[Wolves] support this

[Peter Evans]

On Tuesday 14 November 2006 12:12, Richard Smedley wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 November 2006 10:33, Kevanf1 wrote:
> > > > http://gadgetshow.five.tv/campaign/wifi/
> > >
> > > Who is going to pay for free wifi?

That's already a given, because in part we, the UK tax payers, already are 
funding it.

But I need to be careful how and what I say here and these opinions are mine 
and mine alone.

A number of these 'initiatives' are being looked at throughout the UK.  From 
my current knowledge many are being driven by Local Government albeit usually 
with a commercial partner. For example:

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/11/15/219914/Birmingham+to+deploy+city-centre+Wi-Fi.htm

Has anyone stopped to think why these initiatives are going ahead?  My 
thoughts are as follows:

For both partners there has to be a revenue opportunity.  Commercial 
organisations aren't in the habit of giving something for nothing.  So we can 
assume that they are making money somewhere along the line.

Local Authorities do have 'revenue neutral' schemes, but they are constantly 
on the look out for revenue generating opportunities (and to show just a 
little sympathy I now understand why this is so).  I am going to assume that 
this is one of the revenue generating schemes, since they will be paying the 
Commercial organisation for the bulk of the bandwidth being provided.

For initial funding the council will look to the various NGO funding 
opportunities, and possibly get something from Central Government.  In both 
cases those funds come in part from the tax paying populace.

So what do we get?  Well we get a mobility enabled local authority workforce - 
however they decide to leverage that ability.  As an add-on we get "free 
access to local authority online services".  In the case of Norwich we get a 
free 256K wireless network, which is better than nothing, but not exactly 
great.

I wonder what the "business case" for these networks consisted of?  It would 
be interesting to see.  The cynics amongst us (if you haven't already 
guessed - that would be me for one) could speculate that a) they had to give 
us something or we'd have bleated big style about the capital expended on 
such a project. b) we can be sure, that someone, somewhere has a revenue 
model in mind - even if its coming later and perhaps finally c) if everyone 
has access to free WiFi then there's less and less need for future channels 
of contact into the authority, so there's some cost savings to be had in 
there too.

And finally - on the ultra-paranoid out there conspiracy limb - anyone know if 
ALL the traffic gets routed through Local Authority/Government controlled 
links?
-- 
Regards,

Pete Evans