[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless

Fri Mar 30 16:48:07 UTC 2007

Hi Jeff and Lindsey;

I agree with you both.

What happened in Dharamsala in terms of attendance to the economic 
workshops can be attributed to conflicting scheduling.  People wanted 
both the hands on workshops and the economic workshop but both were 
offered at the same time.  Eventually, Laura and the rest of the 
WSFIIers set aside time during the technical workshop for a mini 
economic workshop.  This was not perfect as it watered down the program 
Laura had painstakingly designed.

Personally, i wanted to know both.  However i knew that if i did not get 
a handle on the technology a little i would not be able to understand 
the bits and pieces required to understand the business plan.

I will never be an engineer or tech specialist on a team but felt it 
important at the time to absorb language, concepts, methods and learn 
about the actual technology before embarking on organizing anything or 
developing a business plan.  I think it is absolutely necessary to learn 
about business planning, organizational structures, and sustainability 
particularly in a developing country or rural and remote area context 
where access to equipment and cost recovery are critical as is 
maintenance over the long term.  Also to understand the policy issues 
such as neutrality, spectrum, licensing and so on.

Perhaps a way to address that are to have a workshop, for say someone 
who may work more on the planning, org, marketing, business planning, 
accounting and proposal writing side of the community wireless equation, 
is to have a workshop that goes over the basics of the technology, maybe 
2 full days to demystify what routers, wires, towers, antennas, tools, 
spectrum and licensing are all about.  This should include things like 
what is open source and not and what are the costs associated with that 
and any other type of equipment needs, why those are needed, roles and 
network types.  It should be basic and high level so that people know 
what these things do, their form and reasoning.  It really should be 
from the perspective of understanding why these should even go into a 
business plan in the first place and then also provide that person with 
a way to interface with the engineering folks/side of the equation.  
Then move into the business planning, models etc.

Laura has an excellent program and with field notes and case studies in 
the books, this can provide for a really nice education package.

With the learning i have done in dharamsala, reading the lists, and the 
work with our small fledgling ogwifi group in ottawa, i now feel capable 
of intelligently absorbing and comprehending what should be in a 
business/economic plan.  I am not sure i would have really been ready 
for it at the time in dharamsala.  Unless of course it was presented as 
discussed above.

Cheers
Tracey

jeff buderer wrote:
> Lindsey,
>
> One related issue may be a misconception by some that WSFII is
> anti-business. Several have commented on this to me personally. It may
> be that many of us are anti-corporate status quo but that does not mean
> we are anti-business or anti-corprorate. Most of us here (it seems) do
> want to find a viable way to do what we are doing as it relates to
> wireless and so that means business/social enterprise development. Some
> of us are even open to in the right conditions working with corporations
> to get our work more widely known and to provide funding to sustain our
> work.
>
> It was my uderstanding that a focus point/goal for the Air Jaldi Summit
> was to investigate sustainable business models for wireless networks.
> However it is not clear to me what was actually gained on a practical
> level and what if there was any exploration in terms of how to build
> economically sustainable wireless networks particularly in emerging
> markets. 
>
> Apparently very few people attended Laura Drewett's Workshop "Economics
> of Small Wireless Networks
> http://summit.airjaldi.com/home/program/workshops/economics-for-small-se
> rvice-operators/" (also some great resources here
> http://resources.airjaldi.com/?page_id=23)at AJS.
>  
> Possibly there is a bit too much focusing on the engineering and
> technical solutions and not enough on making the business model work.
> This complements an effective strategy of promotion. Furthermore we need
> a "complete ecosystem approach" that combines the best of breed
> technologies and approaches to develop networks that can be scaled and
> replicated moving the whole network forward in terms of as you say
> "hitting the mark". 
>
> The three main considerations I see are: 
> 1. Economic sustainability - Enable weaning off of grants and towards
> incuation of local ICT related ventures esp in emerging markets
> 2. Social infrastructure -  Social/technological/economic infrastucture
> integrated is necessary to ensure network sustainability.
> 3. Technology innovations - with good integrated with the economic and
> social innovations in the network (1 & 2)
>
> I would like to see the Economic Sustainability of Community Wireless as
> a major theme at the WSFII Africa 2007 Summit. I will begin work to
> incorporate the issue  of economic sustainability and (complementary to
> this marketing) into our planning for the Summit.
>
> Possibly we could use the materials in your email as a starting point
> for planning a session on the effective promotion of community wireless
> networks.
>
> A capstone session could include people getting together in a workgroup
> (along the lines of what I had proposed for AJS
> http://summit.airjaldi.com/wiki/index.php/Integrated.Development.Approac
> h) and looking at the best practices in wireless network with an eye for
> integration. We can then consider as part of the workshop not just a
> peicemeal approach but consider how we can effectively integrate all the
> pieces to great compelling projects that speak for themselves. This
> would include consideration of how to build business models to maximize
> the replication of these wsfii projects. 
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
>
> This post, combined with the previous one about creating video footage
> about wsfii type projects, are of great interest to me personally as
> they have cropped up in UK conversations for several years, and
> particularly recently. 
>
> It has always seemed to be one area where community wi-fi/broadband
> networks haven't always hit the mark - whether with governments,
> funders, local authorities, establishing credibility with consumers etc.
> Mainly, it has seemed, cos we are so busy trying to get the solutions to
> work, that there is little time for self-promotion. 
>
> In each community, and globally, we have a mix of skills. Techies,
> support, coders, promoters, grant seekers etc. 
>
> I would like to propose, in light of the posts about case studies and
> video footage, that we get together those who are very interested in the
> marketing and promotion side of community broadband networks, and talk
> amongst ourselves. Just from last week's talks with Freifunk and
> Funkfeuer for some EU research for the rural broadband conference in
> Brussels in May, we have found that we have contacts between us covering
> most of the EU, and then some in US, Asia and Australia. Errr... in
> fact, global contacts!! After all, this community broadband world is not
> very big, yet. ;o) 
>
> If everyone could decide which event to go to this summer in EU (!),
> perhaps we could have one track for those of us interested in promoting
> community broadband activity, and tie it in with the amazing work coming
> from the other side of the Atlantic through Sasha, Alison etc, and in
> Asia, and start making a much bigger impact by working together. 
>
> Or just start it all online through a separate list about promotional
> activity to get the word out about the grassroots' efforts ongoing
> across the world?
>
> I'm happy to be amongst the UK/EU contacts more than happy to get
> involved in that type of work, and push to get together TV/video
> footage, and publicise the case studies etc created by us all wherever
> we are. 
>
> Let's JFDI?! 
>
> ATB
> Lindsey Annison
> l.annisonatgmail.com
> Co-founder, Access to Broadband Campaign 
> http://www.ABCampaign.org
> Founder member, Community Broadband Network
> http://www.broadband-uk.coop 
> Author: JFDI Community Broadband: Wennington
> http://www.lulu.com/content/488550 
>
>
>
>
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