 |
||||||||||||||
Governing Board Donald Dubendorf Mitchell Adams Lawrence Reilly Pat Larkin |
BOSTON—“Steady blue, clear view. Flashing blue, clouds are due.” Once, the bright blue and red beacon atop the John Hancock Berkeley tower provided Boston and its surrounding communities with visual weather forecasts, a symbol of technological prowess of the mid-20th century. Soon, new ubiquitous broadband and wireless services will usher in a new age of connectivity to Boston’s footprint in the 21st century. It was very appropriate, then, that the Governing Board of the John Adams Innovation Institute met on May 1st inside the John Hancock Conference Center to hear the three co-chairs of the Boston Wireless Task Force offer their vision of what the changes may mean.
To set the stage for the discussion, Nicholas Vantzelfde, a director with Altman Vilandrie & Co. and a consultant to the Boston Wireless Task Force, presented an overview of where we are today, what ubiquitous broadband will enable, and what can be done to facilitate such a future. In today’s world, Vantzelfde said, the network owner—for cable, for telephone or cell phone—controls both the service and the device. With ubiquitous wireless services, the flow of information changes, flowing back and forth from any enabled device to any application, through any network. These changes, Vantzelfelde said, will provide a platform for innovation, creating constant connectivity that is cheap and ubiquitous—at home, at work, anywhere. The result, he predicted, will be a more connected and transparent society. The hallmarks of the new platform, he urged, should be ubiquitous coverage that is affordable, secure and trusted, and open to developers for “long-tail” applications.
To answer the question of why—and why now—local government has become increasingly involved with broadband, Sharon Gillett, principal research associate at the MIT Center for Technology, Policy & Industrial Development, shared data from recent studies that quantified the evidence of broadband’s economic importance. Between 1998 and 2002, communities served by broadband saw significant increases in jobs, in property values, in number of firms, and in industry mix, Gillett said. She predicted that the advent of ubiquitous broadband will lead to more “customer” ownership of networks, citing hospitals such as New York Presbyterian Hospital, which in May 2005, leased dark fiber to meet its medical imaging data transmission needs, at a savings of $151,000 annually. From a municipal perspective, she cited the city-owned public safety network in San Mateo, CA, a WiFi-mesh network on city-owned poles, which cost less than the radio system it replaced, and significantly improved productivity and efficiency in the delivery of public safety services. THE FIRST PHASE of Boston’s efforts to plan and develop a citywide wireless network is now well underway. The work is being directed by a 23-member task force, which is co-chaired by Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council; Rick Burnes, co-founder and director of Charles River Ventures; and Jim Cash, retired Harvard Business School professor. Mitch Adams, MTC’s executive director, is a member of the task force. The critical first goal is to research and develop business and technical models for deployment of wireless technologies, addressing infrastructure needs, inviting community input, and laying the groundwork to solicit proposals to form a public/private partnership necessary to finance the build-out of a $15-25 million wireless network. Towards that end, the Innovation Institute has invested $150,000 from its regional fund, working in partnership with the Boston Foundation, which has contributed $50,000 and served as a forceful leader in promoting the task force’s efforts, publishing “Wireless Boston.” The task force’s work is expected to serve as replicable model for communities throughout the Commonwealth. The May 1st Governing Board meeting offered a chance to engage with the leaders of the Boston Wireless Task Force about their work and the changes it will portend for Boston and the Commonwealth. The work is movingly rapidly with expectations that the final recommendations will be published in July. The co-chairs shared their personal opinions and vision of the future (no work product or official view of the Task Force was presented).
Nationally, the list of communities pursuing ubiquitous wireless services keeps growing. Plans to create wireless networks were recently announced by Suffolk County in Long Island, New York, as well as for the entire state of Rhode Island, joining the ranks of San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston.
Plotkin recalled Mayor Menino’s efforts 10 years ago “when he jumped in with both feet” to champion “NetDay” and the efforts to ensure that all of Boston’s schools had access to high-speed Internet. Praising Menino for his leadership, she said that the goal was “to provide mobile connectivity to the people of Boston in a cost-effective manner. It will be a huge platform for innovation.” Moderator Don Dubendorf, the chair of the Innovation Institute Governing Board, asked the panelists whether ubiquitous broadband would prove to be a disruptive technology. “It’s both disruptive and also reinforcing,” Sharon Gillett responded. “The capital costs are very low, but the operating expenses are about the same. However, Co-Chair Jim Cash disagreed. Ubiquitous broadband, he said, “is a total disruptive business model for large incumbents across the business landscape.” A single-payer system, said Co-Chair Rick Burnes, is “fraught with danger.” Burnes said he expected that there would be multiple vendors in the mix and the choices were going to multiply for consumers. THE FAR-RANGING DISCUSSION before the Governing Board During the ensuing dialogue with the audience, Teresa A. Martin, who is coordinating the Town of Orleans wireless effort on the Cape for the Cape Cod Technology Council, spoke about how her community has more in common with developing countries than with major metropolitan areas. Orleans, she said, had become an “unwired village,” and the next project on the horizon was an effort to create an “Open Cape” data transport network. The Innovation Institute made a $136,000 investment to the Council toward this wireless project. “We are at the start of the conversation,” said Don Dubendorf, at the close of the meeting. “The Task Force has six working groups addressing everything from community outreach to ownership models. As the Task Force moves ahead with its plans, we expect that we will continue this dialogue, focusing on the opportunities for the Commonwealth and exploring the potential roles that the state may play in the successful deployment of broadband services in every Massachusetts community. The focus will be on developing infrastructure, networks and business models predicated on the open standards that are capable of enabling access speeds at ten times the current offerings and readily available to all citizens across our economic landscape.” Links: Ubiquitous Broadband: Local Government Involvement in Broadband: Why Now? Berkshire Connect engineering and business modeling analysis |
|||||||||||||
What sets Boston apart in its efforts from the other communities is the comprehensive approach of the Task Force. “The amount of effort being put into our processes exceeds all the other cities [San Francisco, Philadelphia] combined,” Task Force Co-Chair Joyce Plotkin told the Governing Board. 
explored many of the complex issues surrounding the development of a new models of connectivity: How aggregating consumer demand may help define new markets; the promise of wireless technology as a way to solve the issue of the digital divide between the “haves” and “have-nots”; the opportunities in which government may choose to participate; and whether the ubiquitous broadband services would be defined as a commodity or as a utility.
To unsubscribe from this email, please respond to this email
and type “Remove” in the subject line.