Municipal Wireless

Philly's wireless plan is coming close... to what I'm not exactly sure.

As municipalities across the country join the Wi-Fi race, the City of Philadelphia is entering the home stretch.

Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit created by the City to transform Philadelphia's neighborhoods by making high-speed Internet access more available and affordable, is expected later today to approve EarthLink's 15-square-mile Wi-Fi Proof of Concept (POC) area or test zone.

In turn, EarthLink will continue building the 135-square-mile Wi-Fi mesh network, slated for citywide completion in the third quarter of 2007. Mayor John F. Street will announce this development tomorrow in a ceremony at William Penn High School, which is located in the Proof of Concept Zone.

I remember railing on about this at one of my old blogs (unfortunately deleted). The wireless implimentation goals were wildly optimistic. Announce the plan in April, choose vendor by end of June, subscribers by the end of the year. At the time I wondered about the timeline and which cronies were going to get rich off the deal. The former is in the "home stretch," despite having only 10% started. The latter has yet to resolve itself...

The question of why cities should be in the broadband business, was never answered.

In entirely unrelated news, technology analysts doubt municipal networks efficacy.

Because systems are just coming online, it's premature to say how many or which ones will fail under current operating plans, but the early signs are troubling.

"I will be surprised if the majority of these are successful and they do not prove to be drains on taxpayers' money," said Michael Balhoff, former telecom equity analyst with Legg Mason Inc. "The government is getting into hotly contested services."

Most communities, including Lompoc [California], paid for their projects. Elsewhere, private companies agreed to absorb costs for the chance to sell services or ads.

The vendors remain confident despite technical and other problems. Chuck Haas, MetroFi Inc.'s chief executive, said Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper to build than cable or DSL, which provides broadband over phone lines.

Demand could grow once more cell phones can make Wi-Fi calls and as city workers improve productivity by reading electric meters remotely, for instance.

Balhoff, however, believes the successful projects are most likely to be in remote places that traditional service providers skip — and fewer and fewer of those areas exist. Cities, he said, should focus on incentives to draw providers.

Enjoy.

Technology Posted by AlexC at May 23, 2007 10:47 PM