This article a little too negative and that it might have dwelled more on approaches with potential to make “mnui Wi-Fi” more successful. Certainly, the hype pendulum naively swung too far over the ad-supported, provider subsidized model, and needs to swing closer to reality. Most people experienced in community broadband efforts never really expected this business model to work. However, there are many models that do work, and many community broadband efforts are successful. Because community broadband networks are important to expanding connectivity both in inner-cities and under-served rural areas, helping to maintain US global competitiveness, I hope that NW will revisit the topic with a more positive outlook. In that hope, I'd like to make a few points, that you might consider including.

Think about substitutes the term "community" for municipal. This is a subtle, but important distinction when working on broadband projects. We have found that each community is quite different, with unique social, demographic, and political forces that drive overall requirements, and ultimately the selection of cost-effective technologies and the most appropriate business model. Successful projects usually require broad community support beyond local government support and leadership from a few key champions.

Understanding the community and assessing its overall requirements, in the broadest sense, is the most important first step. It establishes a foundation of cooperation and support from across the entire community. The data collection process itself can be used to educate people, local institutions, and businesses about what is realistically possible and to build consensus around what network services the community actually needs, as well as identifying local providers that can participate. Ideally, the entire community becomes stakeholders, vested in the idea, supporting the community broadband project as if it were the "home town team", and making a broad public-private partnership possible. This is usually the key to marketing a successful community broadband network.

Successful networks and network business models are also based upon applications and services that solve real problems and deliver real applications for people and organizations in the community. Sometimes these networks are appropriately focused tightly on specific applications, such as public safety or municipal services. For broader, community-wide projects, the assessment described above usually identifies many applications, and the potential to enable cross-sector collaboration that builds the application infrastructure that is so often needed for the community broadband network to deliver its full potential. This potential is fulfilled when community traffic is maximized and aggregated on the community network to insure significant revenue and cash flow. Local service providers are usually quite interested in such situations, enabling the "public" part of the partnership to focus its efforts and investments in incrementally expanding network infrastructure and services to specific portions of the community with special needs. Public support can come in the form of anchor tenancy for services used, low-cost capital, or subsidies to promote digital inclusion.

There are lots of community broadband business models that are working, and will work in the future when they fit the communities need. I don't it's about "moving away" from the models that have been already tried, but expanding upon them, mixing and matching the best attributes from several to get the right one.

I'll close with just one more point. Sometimes, people get hung up on a particular technology - Wi-Fi - for instance. If the requirements assessment is done properly, most communities will probably require a mix of technologies to satisfy their needs. So, in addition to talking about "muni-wireless", let's also start talking about "community broadband".

Bob Panoff