Founded in 2002 by Jasbir Singh, Pronto Networks helps cities bring broadband wireless access to their residents by enabling network operators to deploy and manage large, public hotspot networks. Sun recently spoke with Singh about municipal wireless projects and the role of Sun technology in those projects.
Q: Why are municipalities providing wireless access? Why not leave it to private providers?
Singh: There are plenty of for-profit companies that do a great job of serving their markets. But close to 2000 cities in the United States also operate their own utilities, and if the city can run water or power more cost-effectively, it makes sense they can provide wireless access as well. Many cities take this step because they have no other choice — they only have dial-up, or some very expensive form of broadband.
Some of the earliest adopters were cities that had no prior connectivity. For example, Chaska, Minnesota, is a city with about 15,000 homes, and no private providers were offering service in the area. Now that the city offers service, broadband penetration in Chaska is close to 40 percent. Typically 15 percent market share is considered successful — anything more than that is wonderful, and 40 percent is almost unheard of.
Other cities, like Corpus Christi, Texas, start these projects because they want to automate certain tasks using wireless technology. Corpus Christi already ran its own utilities, and city officials wanted to automate information collection from water meters, energy meters, and parking meters. They realized that a wireless mesh could both meet this need and enable wireless access for residents.
Q: What are some of the challenges cities face during wireless projects?
Singh: I think the biggest challenge is the false expectation that one type of network or technology will address all of a city's problems. They need to strategize beforehand about the technologies they'll use to provide the service. For example, in most cases Wi-Fi mesh — networks in which several wireless nodes are connected to each other to help prevent service interruptions — doesn't succeed on its own. The mesh devices are usually outdoors, on lampposts and buildings, and sometimes they don't penetrate cleanly inside buildings. So they should plan for some kind of radio bridge to make the connection between indoor laptops and the Wi-Fi system.
Also, questions of how to provide different service levels appropriate to different populations are typically an afterthought. They shouldn't be.
Q: How can cities address these challenges?
Singh: They should consider a variety of creative business models. Typically, people think that once you turn on the wireless network, residents either pay for it or use it as a free service. But reality isn't so black and white. Most cities have some sort of digital divide, so in poorer neighborhoods they might want to offer free or discounted access. For universities or students, they might want to offer free access or "skinny pipe" limited service for some period of time. And then, of course, some residents or small businesses might pay for better quality of service.
Through the Pronto platform, cities can get a "drinking fountain" sort of setup, meaning that everyone gets a drink at a certain level. Some users could then pay to scale up their bandwidth for things like videoconferencing, and students, say, could sign on free for two hours a day. Cities can even augment their income with advertising-supported access, where they offer in-line advertisements on the Web pages users visit — if you fire up a browser and go to a golf site, you might see ads for golf products. The city makes some revenue from that, and that income can help subsidize free and discounted access elsewhere.
Q: How does the role of government differ from the role of business in municipal wireless projects?
Singh: The government's role is primarily regulatory. City governments are responsible for authorizing right-of-way for the lampposts or on top of buildings, where the network elements will be deployed. They can also guarantee a minimum number of subscribers. If a city has 2000 employees, for example, they could guarantee that minimum number of subscribers to the carrier. It makes the business model easy for that network operator. And, of course, the city can encourage local residents to subscribe, too.
Q: How does municipal wireless access affect communities?
Singh: Obviously, these networks are incredibly helpful in areas that previously had no connectivity at all. They can also shift the way people think about connectivity. For example, we have a network running in Tempe, Arizona. Tempe is a big university town — Arizona State University has more than 60,000 students. Before the city deployed its wireless network, students were limited to using Ethernet connections in their rooms or libraries. But the network lets them work from anywhere on campus, not just in buildings with connectivity. And they've become the network's primary users.
We've also found that once students get used to using wireless networks, they pass that mindset along to other residents in the community. It's a catalyst effect.
We see less of an impact on businesses, as most already have connectivity if it's available. But wireless access is a great thing for merchants at events like county fairs and weekly farmer's markets — open-air events without a permanent location. These vendors typically had no way of collecting credit card payments, but with Wi-Fi, they can use Wi-Fi-enabled credit card machines.
Q: What is Pronto's role in building broadband wireless networks?
Singh: Pronto is involved in every part of building a wireless network except the radio — from designing the right kind of network, to providing complete back-office support, to making sure the services are up and running. We originally started with Wi-Fi as the primary hotspot technology, but as we've grown through venture backing, we've moved into working with large service providers and carriers on deploying both Wi-Fi and WiMAX. Today, Pronto provides what we call service and subscriber management solutions. Municipal networks fall into that category, but we can actually build out broadband networks for enterprises as well.
"We're still in the Wild West of the municipal wireless movement. Not every city knows what they want to achieve."
Sun helps with these services in three ways. First and foremost, Sun is a retail partner, and our products are rebranded under the Sun name. Second, our software runs on Sun hardware. And third, Sun Labs performs our scalability analysis, so we can say with confidence that our systems can scale from a few subscribers to tens of millions.
The municipal market is our focus, but we're very excited about another market segment as well. With help from Sun, we've had success in providing wireless networks for large enterprises — especially companies with many locations and large campuses around the world. We set up the networks at no up-front cost. Usage fees are based on number of employees, so they can get wireless access for everyone without the capital costs of building out their network. We have carriers we work with, and we also select the right hardware for the enterprise and bring in a systems integrator to do the installation.
Q: Will all cities have municipal wireless networks in the future?
Singh: That's a tough one. I think, in a sense, we're still in the Wild West of the municipal wireless movement. Not every city knows what they want to achieve. It has also become very political — a "me too" environment. No one wants to be left behind. I see it becoming a more mature market over time, in the sense that systems integrators will build and operate the networks, and they will operate like any other business.
About Jasbir Singh
As president and CEO of Pronto Networks, Singh has more than 18 years of high tech and telecommunications expertise. He started his career as an engineering manager at C-DoT, in charge of SS7 and ISDN groups where he helped design and develop SS7 subsystems in India's first digital switching system, which now serves close to 40 percent of all capacity in that country today.
Singh was co-founder and chief technical officer of Yack Inc., and is the chairman of Launchpad Software Inc. and Cybermine Internet Incubator.
Founded in 2002 by Jasbir Singh, Pronto Networks helps cities bring broadband wireless access to their residents by enabling network operators to deploy and manage large, public hotspot networks. Sun recently spoke with Singh about municipal wireless projects and the role of Sun technology in those projects.