Downtown Wifi Update

Yesterday the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership Board of Directors voted to survey downtown business owners about their current provision/costs/use of wireless internet connectivity, their perception on customer demand for the service, the benefits, and the challenges of offering it as a town-supplied service.

I have four concerns with this approach:

1. Business owners are not the only stakeholders in downtown. Such a survey would omit the interests and perspectives of students, residents, and visitors. If we believe the decision to take action on a municipal network (in either direction) should be an inclusive process, then we need to survey everyone simultaneously, ensuring that the surveys are aligned with one another for planning purposes.
   
   
2. What happens if the business owners express their lack of support for the project? Does it get put on hold or is the town's technology committee then forced to move forward in opposition to the business owners?
   
   
3. We've talked this issue to death without providing compelling reasons for moving forward. Here’s my compelling reasons: a) Wireless should be undertaken to ensure regular & reliable access to broadband service, a basic need for participation in the political and economic sectors of our community. b) Wireless has been demonstrated to significantly improve the responsiveness of emergency services such as police and fire. With all the complaints about crime in downtown, how can we possibly consider a municipal network as a business amenity only? I do not support the creation of a municipal network just because it might bring more shoppers into downtown Chapel Hill.
   
   
4. Reliability on surveys requires some degree of common understanding respondents. Demographic questions provide a way of determining how understanding might vary among different categories of respondents. To be fair, the researcher proposing the survey will be adding demographic questions to the draft survey, but I don't believe we know enough about the downtown business owners understanding of wireless to determine what demographic factors may influence their responses. Does business size matter (number of employees, net income, etc.)? Current use of technology (backend system, basis for operation, nice-to-have)? etc. The only thing I know about this group is that, according to the news media, several of them share an assumption that they would be expected to pay for this nework, including deployment into adjacent low-income neighborhoods. That's a pre-conception that could significantly bias this survey. While I support the concept of internet access becoming a public utility (a necessity), there are many payment options that need to be publicly explored. Until we have some ideas for how the network should be designed (address based, mobile, combination), there can be no real understanding of upfront or maintenance cost except in comparison to current charges through Time Warner or one of the other telecomms.

Until we have a real plan for how to move forward, including information on different levels of service and payment options, ie product proposals, I do not believe a survey is the best first step. We need a needs assessment that begins with open-ended data collection methodologies, such as interviews, focus groups, etc. to determine the interests (need) and concerns of each stakeholder group. With that broad data in hand, then we could construct survey(s) that will provide us with more reliable information on how to structure services/products options. That is the data business owners, elected officials, and other stakeholders will need to make an informed decision on whether or not a municipal network is worth undertaking.