Townsend, A. (2006)
Ad-Supported Municipal Wireless Networks and the Future of Cities: Three Issues Missing From the Current Debate.
IFTF Future Now.
http://future.iftf.org/2006/04/adsupported_mun.html
Wireless infrastructure and governance models put in place today are likely to shape a whole generation’s worth of urban wireless networks. Therefore, this blog-post argues, it is important for cities to think ahead when building such infrastructure. According to the author there are three key areas that deserve particular attention (comments are specific to ad-supported business models):
(1) To guarantee citizens’ role 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. -Cities should demand access to any future advertising channel deployed on ad-supported municipal networks for public service announcement-type content.
(2) To find a balance for location privacy cities should: - Favor proposals that put the power of location determination and sharing of location data in the user’s hands - Emphasize the need for special precautions to protect location data for vulnerable populations such as teenagers - Provide a mechanism for receiving and investigating claims of abuse and excessive invasions of privacy
(3) To enable the Internet of Things cities should: -Require franchisees to devote some minimal network resources to networked objects for experimental purposes. The bandwidth requirements would not be excessive, but constant connectivity without complex connection obstacles are needed to encourage bottom-up innovation. -Separate the issue of VoIP handsets from the Internet of things. In the short-term, Voice over IP handsets will be the main form of browser-less device accessing municipal networks. However, VoIP telephony needs to be treated separately from access for networked objects, which are an experimental use not a commercial one.
