Motivations, Technologies, and Sustainability Models of ... - IEEE Xplore

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CONSUMER COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING

Motivations, Technologies, and Sustainability Models of Wireless Municipal Networks Károly Farkas, University of West Hungary Csaba A. Szabó and Zoltán Horváth, Budapest Univ. Tech&Econ

ABSTRACT In this article we provide an integrated presentation of applications, technologies, and business models for wireless municipal networks together with design considerations. We give an overview on the state of affairs in municipal networks, presenting the driving forces and stakeholders of these projects, the applications and services for some carefully selected cases, and the available wireless technologies and regulatory issues. Then we outline the design methodology to build wireless municipal networks, presenting a pilot municipal network in Hungary, and discuss the relevant sustainability and business models, which are analyzed and illustrated by summaries of case studies.

INTRODUCTION

1

The digital divide denoted the differences in access to information and communication technologies in general, or in Internet access in particular, between those geographical areas or population groups with adequate access and those with limited or no access at all. A typical example is a sparsely populated area that is not adequately covered by telcos or Internet service providers (ISPs). 2

ROI is a measure of the efficiency of a given investment; it is calculated as the ratio of the net gain from investment over a certain period of time to the amount of investment.

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Providing broadband access to citizens, communities, public institutions, and developing businesses has become a strategic objective for governments and international organizations worldwide. In particular, serious problems related to the digital divide1 have been widely recognized by public administrations. However, the solution to these problems is not straightforward. A large number of initiatives, under the collective name community networks, have been launched in North America as well as in Europe. By creating telecom infrastructure in underserved regions, local governments can prevent remote communities from experiencing the digital divide, and are able to create a healthy climate for economic development, help startups grow, and bring new businesses into the region. A note on terminology: community network is also, and was originally, a social science term, and in fact, the first community networks were created by social groups in order to improve communication among their members. Free or cheap Internet access has always been an important objective. In this article we use this term in a technological-economic sense: by community network we mean the combination of the

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telecommunication infrastructure, the services provided on it, and the specific business model to operate the infrastructure and provide services. Since most community network projects are being initiated, implemented, or governed by city administrations, the term municipal network or municipal wireless network is used as a synonym for community network throughout this article. For building municipal networks, all infrastructure options that are common in telcos’ networks are, in principle, suitable. Fiber has been an attractive solution for many cities, first of all in North America. Terms like municipal fiber or condominium fiber refer to fiber infrastructure built by a municipality or an association of users such as a school board. Wireless technologies, on the other hand, are also a handy alternative for building municipal networks for several reasons, such as ease of installation and expandability, low costs, and the availability of a range of technologies starting from the ubiquitous WiFi through WiMAX and third-generation (3G) mobile. However, planning, deployment, and operation of municipal networks have been challenging tasks. As opposed to telco networks, there is a specific set of services cities or regions want to implement. The applications and services have to be made accessible to a wide range of geographically diverse users, no matter where they are located. To facilitate the creation of municipal networks, Intel Corporation suggests a list of technical requirements that must be met by digital cities [1]. Unlike in telco networks, cities can more freely choose communication technologies, including emerging ones, as they do not have the stringent business requirements the telcos have to meet, such as high return on investment (ROI) 2 or totally risk-free adaptation of new technologies. Last but not least, suitable business models have to be defined with clever constructions, involving both the public and private sectors while satisfying legal and regulatory requirements. The objective of this article is to provide an integrated presentation of applications, tech-

IEEE Communications Magazine • December 2009

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nologies, and sustainability/business models for wireless municipal networks together with design considerations. This integrated approach has rarely been found in the technical literature. A recently edited book [2] attempts to bring together the most important aspects — technical, legal, regulatory, and economic — in one book. Within the framework of an ongoing European Network of Excellence project called OPAALS (www.opaals.org), the social side, information technologies, and economic models are being investigated by a large interdisciplinary international team, also putting municipal networks in a wider context of digital ecosystems and digital business ecosystems. The rest of the article is organized as follows. In the next section we provide an overview on the state of affairs in wireless municipal networks. With some carefully selected cases, we present the driving forces, stakeholders, applications, and services of municipal network projects, and discuss the available wireless technologies and regulatory issues. We then outline the design methodology for wireless municipal networks and give a short report about a pilot community network in Hungary. We then present general considerations on sustainability and analyze the relevant business models with representative examples. In the final section we give a short summary.

MUNICIPAL NETWORKS In this section we look first at the set of applications usually considered for municipal networks, summarize the current status of wireless municipal network initiatives, and then briefly present the available wireless technologies and frequency regulatory issues.

STAKEHOLDERS, INITIATORS, AND APPLICATIONS OF MUNICIPAL NETWORKS As mentioned above, by municipal network or community network we mean the combination of the telecommunication infrastructure created by the participation of the local government, the services provided on it, and the specific business model to operate the infrastructure and provide services. In this article we focus on wireless municipal networks, where at least the access part, but also in many cases the distribution and backbone part, is implemented using a wireless and/or mobile technology. The stakeholders of municipal networks include: • Public agencies (local governments, local development agencies) • Users (citizens, small and medium enterprises [SMEs],3 associations, etc.) • Private sector services providers (e.g., telcos, ISPs) • Local and global facilitating agencies such as research and consulting centers, associations of municipal networks. One of the above stakeholders is usually the initiator of the project. While classic municipal networks were initiated by the communities themselves (a.k.a. grassroot initiatives), most of


today’s municipal networks are planned and implemented with some form of participation by local and/or regional governments. Applications that drive the development of municipal networks can be grouped as follows: • Access to public information and services • Public safety • Traffic control and transportation • Health care • Business services • Educational • Utility companies (electricity, water, gas, etc.) In most cases there are usually one or two applications that are the main motivations for implementation of a given municipal network. Below we list some wireless municipal network initiatives together with their primary applications [1]: • Chaska, Minnesota — Overcome digital divide for schools, businesses, and residents • Cheyenne, Wyoming — Traffic signal management • Corpus Christi, Texas — Automated meter reading for city-owned utilities • Lewis & Clark County, Montana — Leased line replacement; access to remote county buildings • Medford, Oregon — Public safety • Ocean City, Maryland — Integrated digital, voice and video for city buildings • San Mateo, California — Police field-force productivity improvement • Spokane, Washington — Municipal applications and e-Government initiatives • Piraí, Brazil — Municipal field-force productivity • Shanghai, China — Police field-force productivity improvement • Portsmouth, United Kingdom — Bus passenger information dissemination • Westminster, United Kingdom — Video surveillance and enhanced security According to Muniwireless.com [3], a wellknown portal of wireless municipal networks, there are several hundred regional and city-wide networks, city hot zones, and public safety and municipal use networks in the United States alone. There are further a half thousand ongoing city and country-wide projects, and the number of existing networks plus ongoing projects shows an exponential growth from year to year. There are similar initiatives around the globe, and although Europe, at least the continental part, seems to be lagging behind the United States, similar growth is expected to happen in the next few years to meet the objectives of ambitious European plans to penetrate broadband services to citizens and institutions and foster regional development. In Hungary several wireless municipal network projects have been launched with more or less success and are in planning or pilot stages. The first Hungarian municipal wireless network was built in 2006 in a small city (Gyó´r) for lowcost Internet access and municipal services using WiFi and WiMAX. A related project is a citywide community network in another city (Szolnok), which was built in 2009 by a telco with the support of the local government.

WiFi mesh networks are peer-to-peer multi-hop networks, where the nodes cooperate with each other to route information packets through the network. They present an alternative to infrastructure-based networks.

3

SMEs are companies whose head count or turnover falls below certain limits.

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AVAILABLE WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES WiMAX’s flexible architecture is based on the family of IEEE 802.16 standards. The topology can follow point-topoint, point-multipoint or mesh architectures. The area coverage is up to tens of km in Line Of Site (LOS) environment, at limited data rates.

4

AES and DES are encryption standards in cryptography. AES is an advanced successor of the weaker DES standards. 5

HSDPA and HSUPA belong to the high-speed packet access (HSPA) protocol family (also called 3.5G or 3G+), which defines enhancements to 3G mobile telephony communications protocols. HSPA allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. 6

MIMO is the use of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance. It is one of several forms of smart antenna technology. 7

Femtocells are small cellular base stations, typically designed for use in home or small business environments.

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WiFi Mesh — WiFi mesh networks are peer-topeer multihop networks where the nodes cooperate with each other to route information packets through the network. They present an alternative to infrastructure-based networks. Mesh networks have some attractive features. They are organic; nodes may be added and deleted freely; the mesh principle also means fault tolerance: nodes may fail and packets will still be routed; and mesh networks are manageable in a distributed way. However, mesh networks also pose challenges. If there are too many nodes, the need for routing other nodes’ traffic decreases the access throughput of a given node. On the other hand, if there are too few nodes, routing could be a problem. Security is also an issue. A practical problem is that presently it is hard to find interoperable products as the wireless local area network (WLAN) mesh standard (IEEE 802.11s) is relatively new. In spite of the aforementioned shortcomings, the majority of wireless municipal networks are WiFi mesh, and it is the most likely option to consider when someone is planning to create such an infrastructure. Current products feature dual and multiple radios to significantly compensate for the throughput decrease when traffic is routed through a chain of nodes. Most recently combined products have been developed that feature WiMAX capabilities to use the latter technology as a backbone. WiMAX — WiMAX’s flexible architecture is based on the family of IEEE 802.16 standards. The topology can follow point-to-point, point-tomultipoint, or mesh architectures. The area coverage is up to tens of kilometers in line-of-sight (LOS) environment, at limited data rates. An attractive feature is operation under non-LOS (NLOS) conditions. High capacity and data rates up to 100 Mb/s make WiMAX a viable option for backbone and distribution network segments. It provides a high level of security due to Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES). 4 Quality of service is an inherent feature of WiMAX. It has several service classes, including support for real-time data streams. The mobile version is based on the IEEE 802.16e standard, approved at the end of 2005, and products are already available based on this standard. Its deployment is easy, quick, and relatively inexpensive. Different spectrum allocation possibilities exist in licensed and license-free frequency bands. However, implementers of wireless municipal network infrastructures are cautious regarding WiMAX, mainly due to the currently high costs of WiMAX subscriber stations. Nevertheless, a WiMAX-based backbone for WiFi mesh networks seems to be an attractive option, and mobile WiMAX is definitely a promising solution when mobility is of key importance. 3G Cellular Mobile — 3G cellular systems together with enhancements like high-speed download/upload packet access (HSDPA/ HSUPA), 5 also due to smaller cell sizes, offer per-customer data rates (3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications System [UMTS]: 384 kb/s–2

Mb/s; HSDPA: 12.8 Mb/s; HSUPA: 5.7 Mb/s) that would satisfy the requirements of most of the applications. Nevertheless, there are no municipal networks, at least to the best of the authors’ knowledge, based on cellular mobile service. The reason might be simple: municipalities did not take this option into account; but on the other hand, cellular operators might also be reluctant to work out a specific offer for a city, with very special pricing and specific solutions in addition to cellular coverage to support large institutional users (e.g., in combination with WiMAX). So this option is included here for completeness only. Beyond 3G: 4G Systems — Beyond 3G (B3G) systems are developed on the basis of 3G systems by using improved channel coding, modulation, and automatic repeat request mechanisms to achieve higher link capacity (20–50 Mb/s). Although some concepts such as usage of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)6 antennas or femtocells7 are new, the term beyond 3G is more appropriate than 4G as the network architecture and technologies used in this new generation of wireless cellular networks — notably in HSPA+ and Long Term Evolution (LTE) — are similar to those of 3G systems. As LTE is currently under implementation and testing, it is too early to say anything regarding its usability in municipal networks.

ALTERNATIVES TO MUNICIPAL WIRELESS This overview of technologies and services leads us to an important question: do commercial operators offer viable alternatives to municipal wireless networks initiated by local governments and deployed by themselves or — in a form of public-private partnership — by a commercial partner? There is no general answer to this question as the business environment varies in different countries and regions, but in most cases the answer is no. The common reason regional administrations, agencies, and communities have decided to invest or co-invest in a municipal wireless infrastructure has been that there was no adequate coverage of the respective area and population by commercial service providers, and, as mentioned in our Introduction, the business models of commercial operators do not allow for expanding their infrastructure and services to sparsely populated areas or user groups that cannot afford to pay market prices for services. A related issue is worth mentioning. New types of telecom service providers have recently emerged worldwide: virtual network operators (VNOs) and mobile VNOs (MVNOs). These terms refer to operators who do not own infrastructure or frequency licenses, but set up business cooperations with telcos and mobile operators in order to be able to resell the services of the latter. While (M)VNOs often find customer groups who are not well served by the full-fledged operators and are also more flexible in terms of business constructions, it is unlikely that they will be able to implement the range of services required by municipalities covering their respective area; at least the authors are not aware of working examples. The reasons are sim-


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ilar to those mentioned above with respect to the commercial operators: their business objective is first of all to generate profit in the short term.

FREQUENCY BANDS AND THE REGULATORY SITUATION FOR WIFI AND WIMAX Although industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) 8 frequencies (e.g., 2.4 GHz) are widely used in municipal wireless networks, it is not the preferred option due to high interference with a wide range of devices and systems operating in the unlicensed ISM bands. Frequency bands 3.4–3.6 GHz and 5.7–5.8 GHz are available for fixed and nomadic services in many countries. In the 3.4–3.6 GHz band, nomadicity and limited mobility can be supported. The 2.496–2.69 GHz band (also referred to as the 2.5 GHz band in the United States or the 2.6 GHz band in Europe) is best suited for mobile broadband use. The spectrum below 2 GHz has better propagation characteristics, but those bands are typically already in use. The licensing situation is different in different geographic regions. As for the United States, the 2.5 GHz band is available for WiMAX, but the allocation possibilities are limited because this band is occupied to a large extent by big operators such as Sprint, AT&T, and Clearwire. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently introduced a novel license granting scheme in the 3.65 GHz band [4] to promote the availability of broadband to underserved areas in the country. The scheme is called light licensing, and means an easy and inexpensive way to obtain non-exclusive licenses. In Europe the potentially available frequencies for fixed and mobile WiMAX are the licensed 3.5 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands, and the unlicensed 5.7 GHz band. Despite the efforts made by the WiMAX Forum, the regulatory situation in Europe is far from satisfactory, although the associated technical issues are solvable. Reallocation of these frequencies, used, for instance, for military purposes for a long time, is usually not a big problem, as these bands have been unused for some time by their owners;what slows down the process is mostly an economicalpolitical issue. The current situation in Europe differs from country to country. In some countries WiMAX frequency licensing is not yet regulated, or a few or just one exclusive country-wide license is granted. For example, in Hungary the licensed 3.5 GHz band was allocated to point-to-multipoint microwave systems; thus, it can be used to operate WiMAX systems. Five operators were qualified via open tendering in 2001 to use 2 × 14 MHz wide channels of the 3.5 GHz band, but the usage of these bands is marginal today. Based on these licenses, WiMAX could be a viable option for building municipal wireless networks since these frequencies are currently underutilized by the licensees; thus, they might be interested in municipal projects. Moreover, they are also allowed to resell their entire frequency band or just a part of it. The licensing authority is also willing to open the unlicensed part of the 5 GHz band for WiMAX services as soon as demand arises.


DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

In Europe, the

In this section we deal with the basic issues related to municipal network planning and give a short report on a pilot community network in Hungary. More discussion with examples can be found in [5].

frequencies for fixed

DESIGN METHODOLOGY

GHz and 2.6 GHz

In general, there are significant differences between planning of municipal networks and ISPs’ and other service providers’ design methodology. Key differences include the following requirements for municipal networks: • Ubiquitous WiFi access covering the whole territory of the community (e.g., a city, a county, or a province), no matter if some parts are sparsely populated and/or geographically challenging. • Users should be provided with other forms of access as well, depending on the application and the users’ needs and economic possibilities. Thus, on one hand, the applications must be made accessible via cheap communication services, and on the other hand, bandwidth-demanding customers have to be served too. • Mobility or at least nomadic access across the covered area must be supported. • Support must be provided for a multiplicity of user devices from simple mobile phones through PDAs and laptops to videoconferencing equipment. • The network should support a specific set of government, business, and society-related applications. For the latter, a specific general service platform is needed like Intel’s Government Federated Service Bus (GFSB) [6]. The whole design process consists of the following steps (Fig. 1): 1)Identifying applications and services [2]. First, we should select the key applications and services that raise requirements of the network. 2)Identifying network technology requirements, based on applications [5]. We should analyze the requirements of the applications and services selected in the first step. This analysis should contain quality of service (delay, jitter) and bandwidth parameters. 3)Identifying coverage requirements, and the possibilities and limitations of the environment [7]. Preparing the network technology selection, we should determine the area that is supposed to be covered by the network, with its topography, natural obstacles such as hills or trees as well as buildings, availability of support structures, towers, and so on. 4)Choosing network technology and configuration [7]. Selecting the right technology is one of the key parts of network planning. This decision should be based on identified requirements and conditions of the environment. We should choose optimal solutions for both the access and backbone networks. 5)Planning of network topology [8]. This complex part of the methodology uses the

potentially available and mobile WiMAX are the licensed 3.5 bands and the unlicensed 5.7 GHz band. Despite of the efforts made by WiMAX Forum, the regulatory situation in Europe is far from being satisfactory, although the associated technical issues are solvable.

8

ISM radio bands were originally reserved internationally for the use of radio frequency electromagnetic fields for industrial, scientific, and medical purposes. Communication devices using the ISM bands must tolerate any interference from ISM equipment; in exchange, they can operate in an unlicensed manner. Typical telecommunication devices using ISM bands are wireless LAN equipment or cordless phones.

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results of the coverage requirement analysis as well as the network technology selection. We should plan the network topology according to the topography and optimal station placement strategies. 6)Verifying original requirements. Last but not least, this step stands for verifying the results of planning. We should recognize the differences between the original requirements and the capabilities provided by the planned network.

PILOT MUNICIPAL NETWORK IN HUNGARY To illustrate the design methodology discussed above we briefly present a pilot municipal network in Hungary. This project was the initiative of the government of a small city (Sopron) to implement a city-wide network infrastructure and related services. The wireless infrastructure has been planned to serve several important goals:

Identifying applications and services

Identifying network technology requirements (QoS) based on applications

Identifying coverage requirements and environmental capabilities

Choosing access network technology

Choosing backbone network technology

Verification

Planning of backbone network topology

Planning of access network topology

Verification

• Carry internal data and voice traffic among public institutions and publicly controlled companies. • Improve the efficiency of work processes and introduce electronic customer services via an e-government initiative. • Improve services for citizens. Some potential applications are a public safety system, telemetrics for local utility companies, parking management, and an advanced tourism information system. After identifying the requirements of the planned services, a network scenario of a WiFi mesh with a WiMAX backbone and interconnection network was selected as the communication infrastructure. In this scenario the user connects to a WiFi mesh access point, which can forward the traffic to another one in mesh mode. Finally, the traffic reaches one of the mesh nodes that has a WiMAX interface to connect to the main WiMAX base station. To select the exact location of the communication devices, map-based planning was carried out. Figure 2 depicts the city map with the coverage situation of the planned network and the selected location of the WiFi mesh and WiMAX devices. Nodes with dual (WiMAX and WiFi mesh) interfaces (blue circles) are placed at some high points of the city, such as churches and towers (blue dots). A node with dual interfaces aggregates the traffic from its cell and the traffic of three other WiFi mesh nodes (red circles) on average, and forwards it to the backbone access points (BAPs) using WiMAX connected to the existing wired public Internet and the city’s virtual private network (VPN). Considering capacity and distance aspects, two BAPs are enough to serve the whole coverage area. Fortunately, the city is surrounded by hills southwest and north, and several look-out towers (red dots) offer ideal places for these access points. Thus, two of them (one in the southern and one in the northern part of the city) were selected to place the BAPs.

SUSTAINABILITY AND BUSINESS MODELS In this section we deal with issues related to business planning. We discuss the business constructions for planning, implementation, and operation and maintenance of municipal networks.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Network plan and list of components

Cost calculation

Figure 1. Design process of planning a municipal network.

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There is no simple business model of deploying and operating municipal community networks [9]. In the following we discuss some possibilities according to the involvement of the public entity. The participation of a public entity in creating and operating a municipal network is often accomplished in a kind of public-private partnership (PPP). There is a range of business models according to the structure of public-private cooperation, starting from one extreme of a publicly owned and operated infrastructure to the other, one owned and operated by the munici-


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Figure 2. City map with the pilot municipal network.


High Complexity of management and administration by the public entity

pality. The choice of the appropriate model is also influenced by regulations that may allow or restrict the different ways of and levels at which a public entity can participate in providing telecommunication services. Moreover, the selection among the possible models can be based on costs and/or complexity of management for the public entity. In Fig. 3 the different models are arranged in a cost/complexity coordinate system. The publicly owned and operated model has the highest value of both cost and complexity levels from the viewpoint of the public entity. At the other end of the spectrum, the privately owned and operated model is located, while the other combinations in between offer different cost and complexity levels. According to a recent survey by Muniwireless.com [3], the majority of municipalities in the United States prefer a private entity to be engaged in building and operating their municipal wireless networks (76 and 74 percent, respectively). Among the main reasons they would prefer to work with a private company was that the private sector has better/more technical resources/expertise, and also that in this case the municipalities would not have to commit public money. On the other hand, those who preferred to do the building/operation on their own said that this was the way to have more control over the process. Looking at possible business models more closely, we should note that the term public-private partnership is sometimes confusing; more-

Public/public Non profit

Private/public

Utility

Public/private Private/private High Level of public investment and costs

Figure 3. Comparison of public-private partnership models.

over, it only tells us about the ownership structure and not about the most interesting question: what makes the investment by the public and private sectors viable? After analyzing many existing networks and projects, we have come to the conclusion that two models can be distinguished: • The type 1 model, also called the franchise model. Here the public administration grants the private company the use of pub-

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After the roll-out, it was realized that the AMR application uses only a fraction of the wireless network’s bandwidth, therefore the city has implemented or is planning to implement other applications including the support for public safety, health inspection, animal control, public works and utilities personnel.

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lic facilities. The important point is that the latter does not commit to be a major customer. In terms of a PPP classification, this is a private/private model where the private company pays the public administration for these assets. • The type 2 model, also called the anchor tenant model. Here the public administration or one of the organizations under public control or another business entity commits to become a major customer of the wireless infrastructure. The latter can be implemented and/or operated by either a private company or the public administration itself. Thus, this model corresponds to several PPP models as the emphasis here is on the question of who pays for the network usage. Let us note that there is a third model, which is based on sharing the wireless access and can be called the new grassroots model. This approach is not consistent with the previous models, and it can only be a supplementary solution to them.

MAIN BUSINESS MODELS Type 1: The Franchise Model — The most cited example of this model is the Wireless Philadelphia project [10]. This initiative started with a pilot covering the central districts and was expanded to cover the entire metropolitan area with a total $20 million investment. The project was financed and implemented by Earthlink, a major U.S. ISP, specialized in offering services based on wireless networks. Earthlink has partnered with many U.S. cities. The business model was based on providing Internet access in the city, as the level of broadband penetration was very low (below 25 percent) and was mainly dial-up access. Earthlink was also planning to sell bandwidth to both retail and wholesale customers. The city was planning to subsidize Internet access for lowincome residents. The model essentially failed, and after a long period of uncertainty about the future of Wireless Philadelphia, Earthlink withdrew from it in 2008. This model is characterized by the following objectives and assumptions made by the two main stakeholders. Public administration: Its objective is to provide free or low-cost Internet access to its citizens. It does not want to invest in creation of the network, nor does it want to operate it, and, perhaps most important, the public administration does not want to commit to paying for the usage of the infrastructure to be created by a third party. The maximum it offers is the right of use of public buildings, poles, towers, and ducts, for free or even for some fee. Third party service provider: Its objective is to earn money from providing Internet service to customers, based on the assumption that the existing low penetration of Internet access will grow significantly when the (wireless) infrastructure is in place. It also expects that the local government will also become its customer in spite of the lack of commitment from the latter as mentioned above. The service provider also thinks that advertisements will be a significant revenue source.

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Type 2: The Anchor Tenant Model — Probably the most cited example of this model is the municipal wireless network in Corpus Christi, Texas [11]. This city, which has about 250,000 inhabitants and an area of about 150 mi2, decided to implement an automated meter reading (AMR) system for water and gas customers, and spent $20 million on the AMR system and the wireless network, which yields a saving of $30 million over the estimated $50 million costs within the next 20 years without AMR. In addition to savings, the project resulted in higher levels of customer service and support to citizens. After the rollout, it was realized that the AMR application uses only a fraction of the wireless network’s bandwidth; therefore, the city has implemented or is planning to implement other applications including support for public safety, health inspection, animal control, public works, and utilities personnel. A larger-scale project of this type is T.Net, a municipal network infrastructure project under implementation in Trentino, a province in Northern Italy [12]. Here the anchor tenant is the public administration itself, but also wholesale customers such as alternative telecom companies and ISPs are anticipated. Its management model involves publicly controlled companies for the implementation and management of the broadband infrastructure, supplying transport services, connectivity, and IT services for public administration and renting infrastructure to wholesale customers under fair and non-discriminatory conditions. The type 2 model is based on the existence of at least one key application and its user(s), the so-called anchor tenant, which is ideally the public administration itself. In Corpus Christi, the key application was the AMR service, and the anchor tenant was indeed the city administration itself, as it was responsible for collecting electricity payments from the citizens. In Trentino the key application is providing voice and data traffic services for public institutions in the province, and the anchor tenants are the province and city administrations as well as the public sector institutions. An anchor tenant, which can justify the investment at least to a large degree, can help generate additional applications and bring additional tenants. It is much easier to bring in additional customers when we can tell them that the infrastructure will be in place to serve the requirements of the already existing anchor tenants, and they only have to check if it is suitable for their own purposes. Models Based on Sharing Wireless Access — The approach called the new grassroots model is based on sharing Internet connections among the members of a community. It is also called community WiFi (or municipal WiFi) because of the wireless networking technology used. Probably the most well-known example is FON (www.fon.com). Technically, FON distributes a special router, called La Fonera, to the members of its community, called Foneros, who agree that their Internet access will be shared with other Foneros free of charge and with non-Fonero users for some compensation fee. FON tries to


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cooperate with service providers (e.g., British Telecom). Its community is growing; they can be found in such places as Geneva, Oslo, Munich, Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco. FON-type models are of interest for at least two reasons: failure of type 1 models in many cities in the United States, and lack of public money and/or interest from commercial operators to build wireless municipal infrastructures. We can conclude that while the type 1 and 2 models aim at fully covering a certain geographic area, either to be able to offer Internet access to the whole population of the city (type 1 models) or because the anchor customer’s application requires it, the new grassroots model can be used as a supplementary method and also as an introductory step, a kind of pilot project covering, for example, the tourist area of a city with some specific applications for tourists.

SUMMARY This article has presented an integrated view of applications, technologies, and business models of wireless municipal networks. Our main conclusions are as follows: • Municipal network projects should not be technology driven. • Identifying key applications and anchor customers is critical. • The specific form of public-private cooperation/partnership depends on the willingness and capabilities of local governments to invest and manage the investment and on willingness of market players to become partners. The challenge is to explore the appropriate technology to plan and build the municipal network, and find a business model that satisfies both sides’ interests.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was partially supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) under research proposal ID PD 72984.

REFERENCES [1] “Digital Community Best Practices,” Intel Solutions White Paper, 2005. [2] I. Chlamtac, A. Gumaste, and C. Szabó (Eds.), Broadband Services: Business Models and Technologies for Broadband Community Networks, Wiley, 2005. [3] MuniWireless, “Municipal Wireless Business Models Report,” 2007; http://www.muniwireless.com [4] M. Paolini, “Expanding the Potential of Wireless Broadband Services in the US Using the 3.65 GHz Band,” Sept. 2008; http://www.wimaxforum.org [5] K. Farkas, Cs. Szabó, and Z. Horváth, “Planning of Wireless Community Networks,” in Handbook of Research on Telecommunications Planning and Management for Business, I. Lee, Ed., IGI Global, 2009. [6] “Core Technologies for Developing a Digital Community Framework,” Intel Solutions White Paper, 2005.


[7] A. W. Graham, N. C. Kirkman, and P. M. Paul, Mobile Radio Network Design in the VHF and UHF Bands: A Practical Approach, Wiley, 2006. [8] A. R. Mishra, Fundamentals of Cellular Network Planning and Optimization, Wiley, 2004. [9] Cs. Szabó, I. Chlamtac, and E. Bedó´, “Design Considerations of Broadband Community Networks,” Proc. 37th Annual Hawaii Int’l. Conf. Sys. Sci., HI, Jan. 2004. [10] Wireless Philadelphia Executive Committee, “Wireless Philadelphia Business Plan: Wireless Broadband as the Foundation for a Digital City,” Feb. 2005. [11] Tropos Network, “Corpus Christi Pioneers Metro-Wide WiFi Mesh Network for AMR,” case study, July 2007; http://www.troposnetworks.com [12] S. Longano, “T.Net — Trentino in Rete,” Bridging the Broadband Gap Conf., Brussels, May 2007.

BIOGRAPHIES KAROLY FARKAS [M] ([email protected]) received his Ph.D. degree in computer science in 2007 from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and his M.Sc. degree in computer science in 1998 from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Hungary. Currently he is working as an associate professor at the University of West Hungary, Sopron. His research interests cover the field of communication networks, especially autonomic, self-organized, and wireless mobile ad hoc networks. His core research area deals with service provisioning in mobile ad hoc networks. He has published more than 50 scientific papers in different journals, conferences, and workshops, and he has given several regular and invited talks. In years past he has supervised a number of student theses, participated in several research projects, coordinated the preparation of an EU IST research project proposal, and acted as program committee member, reviewer, and organizer of numerous scientific conferences. He is a fellow of the European Multimedia Academy.

The approach called the new grassroots model is based on sharing Internet connections among the members of the community. It is also called community WiFi (or municipal WiFi) because of the wireless networking technology used.

CSABA A. SZABO [SM] ([email protected]) received his Ph.D. degree from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) and a Doctor of Technical Sciences title from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is a professor in the Department of Telecommunications at BME. He has also been with Create-Net, an international research center, based in Trento, Italy, as a senior advisor since 2004. His 30+ years of experience in academia, R&D, and telecommunication business includes metropolitan area networks, integrated services wireless networks, videoconferencing and media streaming, broadband optical and wireless networks, and community network technologies and applications. He has been a member of editorial boards of several journals including Computer Networks, and is the Editorin-Chief of the Hungarian journal Telecommunications. He has been General Chair and Steering Committee Chair for several international conferences, including Multimedia Services Access Networks (MSAN), the 1st International IEEE/Create-Net Workshop on Telemedicine over Broadband (BroadMed), and the series of IEEE/Create-Net Conferences on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures (Tridentcom). He is a co-editor and co-author of a recent book titled Broadband Services: Business Models and Technologies for Community Networks (Wiley). ZOLTAN HORVATH ([email protected]) received his M.Sc. degree from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. studies and gives computer networks courses. He has participated in many R&D projects related to planning, testing, and building local and metropolitan area networks including WiMAX and community network technologies. He also worked as an advisor for the Hungarian National Communications Authority in applying ETSI regulations, testing devices, EMC measurements, and interference examination cooperating with the Hungarian Meteorological Service.

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