The group, comprised of IBM, Cisco, SeaKay, and Azulstar, announced on
Tuesday that their proposal to wirelessly connect the Silicon Valley was
accepted by the San Mateo County Telecommunications Authority (SAMCAT).
The Metro Connect network will be a combination of Wi-Fi and WiMAX and
span 1,500 square miles. It includes six tiers of service, two of which
are free.
Metro Connect will use mesh wireless technology from Cisco and network
design by IBM. Azulstar, an ISP, will be the network operator for service
provisioning of the 802.11b/g network. SeaKay, a nonprofit, will work
directly with the municipalities to enable the construction and support
of the network.
"There are 42 cities that have joined onto the collaborative effort,
which we find really amazing because you can never get 42 cities to do
anything," said Tyler van Houweligen, chief executive officer for
Azulstar. "It's almost like a public utility network, which is where
we want to go with this. We want it to be conceived of as a public utility
because it is."
So is the telephone service that brings dial-up, which van Houweligen
said cannot become extinct fast enough.
"We hope that this kills dial-up instantly," he said. "Our
goal is that dial-up rests in peace as soon as possible. The free services
will present challenges to existing ISPs. One of the big reasons that
people are concerned with net neutrality is that it's a duopoly and this
essentially breaks the duopoly."
The first tier of free service is limited with download speeds of 256
kilobits per second and upload speeds of 60 kilobits per second. It will
not support VoIP or file sharing and it will require a credit card so
that children won't be able to use it. Children will use the second tier,
called "Kids," which is also free but will only offer secure
filtered content. The free models will be heavily supported by advertising.
The four remaining levels will have anywhere from 400 to 1,000 kilobits
per second and cost between $14.95 and $59.95 per month.
"We started playing with the ad-supported model in other cities and
we're excited about it," van Houweligen said. "IBM and Cisco
have been refining these technologies. One partner for example, Yahoo!,
has a lot of advertising and location technologies that they want to incorporate
with this. The network is location-based so we know the profile and location
of the user, so that can make fairly significant ad-revenue dollars."
The four companies behind Metro Connect hope to build out the wireless
network within the next year. The companies will meet with municipalities
on Monday to negotiate a model agreement. Diana Hage, director of wireless
services for IBM, says that some cities may even be up and running by
early 2007.
One of the more time-consuming tasks of building municipal wireless networks
is obtaining permission to post nodes on government property. But since
the governments of all participating cities have been involved from the
get-go, the group expects minimal bureaucratic delay.
IBM hopes that existing ISP will build products on top of this network,
rather than feel threatened by it.
"Our vision is to provide a complimentary overlay wireless network
that will enable all residents and visitors to the valley region to have
portable access wherever they reside," Hage said. "Our intention
is to open up this network to any telco provider that would like to run
across the network. We're hoping to use this for innovation, or a test
bed to all new services."
