wrythings

Last weekend at the 3rd (now self-admittedly International) Summit for Community Wireless Networks (IS4CWN) the evidence was clear… (based on a plethora of conversations): Community Wireless Networking is not dead, and while (for those in the movement) it may seem to have been eclipsed in the media eye, it hasn’t really had much mainstream attention yet.

It’s the pseudo-muni model that has failed.

The tragedy of the past few years has been a penchant for political leadership to buy what network carriers have been selling. The term Municipal in Muni-Wireless and Muni-Broadband has been co-opted by the sellers of networks to mean coverage of a city rather a more proper sense of Municipal Ownership. Terms are easily diluted in that way, but what is more serious for the various Municipalities and their residents is the dilution of the contracts and hence the vision that drove their initiatives in the first place.

I’ve heard reports from both Houston and Phily that the network footprint won’t be as extensive as originally envisioned. Once you get a contract the city is bought in enough that successive renegotiations can easily be achieved, reducing risk and cost to the vendor, and increasing cost, decreasing scope (which is an aspect of quality) of service, and maybe you can get the city to buy in as an anchor tenant after all.

Cities struggle with their budgets, we know. When you don’t have confidence (which translates into political will) in the potential of these networks you aren’t likely to put your money where your mouth is. It’s foolish model of accounting for costs that can’t simply aggregate the demand of the community and suggest that it will be cheaper to the tax-payers or rate-payers if the Municipality does the network itself… or better yet if the model rolls out as Boston plans: structural separation for a wholesale model with any number of service providers having access to the network infrastructure on the same terms and with very low barrier to entry. (Oddly Chicago completely rejected the possibility of non-profit ownership in the formulation of their request for proposal (RFP) despite a fair amount of testimony.)

So, the leading US cities haven’t put their money where their mouth is - and now the vendors are doing likewise. They win the contract for citywide service and then pull back from delivery.

How much investment is required to make this work? What model of ownership makes the most sense? What sort of business model works? What technology choices should we make? What are the purposes of the network? It’s the answers to network purpose that should drive your business/ownership and technology model, not the reverse. That requires commitment to the purposes of the network as opposed to just the idea of “let’s have a network because others have one”.

So, in the cities where the footprints of their pseudo-muni wireless networks are ever-shrinking… how will we cover the gap? It’s time for public attention to turn to community driven models., and it’s time for us to spread the word, spread the model and dispel the FUD.

Total Cost of Ownership - TCO - is a great throwaway phrase. In the context of city-wide communications networks (wireless or otherwise), we need to know what we are really paying (collectively) and what we really “own”.

First and foremost: Let it really be about ownership and not rents.

Cities are buying the meaningless phraseology of public-private partnership hook line and sinker. We’re so afraid of our shadows we can’t make a proper public investment in anything, anymore.

Most cities foreclose a host of business/ownership models before fully determining the purposes they want their network to serve.

This is backwards. It makes no sense.

But the question here is dollars and cents. Why are we so afraid to invest?

Our nation was built in a series of major public investments.

Is the problem public innumeracy? How often does the phrase no public dollars get uttered in the context of city-wide networks?

In terms of public dollars being spent (or not), there are two points to consider:

• will the city buy services on this network?
• how much will the general public be spending on network services?

Clearly, if the city makes significant use of a network it doesn’t own and there is no competition to speak of, tax-payers are supporting the network. If tax-payers are going to support the network, will they be well served by the network?

Would the public be better served under a model of municipal or non-profit ownership than under a vendor driven model? Would it not be cheaper in the long-run and in the aggregate for tax-payers or rate-payers to buy into a true muni or community model?

Perhaps the biggest question is this: if our civic leaders are so gung-ho about business models, shouldn’t we apply the proven experience of the sharper business minds? Big business knows what makes financial sense: if you can afford to buy your own network, you build/buy it. You don’t rent (for long).

I am one among many Chicagoans who were deeply inspired by the success of the Minneapolis grassroots digital inclusion effort that attained a Community Benefits Agreement as a part of their city-wide wireless agreement. Among the concepts promoted in Minneapolis was a provision of a “walled garden” … a space of community identified and city content that would be freely accessible to anyone able to receive the wireless signal. Some resources were also to go towards community portals for up to 90 neighborhoods in Minneapolis. Presumably, the content of those portals would be included in the walled garden? A committee was formed to flesh out those details of the contract.

The Minneapolis Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) served for us as a starting point in the Chicago campaign (still under way and in need of support) and led to the formation of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA). We began by taking a positive but critical look at the Minneapolis model, considering it an evolutionary step in public connectivity.

With each item on the Minneapolis CBA we asked: did they get enough? what does Chicago want? what does Chicago need? These are all preparatory to the wider dialog: what kind of Chicago do we want to be?

Chicago’s a bigger city … in terms of population and geography. Scale matters, and local political culture does too. But aside from those particulars, the principles of the movement for digital excellence and civic engagement allow for a wider dialog between and within communities. Communications policy as an object of public deliberation requires that we step up the discourse to a new level. We’re addressing topics that are multilayered and cross-cutting with all of our social needs and aspirations.

The “Walled Garden” appeared to be one of those concepts that required much further deliberation, not to mention some work on the language and framing.

A “walled garden” has some negative connotations in Internet parlance. A gated community doesn’t truly serve it’s residents well, nor our wider society, but we understand what motivates people to create them. This dissatisfaction with the terminology was not a minor part in desiring something more, something better.

But let’s start with the specifics of the original framing of Minneapolis’ walled garden concept: some community identified content and some city provided content would be freely available to anyone within range of the wireless signal. This ties to the basic questions of ownership of Wireless Internet Real Estate: splash pages and portals. Communities and Cities need a mechanism for local content and local identity and it needs to be front and center. We should view this space from a civic perspective. In Chicago we ask: what is the character of the network we want? Is’nt the splash page… the landing page as you join the network a critical aspect of that? What will the network encourage?

Some city content. Public convenience, utility and necessity. Branding for the city on the network. Lot’s of motivations there. But though we may be citizens and residents of a particular city, are we not also citizens and residents of the state in which we live, and of the nation? In other words, if there is a logic to having public access to city government resources online, in a free “walled garden” area, would this same logic not extend to state government sites, and federal sites? This broke open the concept and the idea of the Civic Garden emerged. Why not make all .gov sites available under these terms? The airwaves belong to the public anyway. We only license them out (or make them available for unlicensed use). Wireless providers need access to the right of way, pole attachments etc., you get the point.

If we accept the premise that leads to “some city content” being made available in this way, all .Gov is a step away.

Now, let us build on this case. Promotion of educational institutions and resources serves the public interest. Let’s make the content of school and higher learning available under this framework. Hence our call to make .edu a part of the Civic Garden. Now, .edu is a shorthand here: we intend this to cover the concept of education broadly.

An interesting aspect of this differentiation of select top level domains (TLDs) is in how the brands allowed themselves to be diluted. A fair number of government sites have been established under .com, with a supposition that people can’t type .gov. The different TLDs have meaning, and this is a means of opening the discourse on the relevance of the public sphere. We have an interest in opening up spaces for the commons.

The third leg of the Civic Garden pertains to community content produced locally, outside of government or government funded institutional channels. The Minneapolis walled garden and support of community portals establishes the basic principle. Communities have a right to create their own identity and to shape the character and flavor of the local network.

I expect the model of the Civic Garden to continue to evolve… word is that Minneapolis is adopting use of the term in association with their effort.

To start: there isn’t enough of it, of decent quality, interconnected and given priority.

Is that blunt enough?

Some problems require a collective response, but too often we accept those problems as intractable, because as individuals the issue is overwhelming in scale. How do we get ourselves to the point where we can even begin to explore the collective option?

Traffic and Transit

We’ve privileged the unsustainable. We have refused to invest in a truly public infrastructure. If we consider all the costs involved with traffic how would that compare with a reconstruction of public transit worthy of the public? That is, a system that is well-interconnected, efficient, (sufficiently frequent in service), reliable, comfortable and clean?

We can begin with the cost of traffic. This is not intended to be exhaustive. This is just to get us started on the critical path. Leaving the Chicago Green Festival this was brought home to me … Lake Shore Drive looked like a parking lot. Many urban thoroughfares look like that twice a day. With cars backed up as far as the eye can see you have to wonder at the fuel consumed and the value of our time as we sit waiting to get through the traffic and on to our destination. This does not even begin to address the cost of road maintenance (or construction), nor those of pollution.

What are the aggregate costs on these and other measures we may come up with, for traffic and transit, for any city on any given day?

We choose traffic over transit because transit doesn’t satisfactorily meet our needs, and we have each adjusted to the situation from an individualized frame of reference. We believe the extent of our impact on the situation is limited to that frame. We’ve bought in to consumerism as opposed to collectivism. This is not a question of a free-market versus a communistic system, but it is a question of how we can better live together. We need to be able to explore the characteristics of network and public aggregated solutions without having to defend against such simplistic rhetoric. This applies to questions of transit, as much as other public services and utilities, including communications networks such as broadband or citywide wireless. Each of these is a matter of infrastructure and capacity and demands public discourse and deliberation.

Urban myths of impossibility vs. Amenities in historical context

Our practices and attitudes towards the possible in the several sectors of urban socio-economic life reveal fundamental contradictions. Some behaviors are accepted as the domain of a natural monopoly (or duopoly for an illusion of market), some are left to individual patterns of consumption and behavior and others are the domain of government, governance and patronage. Looking at how the work and life of a city functions on a day to day basis we find no explanation for organizing the different infrastructures as we do other than the historical context of the interests that fought for the current state of affairs. Tracing the history of these domains of our economic life we also see considerable variety - oscillations between private interests, markets, collective responses, monopoly-utility and government driven approaches. There is also plenty of blending and interaction across these categories. In principle we should not allow rhetoric or ideology to foreclose options in our collective response, especially the option of a collective response.

What is Digital Literacy without deep dedication to cultivating Literacy and Judgment? What is Digital Citizenship without ongoing effort to promote a robust Civic Life? What is Digital Inclusion without a true effort and policy of Inclusion? What’s the Expansion in Digital Expansion? Digital Government? Digital Community? Digital Neighborhoods? The Digerati? Don’t get me started on Digital Futures and Opportunities…

Digital isn’t the point, whatever the form: e-this, i-that. We single out recent technologies with magical promise by such signals as they arrive in successive waves. Technology that has permeated society is barely recognized as technology by most of us: television, telephone, tricycles, fire and other dangerous things. We know we need a mechanic when something goes wrong (if we aren’t technically inclined), but with the newer technologies most of society remains mystified (including practitioners).

We can no longer participate in the perpetuation of that mystification through repetition and variation on the incantations. We can’t proclaim the benefits of indiscriminate innovations and extensions in and of the virtual world dreaming that that is enough and will necessarily and sufficiently transform our society.

Digital Inclusion is the term of art that really broke the spell for me. “What art?” you may ask… the selling of networks and network consulting and ancillary services and technologies, whether wireless, WiMAX-WiFi or other broadbands and slices of spectrum. If we’re Keynesians after all, then let’s just say so. If not, or if we’re moderated Keynesians, we had better be more critical of our technology planning and spending. (And by odd coincidence, promoting public discourse on media and technology is just the prescription for an inclusive, civic minded, digital and media literate citizenry ready to take up tools to their own purposes and to make investments toward common purposes.)

We need to become serious about social justice questions, embrace them as the core of our movement. We need to become serious about issues that demand a holistic view, we need to treat our work in the context of the whole of lives of individuals, families and communities.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-digital. To be clear: the digital divide has not gone away but/and deserves our attention in so far as it is a divide, not because it is digital.

I favor a positive view on the way forward as long as it doesn’t deny where we are and what it will take. I see great potential in these technologies and in the expansion of communication capacity. I just want the digital in context and in service to the world we want and the dialogue that gets us headed there, and I want our individual and collective investments to consciously shape the character of our networks and our society. We can’t take these outcomes for granted. The sales pitch is always promising.

So, with each Digitized phrase, we must ask: how does it stand on its own? Can we forget the technical innovation of the moment, live without the distraction and get serious about living together?

In our work promoting Digital Excellence, we’re more than happy to Drop the Digital, we emphasize the Excellence. That’s what we want from students, citizens, families, communities, companies, politics, education and the economy.

If these digital prefix strategies are work-arounds (and no just new and improved sales pitches) for some of us… our attempt at concealing revolutionary socially transforming activity, it’s time for a reality check. We have to become clear about our goals. If it’s a dance of revolutionary work concealed behind revolutionary technologies and obstructed by reactionary policies and practices, make sure it is we who call the tune with the language we choose. Let’s choose what we want and aspire to, not settle upon the limited scraps we may or may not get.

The so called “video competition” bill, HB 1500 is opposed by every community and advocacy group worth it’s salt. A lobby day is planned for Weds. April 18 under the Keep Us Connected coalition. From their site:

Join the Keep Us Connected coalition. Support pro-community video franchise laws that:

• Require build-out to all neighborhoods in a community
• Protect Public, Educational and Government (PEG) Access by ensuring carriage of existing and future PEG stations with adequate funding to operate
• Maintain local governments’ control over its rights of way, including the right to create communications networks
• Protect consumers with meaningful competition and strong customer service standards
• Maintain a free and open Internet

The Keep Us Connected coalition consists of nonprofits, municipalities, PEG Access stations, educational and government institutions, and Illinois residents.

Some civic voices including yours truly are given space on Community Media Workshop: Newstips - “Cable Deregulation Challenged”.

Here’s the full text from Newstips:

[UPDATE - The April 18 hearing on HB 1500 has been postponed, according to a report from the Keep Us Connected Coalition. The coalition is proceeding with its citizens lobby day on April 18 in Springfield. ]

Growing attention on a proposed statewide cable franchise bill could slow a legislative blitz by supporters of telecommunications giant AT&T.

State Representative James Brosnahan (D-Oak Lawn) was expecting the House Telecommunications Committee he chairs to vote Wednesday to approve HB 1500, the franchise bill he has sponsored, but the vote could be delayed. The bill would strip local municipalities of cable franchising power and create state franchises authorized by the Illinois Commerce Commission, going far toward deregulating the industry in Illinois.

AT&T has poured money into a full-court press by lobbyists in support of the measure, along with an extensive TV ad campaign suggesting that HB 1500 promises competition and lower cable rates.

But last week Ald. Edward Burke introduced a City Council resolution calling on the legislature to reject the bill. He plans to hold hearings on the issue with Attorney General Lisa Madigan and others, said spokesperson Donal Quinlan. A press conference called by Burke Tuesday morning (10 a.m. at City Hall, room 302) will raise the profile of opposition to the measure by the city and by municipalities across the state.

Public Access Channels Threatened

Wednesday morning, as the committee meets, community activists backing Chicago’s CAN-TV and public access channels across the state will arrive in Springfield for a citizen lobby day by the Keep Us Connected Coalition. (Community Media Workshop is a coalition member; CMW president Thom Clark hosts a show on CAN-TV.) The coalition says HB 1500 would undercut existing guarantees on funding, channel accessiblity and quality for public access cable, would provide for no new public channels in new service areas, and would establish stringent “no-repeat” requirements - not applying to commercial channels - allowing providers to eliminate public access channels.

“Instead of talking about strengthening public access, as we should be, we’re fighting to get back to first base,” said Barbara Popovic of CAN-TV.

Representatives of municipalities are challenging the basic concept of HB 1500 - that state franchises are needed to promote cable competition. They point out that by overriding local control, the bill eliminates basic customer service protections now enforced by municipalities, as well as local franchise requirements that entire communities be served.

Without anti-redlining provisions - which are probably only practical on a local basis - the measure won’t promote competition and lower rates across the board, but will create a dynamic where rates go down in affluent areas but are “subsidized by higher prices paid by residents in lower-income, non-competitive areas,” Burke argues in his resolution.

Eminent Domain for AT&T

Municipalities are outraged that for the first time they’ll have no oversight over contruction in their public right-of-ways, said Terry Miller, an attorney with the City of Naperville. Local officials worry about refrigerator-sized utility boxes which AT&T would have blanket authorization to install under the bill’s franchise, he said.

Under the bill the ICC can authorize franchises but has no enforcement power. Supporters of HB 1500 have promised “self-enforcement.”

Most shocking for many is the bill’s grant of eminent domain powers to AT&T and other state franchise holders, with no requirement for just compensation or avenue for appeal. HB 1500 “gives away the store regarding the ability of a private company to encroach on residential property in ways we’ve never seen before,” Quinlan said. “It’s extremely problematic.”

The eminent domain provision is not expected to survive current negotiations over amendments, but it’s indicative of the way Brosnahan’s bill contains “an a la carte sampling” of only the provisions in cable law that favor AT&T, Miller said.

“What’s clear about this bill is that it was written by telecommunications lobbyists,” according to technology analyst Sascha Meinrath, executive director of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, on his blog. “I can only imagine that the goal was to fast-track this bill and sneak it through before the public got organized enough to demand that it be withdrawn.”

“AT&T wants to make this happen now because they know that with more time, more questions will be raised,” said Brian Imus of Illinois PIRG, calling HB 1500 “a sweetheart deal for AT&T.”

He points out, “There’s nothing now blocking competition, nothing stopping AT&T from negotiating cable franchises with local municipalities.”

‘Local Franchising Works’

“Local franchising works real well,” points out Roger Huebner of the Illinois Municipal League. He’s meeting with Brosnahan Tuesday to propose amendments to the Municipal Code and existing statutes that currently cover cable franchising, in order to address AT&T’s complaints about aspects of the process that are cumbersome, he said. The approach embodied in HB 1500 - creating a new article in the Public Utilities Act to give the ICC authority to issue state cable franchises - is unnecessary, he maintains.

Verizon, AT&T’s chief competitor for internet provider television (IPTV), has snapped up hundreds of local franchises on the East Coast, and according to Huebner, AT&T itself is seeking local video franchises in Illinois communities including Bellwood and Wheaton.

The municipal amendments should get full consideration, said Miller. That would mean no committee vote on Wednesday.

Brosnahan’s office said he was waiting for proposed amendments from the Attorney General’s office. Another hearing on the bill has now been scheduled for one week after this Wednesday’s hearing.

Illinois PIRG was joined by national consumer groups including Consumers Union in opposing the bill in its original form. “The unintended consequence will be systematic redlining on a statewide scale,” according to a letter from Consumer Union’s Jeannine Kenney and others to state legislators. They say other states with similar deregulation schemes have seen prices increase, “leaving consumers with nothing but empty promises.”

Consumer groups also emphasize the importance on non-discriminatory “net neutrality” provisions ensuring free access to content to the Internet.

Michael Maranda of the Chicago Digital Access Alliance points out that AT&T is pushing legislation legalizing redlining and undermining local control and access even as it presents itself as a bidder on Chicago’s wireless network, which parallels the city’s cable franchises - and requires a digital inclusion plan. “It’s a horrible bill and a discredit to the state,” he said.

I call upon all who view themselves as technology and social justice advocates to seize the moment afforded by the recent attention to Digital Inclusion: let’s raise both the public discourse and the practices of our field to a new level.

We’ve been doing heavy lifting trying to meaningfully connect our communities for a long time without sufficient resources or recognition. We know better than anyone else that the Divide persists and we’re glad it’s being noticed (again). We hear Digital Inclusion trumpeted as the virtue of every network proposal, but we can’t allow ourselves to be used in the selling of these networks, and we can’t let our communities be sold short. We want the connectivity, yes, but unless we as a people assert what we require of our networks we’ll be looking back upon another missed opportunity.

What we really want is a fundamental change in communications and technology policy at every level of social organization. We the people are a lot more sophisticated than we give ourselves credit for… and than we are credited with by others who hold themselves above the people.

It’s time for us to state clearly who we are, what our values are and what we know is needed at this moment in history. Let your actions speak louder than your words, certainly, but get your story out there. This holds for all who seek social justice and have dedicated themselves to working locally. Your direct work with your community is important, but so is the shaping of our collective life through shared words, images and ideas. We must make time for both.

I warmly thank Sascha Meinrath for helping to further this conversation.

We’re all ready to move Beyond Digital Inclusion.