Transcript of Freeing the Internet: Outdoors and Online with NYCwireless

Dana: I would say by far the most expensive thing is not computers but internet access. you can get a brand new computer today for $300, and it's good for 3 years. Over that same period of time high speed internet access costs about $50/month for 36 months, about $1200 dollars. And if you look at it, the cost differential is enormous. A computer costs $300 but getting online and being able to do something useful with it costs anywhere between 4 and 10 times that. And that's the thing that's not affordable. And so any type of wireless access or municipal network, wireless or fiber or whatever. If you can bring the price of access down, then it's by far successful.

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Narrator: Hi, I'm Douglas and welcome to the Idealist.org Community Podcast. In each episode we explore ways people are making a positive impact on their communities to inspire you to do the same. In this episode we talk with two people, Dana Speigel and Laura Forlano, from the organization NYC Wireless to find out how their organization is working to make the internet available to everyone and how they are trying to reconnect new yorkers with their public spaces.

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Narrator: Dana moved to New York City a few years ago when he first got involved with the NYC wireless group. I asked him how this group started...

Dana: Basically, with the idea that this wireless gear that those of us working in very early technology, was a very useful thing for using in your apartment and that if you hung it out your window other people would be able to get access to the network, meaning your neighbors and people on the street. Based on this idea a couple of the guys that started NYC wireless, Anthony Townsend, Terry Schmit, Dustin Goodwin, who are also involved today, started gathering people together, talking about using this technology for getting access to each other and sharing out networks. One of the earliest projects that they undertook was to light up Tompkins sq park in the east village. And that was done through the installation of wi-fi gear in a cafe by the park and setting up antennas that would be the signal into the park itself.

Narrator: NYCwireless is an all volunteer organization that now advocates and enables the growth of free, public internet access throughout New York City. For a number of people, this may seem like an odd mission for an organization. Internet access doesn't seem like something essential. I spoke with Laura Forlano, who is completing her PhD in communications at Columbia University, about why she and the other members, as volunteers, would spend so much time on this?

Laura: As people's hobbies and all kind of activities are increasingly done online, we believe this is one added way for people to be able to access internet from a public space, and therby spend more time outside. So it's a nice benefit it's similar to the way we put public water fountains or trash cans or benches in public spaces to make that area more amenable and conducive to a lively public environment.

Dana: Living in new york, what you experience more than you do in other cities is the amount of shared space and shared experiences within the city. Parks have always been a tremendously important part of city life in NYC. They date back to the earliest parks of the founding of New York City and our work early on and still today is really based around the fact that parks are the ultimate place where people get together and so are the perfect place for providing internet access to support activities there.

Narrator: So far they've helped setup dozens of wireless networks across New York City from Bryant Park to City Hall Park. Statistics vary depending on the season and location of the parks, but Bryant Park reports about 60 to 65 thousand unique users in a year and NYC wireless estimates that thousands of people are logging in a day. But is this successfully building community?

Dana: We hear mostly anecdotal from people that use it. We get notes all the time and people post to our website about how they love using wifi and how they see it as a really important component of being out and about in New York City.

Laura: So certainly you have a lot of people using the network that's one sign of success but another is whether or not the network brings people together in a relatively small geographic area and whether there is other interactions or things that come out of that type of usage. So for example I've interviewed people who used wi-fi networks at cafes and many of them have met friends in those locales and collaborated on projects with people they met in those locations.

Narrator: Free wireless has the potential to be a great way to build community and pull people back into the parks but, but it's also part of a bigger movement to connect people to the conversations and community developing online.

Laura: I interestingly also interviewed a gentleman who was a homeless blogger. He had become homeless after being let go from his job, he was someone who had had his own company, house, car and really lost his job and sort of decided to not work in a full time capacity. That was not common scenario but interesting that he was also able to appropriate the Starbucks where he was spending all his time and reason he was able to do that was he was using a free wireless from across the street that was coming from another office building but he would sit in Starbucks and use it so he had found the exact spot for access.

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Narrator: After their early successes of establishing networks in the parks, a new opportunity was presented to them.

Dana: We were contacted some time ago by a New York City housing developer that builds affordable housing residents in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Manhattan and they work, as all of these affordable housing developers do, in conjunction with the New York City housing authority. Basically they came to us and said, look we're building this building and want to provide free wi-fi to the residents.

Narrator: NYC wireless works with the developers, like Dunn Development Corp. most recently, to help pre-wire the building for Ethernet. Once the building are completed, the group helps set up the equipment and connection. So far they've been able to connect a number of affordable housing complexes with free internet run by volunteers. But this made us wonder, how useful is this for residents if they can't afford a computer?

Dana: We find computers have come down in price tremendously. You can buy a laptop for a few hundred bucks and there are organizations that are have done work with, one called Per Scholas, that provides refurbished computers free or cheaply to underprivileged folks. Oftentimes these residences also provide a bank of computers that are common usage so that any resident in the building can use it if they don't have one for themselves. But what we've found regardless of how folks get computers it is without a doubt one of the most beneficial things they can have as they're trying to get themselves back on their feet. A resident in the East Village unit that told me countless times that the internet we provide was a lifeline for them that enabled him to be able to stay in touch. He oculd go online and learn to do things, he started blogging, he started doing some amateur videography. What people do with this utility is absolutely amazing.

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Narrator: There is a great potential power in having an internet connection, from small things such as contacting your friends to big things like accessing news and information from around the world. And obviously, we at Idealist.org have some self-interest in having everyone online. It seems like a public service that most people would support, but opening up wi-fi isn't always that easy.

Laura: I don't think anyone would complain if a business, bar, or restaurant chose to offer their wifi access to the public. I think everyone would agree if there's an organization that want to support that's probably a good idea. I guess some of the less positive images are those of the municipal wifi projects which we've seen around the country here in the US. Over 380 cities have initiated or begun planning a wireless networks for their cities and in these cases the telecommunications and cable companies have argued that it's unfair competition with the private sector and that public funding and city funding should not be used to compete with the telecom or cable industries and so that model in 2008 really started falling apart.

Narrator: Sure, it makes sense that Internet Service Providers would be wary of organizations setting up free access. It works against their basic business model, right?

Dana: That's just not true. What actually turns out to be the case is that these organizations, these community wireless organizations, they don't compete with the incumbent ISP. They actually bring more customers to the incumbent. Story goes that there is some number today, hovering around 50% of people across the country have internet access. Of that 50%, some number goes to cable company, some goes to the telephone company. What community wireless groups do overall is not take out a chunk of the 50% (though some will leave) but draw the other 50% in. They bring the other 50% otherwise untouched by the incumbent companies and expand the total pie of people that use high speed internet access.

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Narrator: Since they've been able launched wireless networks in the parks and have started building wireless networks in affordable housing complexes, I asked Dana what he thought was his group's biggest success.

Dana: For me the most impressive is not just the impact we've had on ppl in country but the impact we've had on people around the world. Had lunch with some folks from Estonia few months ago. Estonia, if you don't know about it, is one of the most wired countries in Europe. They have nation-wide, granted their country is not that big, they have nation-wide wifi available. The guy who runs said, "You know it all started because I saw NYC wireless and wondered if I could do that here" and he did! He has done more even the stuff that we've done but he still puts our logo on his website and I'm incredibly proud not just of the work that we've done here but the influence we've had and inspiration we've created for people around the world to actually change their countries and have a positive effect on their communities. To me that is by far the most rewarding aspect of the work we do.

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Narrator: Increasing the pie, as it were, is important in New York City and to those of us who live here. There are quite a few of us who live in really poorly connected neighborhoods and parks with no access. So how exactly would I, and for that matter you, get a network going?

Dana: First step is to seek out other people that are like-minded, hold a meet-up or a meeting, gather other technology people that live in your neighborhood. Start to talk to them about what would it be like if we had some wifi access wherever we wanted to have access. What if we could have internet in the park, in the city courtroom or int he library or any number of different places. Then reach out to organizations like NYCwireless--there are a lot of us that work in this space. There's a lot of diff solutions and scenarios. NYC wireless knows a lot about dense urban environments. A group called CUWiN in Champagne-Urbana in Illinois knows a lot about small town rural deployment and what it means to provide wifi to a group of people there. Starts with a person and an idea and what we've found is that when you start talking with people, it tends to get the ball rolling and find out lot of people are interested in this and don't really know where to start. If you start the dialogue a lot of people will follow you.

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Narrator: If you are interested in getting involved with NYC Wireless, check them out at nycwireless.net. Not in New York? You can search our site, idealist.org, for more groups working on open wireless.

Do you agree with NYC Wireless's approach? Join the conversation by going to our podcast blog at idealist.libsyn.com.

Also, If you enjoyed our podcast, please leave a review or comment on our iTunes Store page.

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