[LINK] Free wireless network plan scrapped

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Free city broadband quietly shelved

Asher Moses May 10, 2008
<http://www.theage.com.au/news/wireless--broadband/free-city-broadband-
quietly-shelved/2008/05/09/1210444215811.html>

The NSW State Government would have known a year ago that its promised 
free wireless broadband network for the Sydney business district and 
surrounding centres was unviable, analysts said, but chose to announce its 
decision to scrap the project on the day six people were killed in the 
Sydney Harbour boat tragedy.

The Minister for Commerce, Eric Roozendaal, quietly announced last 
Thursday that the Government had evaluated proposals from 15 providers 
keen to build the network but concluded it was not practical based on 
technical and financial grounds. The emailed press release was sent to 
technology writers but political reporters did not receive it.

This came almost a year after Mr Roozendaal said the Government was in 
the "final approval stage" of selecting a supplier to build the network, 
which would provide free internet access to anyone within range.

A spokeswoman for Mr Roozendaal said the decision to scrap the network was 
announced on the day of the boat crash because that was when the decision 
was made and "because of the commercial nature of the decision" the 
announcement had to be made immediately.

Analysts agreed that asking the private sector to build a free wireless 
network funded largely by advertising was fraught with difficulty, but 
said this should have been apparent to the Government a year ago.

One telecommunications company that expressed interest in building the 
network, Unwired, rejected Mr Roozendaal's core justification that it 
would expose taxpayers to tens of millions of dollars in losses, saying 
its proposal would require next to no extra Government funding. Unwired's 
chief executive, David Spence, said all the company required from the 
Government was access to building infrastructure such as rooftops. Unwired 
has more than 100 free wireless hot spots dotted across Sydney - running 
under the uConnect brand - and would use some of this existing 
infrastructure. The network would be funded by advertising.

Overseas, free municipal wireless projects - promised for US cities such 
as San Francisco and Philadelphia - have failed largely due to the 
complexity involved in spreading coverage across a broad area, 
difficulties in maintaining signal strength inside buildings and the 
presence of competing paid-for wireless broadband service provided by 
telecommunications companies, Gartner's mobile and wireless research 
director, Robin Simpson, said.

But other similar projects in Paris and Hong Kong have been relatively 
successful, as advances in technology have made setting up municipal 
wireless networks more affordable.

Mark Novosel, telecommunications market analyst at IDC, said the 
project "sounded like probably an election promise to get them over the 
line more than anything else" and the Government would have known if the 
project was financially viable even when it first announced the project at 
the end of 2006.


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