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Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade -- Meinrath and Others Talk with the NYTimes
SSRC grant recipient Sascha Meinrath (Director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation) is featured in an article by the NYTimes on struggling municiple wi-fi networks in major cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Miami, and San Franscisco. How can cities adopt viable plans that live up to the hype?
Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out
By Ian Urbina
Published: March 22, 2008
The New York Times
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"The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects," said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Mr. Meinrath said that advocates wanted to see American cities catch up with places like Athens, Leipzig and Vienna, where free or inexpensive Wi-Fi already exists in many areas.
He said that true municipal networks, the ones that are owned and operated by municipalities, were far more sustainable because they could take into account benefits that help cities beyond private profit, including property-value increases, education benefits and quality-of-life improvements that come with offering residents free wireless access.
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Click here for the full article
Municiple broadband policy is one of several key research needs addressed by the Collaborative Grants project of the Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere Program of the SSRC. Municipally-owned broadband services have been central to visions of Internet access as a utility, rather than a luxury. If municipalities are to play a role in broadband provision, more needs to be learned from the wide range of experiments in this area. Sustainable business models and best practices need to be developed and reproduced.
- Sascha Meinrath, Laura Forlano (Columbia University), and New America Foundation have received a $30,000 Collaborative Grant from the SSRC for their proposal to analyze Global Best Practices for Community Wireless Networks. Via in-depth examination of successful international and domestic community wireless networks, the team is able to highlight innovative projects that can revitalize U.S. efforts.
- New America Foundation also received a 'Research Bounty' award for their proposal to critically evaluate the current debates on net neutrality: New Network Neutrality: Toward a Stronger Account of Internet Freedom.