An excellent post from Anthony Townsend over at Institute for the Future (IFTF), via Esme Vos. Titled, “Ad-Supported Municipal Wireless Networks and the Future of Cities: Three Issues Missing From the Current Debate”. In it, Anthony underlines how the discussion surrounding municipal wireless networks does not address 3 important issues:

• Guaranteeing citizens’ role as content providers
• Finding a balance for location privacy
• Enabling the Internet of Things

Notably, he suggests

“in order to guarantee that municipal wireless networks willl enhance citizen’s roles as content providers, cities should:

• Require that wireless franchisees provide significant community access to wireless captive portal pages and splash pages. Ownership, control and access to this resource can be organized in any number of ways – having local students document and chronicle local events and other open content authoring models. “

This “community content” is something that has been of particular interest to volunteers here. Location-specific art, storytelling, and music is something a lot of people are keen on here, and as our network grows, I’m excited to see how and who takes this up!

Meanwhile, developers at Ile Sans Fils are busy leading the push to hone this functionality in Wifidog, and I’m looking forward to seeing what evolves.

I’m really happy to hear/read these thoughts from Anthony. The article is thoughtful and will hopefully provoke some wider discussion around some of the cultural and civic implications of Muni-Wireless (and community wireless).

As he emphasizes,

“[there are] long-term consequences of design and implementation decisions. While the working life of today’s Wi-Fi technologies may only be five to ten years, the infrastructure and governance models put in place today are likely to shape a whole generation’s worth of urban wireless networks. If cities fail to think ahead, they may find it more challenging to leverage wireless infrastructure for digital inclusion, economic development and public safety in the future.”