802.11b signal gets lost in the sea of radio waves created by 
other wireless devices. So for now, Free Wireless is proliferating.  

But the battle over broadband raises the important question of 
whether bandwidth is a commodity. Small entrepreneurs think it is. 
After all, they reason, can a flour company demand a cut of the 
profits from cookies you sell at a bake sale just because you baked 
them with their flour? 

Absurd as this question might seem, the Free Wireless movement 
is forcing ISPs and telecom companies to define the exact legal 
limits of bandwidth allocation. That, in essence, is the problem with 
Free Wireless: It's at the mercy of the Baby Bells and cable 
companies, which, once the movement reaches critical mass, will 
crack down hard when they discover they're losing market share to 
a bunch of hackers.  

Many of these do-it-yourself broadband networkers pride 
themselves on scrupulous adherence to the law, pointing out that 
the contracts they sign with ISPs to get their broadband 
connections don't prohibit them from reselling some of their 
bandwidth. 

People like Dewayne Hendricks, a wireless network developer 
who runs a company called the Dandin Group, pays $925 a month 
for his T-1 connection, which, he says, "gives me the right to act as 
my own ISP and redistribute bandwidth [wirelessly] without 
restrictions." In turn, he is spreading broadband to neighborhoods 
where cable or DSL providers can't or won't service, such as the 
wireless network he recently began building for the Turtle 
Mountain Chippewa Reservation in Belcourt, N.D.  

Along with his partner Matt Peterson, Tim Pozar, the co-founder of 
the Bay Area Wireless Users Group, was among the first to help 
communities set up 802.11b networks. "We want to educate 
people on how to create 802.11b networks that adhere to the FCC 
rules and regulations on how you can use this portion of 
unlicensed bandwidth," he explains. "We're encouraging people to 
build mom-and-pop [wireless networks] and a lot of people are 
going out there and doing it." 

Indeed, hundreds of Bay Area networks have already been built on 
this model. It would be tough to argue with Pozar's prescription for 
spreading broadband were it not for the sticky issue of legality: 
One problem with Free Wireless which Hendricks points out is that 
FCC regulations forbid the kind of souped-up base stations that 
beam wireless broadband signals to entire neighborhoods. 

It's true that the Free Wireless folks can spread broadband more 
quickly and easily than a traditional ISP, but at the same time they 
operate in a legal gray area---a fact that may eventually lead to 
their demise.  

Killing the Free Wireless movement in its infancy would be tragic, 
because the alternatives for spreading broadband are fraught with 
problems. Not only are the cable, phone, and satellite companies 
many years and billions of dollars away from creating universal 
broadband, but if small entrepreneurs disappear, so will customer 
choice: whichever of the major providers controls broadband also 
influences what its subscribers see and do online. 

In much the same way that Microsoft dominates the browser 
market, it's conceivable that a phone company such as Verizon 
could cut deals with certain news and shopping sites, then instruct 
its network to steer unwitting customers toward its content 
partners. By controlling the broadband gateway, it could even go 
so far as to ensure that non-partner pages download slower than 
preferred portals to encourage---or force---users to stay within the 
Verizon "family."  

At a time when Washington is flummoxed over how to spread 
broadband and spur the next economic boom, the Free Wireless 
movement is pointing the way toward a cheaper, faster way to 
bring broadband to the masses. The trouble is, cutting-edge 
entrepreneurs like Hendricks and Berry have no real presence in 
Washington, which is where the future of broadband will soon be 
decided. 

Right now, the debate is shaping up as a battle between the Baby 
Bells, cable companies, and the big wireless phone companies, all 
of whom have hired lobbyists and are jockeying to guide federal 
subsidies and regulatory advantages their way in a bid to claim for 
themselves this vast potential market (if you live in Washington, 
surely you too have been bombarded will all the television 
commercials for and against broadband legislation). But it will take 
big industry years and billions of dollars to deliver universal 
broadband through their preferred means.  

Washington lawmakers need to create a regulatory environment in 
which small entrepreneurs can flourish. The first step is to clear up 
the law so that broadband entrepreneurs are free to resell 
broadband to customers quickly and affordably. AT&T may flinch 
over this, but NYC Wireless's Townsend makes the point that "big 
ISPs will come to see us as a good thing---we're building demand 
for broadband by demonstrating its possibilities." 

The vast majority of Americans could receive some form of 
broadband, but due to price and hassle, so far have elected not to. 
Low-cost wireless community networks could change this, giving 
customers an easy way to get online, sparking demand for 
broadband applications and kicking the economy into high gear.  

None of this can happen until the FCC frees up more unlicensed 
spectrum. While 802.11b has proven its potential for enabling 
cheap wireless networking, the downside is that it can only handle 
a limited amount of users before interference becomes a problem. 

Fortunately, there is plenty of available spectrum that could fill this 
need---the catch is that it's controlled by powerful businesses 
which got their spectrum years ago and aren't permitted to sell it. 

Television broadcasters are the best case in point: Several years 
ago, the government allotted them, at no cost, new spectrum for 
high-definition television, which looked at the time to be the next 
stage in broadcast technology. But that idea fizzled. Digital 
television is instead being deployed at a rapid clip through cable. 
It's time to take that spectrum back.  

Unfortunately, the Bush administration looks to be on the brink of 
doing exactly the wrong thing: giving Baby Bells and cable 
operators complete and exclusive control of their lines, effectively 
shutting out competition. 

The Baby Bells have already shown their eagerness to deny 
access to independent ISPs, driving many out of business. Surely, 
they would move just as swiftly to deny small broadband 
entrepreneurs the right to re-sell their signal if doing so meant 
sacrificing potential customers.  

Throughout American history, our economy has thrived when 
individual entrepreneurs led the way---from homesteaders in the 
19th century to the 1970s garage-geeks who founded some of 
today's biggest Silicon Valley tech companies. 

New wireless technologies could enable legions of small 
broadband entrepreneurs to deliver high-speed wireless Internet to 
tens of thousands of Americans at lower prices. Once online, these 
new broadband users will not only unleash long-awaited features 
like movies-on-demand and videoconferencing, but also set the 
stage for more Napster-like innovation from smaller entrepreneurs. 
(Ninety percent of small businesses lack broadband.)  

Today, the closest thing to anytime-anywhere wireless broadband 
service is provided by a company called Boingo, which is 
garnering heaps of praise from the tech press and early adopters 
like me. Boingo sells "sniffer" software that hunts for 802.11b 
networks in the vicinity of your laptop, wherever it may happen to 
be. 

Next month, I'm travelling to San Jose and then to Seattle---both 
cities covered under the Boingo umbrella. While on the road, I'll be 
able to flip open my laptop and get fast, wireless broadband 
service. And I don't even need a Pringles can.  

Lawmakers debating the future of broadband should take note: 
Before you side with big industry and sabotage free wireless, give 
this service a shot and discover the future of broadband yourself. 
Thousands of voters already have. Millions more are bound to be 
impressed with whomever recognizes this hidden key to fixing the 
economy.


Copyright 2002 The Washington Monthly





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