Unwire Oregon: Forging a New Economic Development Consensus

By Robert Bole, One Economy

Over the past three years, the world has been “unwiring” to bring high-speed Internet access to everything from poor, remote villages of India to the frenetic urban streets of Taipei. New technologies are increasingly converging broadband delivery into a seemingly endless variety of devices that enable consumers, businesses and even communities of users to evolve new forms of collaboration, business models and a new set of 21st-century skills.

Oregon emerging as a leader in wireless access

Oregonians already have among the widest access to free or affordable wireless Internet access. Portland recently launched its municipal wireless network. Rest areas on the interstate offer free Wi-Fi. It seems like every hotel now offers broadband access and increasingly it is a wireless connection and free. The trend toward choosing wireless is not likely to change. Since at least 2005, there have been more cell phone lines in Oregon than land lines. Although still small, there are increasing numbers of households choosing wireless with no wired telephone. When offered a reliable service with sufficient bandwidth, consumers are choosing mobility.

Beneath the headlines, Oregon is also emerging as a leader in developing the next generation of wireless access. Companies such as Intel, Sprint and Clearwire are leading the deployment of WiMAX that covers tens of miles instead of hundreds of feet and with much higher access speeds. In addition, the WiMAX Forum, the global body that promotes the interoperability of WiMAX products, is located right here in Beaverton.

The next generation is already getting started. Companies such as FreeRange Wireless are building data applications that take advantage of unwiring by delivering new services, including location-based applications, which are leading to a number of new companies locating in Oregon. However, with all of this energy moving towards our state, the question is how does Oregon continue to maintain a leadership position? How can we use this trend to our advantage?

New opportunities offered in next phases of the wireless trend

The change will extend beyond just consumers choosing to go mobile. High-speed access from mobile devices creates whole opportunities for new applications and new software based on this access. Like most changes in technology, the first phase of the change is to move the old applications to the new technology. For mobility, it means making the web accessible and getting email on your handheld device. The next phase and the phase after that is when totally new ideas will allow for new business models, unique workforce opportunities and new-found consumer freedom that utilize the characteristics of mobility to create totally new services and products.

Few people outside of large corporations or technology companies, however, have spent any time thinking about how to use this access to improve their communities, increase economic development or improve workforce development. However, this is when the really interesting questions need quality answers.

Questions such as, how can this technology change communities and their economic future? How can communities get ahead of this change? What community needs can be met better or be met for the first time with mobility? How can communities ride the wave and not end up lost in the whitewater? These are the critical questions for civic leaders to begin thinking about.

Unwire Oregon conference brings together executives, legislators and policy-makers

On May 1, 2007, Oregon started to wrestle with some of those questions. One Economy Corporation , a leading non-profit that uses technology to connect the poor to the 21st-century economy, and Oregon State University forged a unique partnership and hosted a statewide conversation, Unwire Oregon. Unwire Oregon provided an opportunity for executives both locally and nationally from Google, Tropos Networks, Intel, WiMAX Forum, M2Z Networks as well as Oregon State legislators and policy makers to address the future of promoting the next generation of mobile Internet access and applications in Oregon.

Ron Resnick, president and chair of the WiMAX Forum, opened the day with a call to business and state leaders to realize the profound change wireless will have on our economy and our communities. “Mass adoption of wireless broadband will profoundly change the way we access the Internet and change what we do with it,” said Resnick. “As a state, Oregon can take a leading stance on making Internet access readably available and could look to wireless Internet as the greatest growth engine for Oregon’s economy.”

At the Summit’s highly charged round table discussion, moderated by One Economy’s CEO and founder Rey Ramsey, CEOs and business leaders debated the role and timing for growing a mobile Internet cluster here in Oregon. City officials noted that for municipalities, mobile technology is as a low-cost solution for many declining city-safety and public-service budgets. This led to the larger question of the role of government versus private-sector in nurturing wireless networks and industry in Oregon. All realized that it can be difficult for governments to understand and prepare for technological change, but Oregon is in a unique position of having strong telecommunications assets, as well as a growing mobile-data industry. Participants directed governments to work with the private sector, utilizing mobile data networks to deliver public services more efficiently, but more importantly, working with residents and businesses to prepare for the coming mobile revolution.

The Summit’s closing remarks were lead by Google’s Chris Sacca, who candidly discussed the challenges faced by communities that want to aggressively develop municipal unwiring projects. Sacca discussed his grassroots effort to bring free public Wi-Fi to the residents in Mountain View, CA, and became increasingly optimistic with the continued increase of Wi-Fi usage in the lower income neighborhoods. In addition, Sacca highlighted the many obstacles Google must overcome with city government as the company embarks on the San Francisco wireless project.

Where does Oregon go from here?

Today, Oregon has the chance to be a leader of mobile Internet in our country. There are many strong private and community assets that are making our state a proving ground for the future of municipal wireless, commercial WiMAX and mobile data applications. Whether this adds up to a new “mobile data” cluster in Oregon, and how to best evolve it for our mutual benefit – including the employment of more software developers – are issues that our state and local governments must wrestle with today so as not to lose our advantage. One positive action would be attracting a world-class testing laboratory to our state to help expand opportunities for home-grown players to get products to market, as well as attract West Coast companies to bring their new technologies to Oregon.

The mobile data revolution is starting to hit America’s shores and will have profound impacts on how companies operate, how workers collaborate and how consumers interact with services. We have the opportunity to bring that movement on land in Oregon with leaders who recognize our current advantage in existing mobile infrastructure and encourage the building of the next generation of technologies. However, the most important criteria for our future are leaders who recognize the deep impacts that mobility is beginning to have on our daily lives and chart a future that helps all of our community – everything from small businesses and low-income families to the high-tech worker – to take advantage of an increasingly unwired world.

For the members of SAO there is great opportunity to match the infrastructure with high-quality software that helps improve our consumer experience and improve business productivity. In the near term, the move will be towards creating applications that use the wireless platform for existing web services, such as news feeds and social networking.

The twin challenges for the software industry are supporting the unwiring agenda and riding that trend by producing socially useful applications that improve the quality of life in Oregon. The latter is left to the innovative minds of our local software developers, but to understand the future of the Unwire Oregon agenda, go to www.unwireoregon.com keep track of what is happening in the community. The story of Oregon unwiring is not over…

About the organizers

Over the past six years, One Economy has emerged as the world’s largest nonprofit using technology to connect low-income people and communities to the 21st-century economy. Our work has taken root in 42 states, and we have on-the-ground programs in 4 continents. We work to provide people with the tools they need to build stronger lives.

Oregon State University is Oregon's land grant, sea grant, sun grant, and space grant university, with over 19,000 students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries. OSU is home to the Open Source Lab and organizer of the Government Open Source Conference, the leading gathering of public and private users of open source software. OSU has also played key roles in examining state and national policy, including the Timber Summit hosted by President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

About the author

Robert Bole has more than fifteen years experience in managing nonprofit programs, including work for The Enterprise Foundation, the City of Portland, and the City of Philadelphia. Currently Rob serves as vice president of consumer and media services and also managing director of the Public Internet Channel for One Economy Corporation, a multi-national non-profit founded in 2000 that uses technology-based strategies to help low-income people improve their lives and join the economic mainstream. One Economy’s strategy brings broadband into the home along with online content through a bilingual consumer website, the Beehive (www.thebeehive.org). Rob is currently overseeing the development of One Economy’s latest media offering, the Public Internet Channel, a public service network of organizations, public, private and nonprofit, to produce a web property to serve the public interest. Senators Obama and McCain are co-sponsors of the policy initiative in Congress to create the channel. Rob helped to co-produce Unwire Oregon. He can be reached at rbole@one-economy.com.