Redmond to Consider Providing Citywide Wi-Fi

Tonight, the Redmond Planning Commission discussed proposed updates to the Utilities Element, or chapter, of our 20-year Comprehensive Plan. Theoretically, we get around to reviewing each chapter once every five years. The Comp Plan is a state-mandated vision statement--a high-level spec of sorts--that guides the development and implementation of city development guidelines, rules, ordinances, city-administered programs, and "functional plans". Every action the city takes and every privately-initiated development within city boundaries must be evaluated for and found to be in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan.

I've been a volunteer Planning Commissioner for just over a year and have had a few minor, minor wins...a possible pedestrian bridge over the state highway that separates our lovely little downtown from the amazing Marymoor Park to the south...a proposed Pea Patch program that would allow residents in quickly-urbanizing areas like Overlake, where Microsoft is located, to grow their own fruits, vegetables, and flowers...a proposed open-air performance venue in downtown... Minor wins all.

But tonight, I was honored to introduce the following policy proposal for the consideration of my fellow commissioners. With minor changes incorporated, this policy was unanimously approved by the Commission and will soon be sent to the City Council for their consideration and, we hope, approval.

Policy UT-70.5: Utilities Element of the Comprehensive Plan for the City of Redmond
Recognizing the importance to businesses and residents of access to the Internet, consider providing wireless Internet access citywide. Consider implementing a pilot program to evaluate feasibility.

If this policy is adopted by the City Council in its current form (or strenghthened), I would consider it a MAJOR win for me and my fellow residents of and visitors to Redmond (like George W. and the Apaches that spent the night hovering over my house three weeks ago) as it lays the foundation for the cost-effective provision of free or virtually free, high speed, wireless Internet access to city residents throughout the City. Its implementation would elevate Redmond into an elite league of really progressive North American cities that provide, or plan to provide free WiFi citywide. These include: Philadelphia, Long Beach, Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Salem, MA, Los Gatos,...and honorable mention to the National Mall, in Washington, DC. If I missed your fair city or town (Amsterdam, New York...), please let us know by adding a comment to this post.

As I've noted in previous posts*, public WiFi makes sense, particularly for Redmond. We already have great physical infrastructure in place; in downtown Redmond alone, 22 miles of unused, garden hose-sized fiberoptic cable sits dormant. Consequently, initial expenditures for wireless access points will be very low. Hermosa Beach, CA expects the total cost of citywide Wi-Fi to be $75,000 to $80,000 with annunal maintanence expenses of $18,000 in 2003 U$'s. I don't expect the cost will be much greater in Redmond. Let's see, that's just $2 dollars down payment and $0.50/year for every Redmond resident (halve that if you're counting our 90,000+ daytime population) to have high speed access to the Internet in their homes, businesses, cars, and recreational venues. No matter how you look at it, that is economical! Additionally, we might be able to tap into the high speed Internet connection provided by the forward-thinking King County Library system. Free Wi-Fi is already available in over half of our county libraries, including the branch in downtown Redmond, right next door to City Hall. Oh, and that free Wi-Fi access that all my geek friends, particularly Scoble love to blog about over at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue? You guessed it.  Internet service at Crossroads Mall is provided as a courtesy of the King County Library System. 

Let there be libraries! Libraries everywhere! I believe that the proliferation of freely-available, ubiquitous, wireless Internet networks in cities and towns across America will prove to be as powerful, liberating, and enriching a force as was unleashed by the construction of public libraries in every medium-sized town and large city across the United States in the 19th and early 20th century. Education, and the ready access to information it requires, is the lifeblood of democracy.

I hope that you will join me in urging the Redmond City Council to adopt our proposed WiFi policy and establish funding for the immediate implementation of a Pilot WiFi program. Click Here to email the City Council and support citywide WiFi. Let them know where you hang out in Redmond and more importantly, where you would like to be able to access the Internet wirelessly, now and in the future.

*some related posts:

• Warchalk-Proofing Redmond
• Reallocating Unused TV Spectrum (to the People!)
• The Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy
• Wi-Fi (and C-Span) for the Masses

[fixed broken hyperlink on 9 September 2004]

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 08, 2004
  While quickly scanning this morning's posts, I read the title of this as "Raymond Chen to Consider Providing Citywide Wi-Fi". Now that would be something.

• Anonymous
  September 08, 2004
  Hey, can you get them to add city-wide wifi to Sammamish too :)?
  
  Great job!

• Anonymous
  September 08, 2004
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  I think she hit the web link. She doesn't know RSS from ATOM :p

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Korby: You're doing the right thing. Keep it up!
  
  

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Winer Knows Democracy

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Todd Bishop (Seattle PI) chimes in

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  Good to see the mention of the King County Library - they are doing great work - the idea of utilizing the infrastructure that exists at public libraries is defintiely taking off - check out the posts over at Daily Wireless and <shameless self-promotion> at a blog I co-author - http://www.technobiblio.com/archives/000233.html </shameless self-promotion>
  
  Intersting also to see your thoughts on the cable piece in your earlier post - have you ever discussed this with David Keyes over at the City of Seattle?

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  I was out at AOL a couple weeks back, talking to some of their Search folks about their business and product strategy -- a truly WONDERFUL set of people, BTW -- when the story about Philly possibly providing free city-wide WiFi access was circulating.
  
  Sitting in AOL's HQ lobby, looking at the huge flat-screen showing usage stats and pictures of their international data centers, it occurred to me that an ISP like AOL (and heck, many cable, phone and as recently announced, electric companies) must be dreading this news.
  
  Sure, there's still business in providing bandwidth to the city; and most businesses would want to have some type of backup plan vs. 100% reliance on the city for their connectivity... but clearly, the days of 30MM $19.95 subscribers are numbered.
  
  Of course, being a bit of a sceptic, I expected that these behemoths would simply crush the movement by lobbying ($$$) in D.C. for "protection", "consideration", or some other such euphemism for gov't subsidies...
  
  But, reading Korby's post... and seeing that at least in the case of Redmond, the initiative was coming from a savvy tech employee focused on actually trying to provide value to everyday citizens... well, that just warms my heart a bit and gives me hope that the common good just might outweigh the machinations of biggie corporations.
  
  Either way, it'll be interesting to watch.
  

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2004
  UPDATE: Another blog post (culled from my PubSub search on "public libraries") that sess thevalue of public libraries in the whole wireless infrastrucutre of a city or region - this one in my own backyard of Remond, WA (well, if I had a really big backyard). I mentioned previously in a quick entry about how libraries could loan notebooks with Wi-Max cards and with Wi-Max equipment at their location also be an ISP for these patrons as they already have the backhaul circuit needed. Well, this article on Daily Wireless led me to this post over at the "Institute for the Future" blog where the idea of Wal-Mart getting into the ISP business utilizing Wi-Max is floated. Interesting notion, although highly unlikely for support, cost and profit margin reasons. They are primarily driven by these latter two factors and just in case you have been asleep over the past five years, the telecom world is not exactly lighting up the business world in those areas. While the infrastructure costs would certainly be less than in the traditional telco world, there are a bevy of problems that still exist that I think would steer Wal-Mart away from this investment. But this is interesting to consider because those are the exact two reasons that libraries would actually be well suited for this role. They already provide technical support for their users (albeit this is usually on-site, but not always) and since they are not charging for the service, they do not have to be concerned about profits - although obviously they would have to be concerned about sustaining the equipment and personnel costs. In addition, let's look at the spread of Wal-Marts as compared to public libraries purely on a number of locations basis to see what type of coverage they each would be able to offer. From Wal-Mart's corporate investor relations web site: "As of July 31, 2004, the Company had 1,398 Wal-Mart stores, 1,585 Supercenters, 539 SAM'S CLUBS and 72 Neighborhood Markets in the United States." That is a total of 3,594 locations. According to ALA there are over 16,000 public libraries in the US. Now Wal-Mart may be in more population centers and also can do things that libraries cannot (the uproar caused by a library giving away free internet service to their entire community would be thunderous), but public libraries could certainly cover some markets where Wal-Mart is not. And again, I would not advocate that public libraries make this their primary mission - but as a digital divide effort it could be very interesting. What if you did a multi-layer GIS overlay with your ILS data to highlight your user base, layer in economic demographics, and also home PC ownership and you could selectively install the Wi-Max equipment in those branches of your system where they would have the greatest impact. Then you create a lending program with a local school that gives kids (heck, we might as well include those adults too) access to additional content,...

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2004
  We just officially launched the Hotzone for Culver City, California. Home of Sony Pictures, Culver Studios, and future home of Symantec. Let us know how we can be helpful!
  
  http://www.wirelesshotspot.com

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2004
  DailyWireless.org

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  July 14, 2005
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