Collaborative municipal Wi-Fi networks - challenges and opportunities

Municipal Wi-Fi networks aim at providing Internet access and selected mobile network services to citizens, travelers, and civil servants. The goals of these networks are to bridge the digital divide, stimulate innovation, support economic growth, and increase city operations efficiency. While establishing such urban networks is financially challenging for municipalities, Wi-Fi-sharing communities accomplish good coverage and ubiquitous Internet access by capitalizing on the dense deployment of private access points in urban residential areas. By combining Wi-Fi communities and municipal Wi-Fi, a collaborative municipal Wi-Fi system promises cheap and ubiquitous access to mobile city services. However, the differences in intent, philosophy, and technical realization between community and municipal Wi-Fi networks prevent a straight-forward combination of both approaches. In this paper, we highlight the conceptual and technical challenges that need to be solved to create collaborative municipal Wi-Fi networks.