By Teresa A. Martin
Last fall we announced plans to develop a pilot project in Orleans, to create a public zone of free wireless broadband access. Well, the lights are about to turned on.
In case you’ve not been following the story, let me recap. During each era in history, an infrastructure innovation has always come along to drive growth. The packet ship, the railway, the highway ... the transportation of goods and information has and continues to be essential to business and economic development. As you might guess, our era is no different.
The “information superhighway” (remember when that term was fresh and new!) turns out to be a pretty good way to define the online world. The Internet is driving business in ways that no one expected and making good use of it is essential to basic business function in the 21st century.
To compete, communities need to have easy connection to this digital highway. Unwired Village (tm), which is The funded by a grant from the John Adams Innovation Institute at the MTC, is just such a connection and access point. Unwired Village provides free broadband wireless access to the Internet from public areas in town. It is a bit like streetlights – providing illumination to common areas for the benefit of all.
Unwired Village is beginning with a pilot project in Orleans, one of the three commercial hubs of the Cape. But that is just the pilot. The idea is to deploy multiple Unwired Villages in partnership with other entities across the entire region.
The goals of Unwired Village are four-fold:
- Deploy wireless technology providing access within the core business area or district of the town;
- Develop a self sustaining business model that may be easily replicated in other locations;
- Establish best practices for the installation, management, and promotion of a public broadband wireless network;
- Monitor and analyze the use and usability of a community broadband access network.
The project formally began in September 2005, although research and planning began the previous spring. The Orleans Chamber has been a key partner and dozens upon dozens of organizations and individuals have helped shape the vision. And many other chambers and business districts have added their respective inputs and are in the queue, waiting to make the jump once all the bugs have been worked out in Orleans. Just think – by summer 2007, we may have a fully Unwired Cape!
The basic scenario for Unwired Village is simple: a user opens his or her laptop or other portable device and is connected wirelessly to a broadband network where he or she can send and receive information. The concept is sometimes called ‘unbounded mobility ” – that is, you can access the information you need from wherever you happen to be.
Making this happens requires a network of routers and servers connected to wired broadband data networks. And it also requires a high level of community and business collaboration. For the past six months, the team has been working on those two areas.
For example, we tried to develop a better understanding of the market dynamics: Why were businesses interested in community network? Who would use it? How would/could different constituencies interact? What role did local government want to play? We quickly learned that the business community here on the cape supports efforts to create a better business climate – and that a wireless network is one of these elements. This was incredibly exciting!
We also developed several different business models and concept tested them: would business support a monthly subscription? What about advertising? Sponsorship? Did they see this as a telecom service or as an information product? How might the network be valued by local business? How could we develop a plan for long term sustainability?
In tandem with this, we explored a variety of different technology options: we confirmed our initial thesis that Open Source – that is, products developed and maintained by a noncommercial global community – could indeed be applied in a stable, supportable, and cost effective way. We explored different server options, different advertising delivery options, and different models of leased or owned hardware.
And that brings us to today – the count down is underway to the official launch of the first Unwired Village. The communication street lights are being fired up. If you’re looking for technology excitement, there’s no need to cross the bridge because we’ve got it here ... cutting edge applications, in an engaged community. It doesn’t get any better than that!
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