Low-fi

These appear to be dark days for municipal Wi-Fi. The oncepromising way to bring wireless broadband to the masses has hit that hard wall separating hype from reality.
Chicago just added itself to a growing list of cities with second thoughts about deploying a publicly funded muni Wi-Fi network. Nielsen/NetRatings recently said Chicago was the eighth least-broadband-penetrated market in the country.
According to the Chicago Tribune, city officials could not come to an agreement with EarthLink Inc. or AT&T Inc. over proposals to blanket the Windy City with free or subsidized wireless broadband. A key sticking point was reportedly a commitment from the city to be an anchor tenant on the network, thus providing a steady flow of revenues.
The Tribune story noted that another snag was that current broadband prices have fallen dramatically in the city: AT&T offers DSL service in portions of Chicago for as little as $10 per month. Chicago is also one of the first markets Sprint Nextel expects to cover with its WiMAX network, set to launch later this year.
But Wi-Fi trouble isn’t limited to Chicago. EarthLink’s plans to deploy muni Wi-Fi in San Francisco and Houston also hit the skids. EarthLink is still on the hook for $30 million to complete projects in Philadelphia; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Anaheim, Calif.
On the other side of the country, Google recently touted the success of its muni Wi-Fi deployment in Mountain View, Calif., a posh Silicon Valley town that is probably least in need of any additional broadband capabilities. The same Nielsen/NetRatings study showed San Francisco, Mountain View’s neighbor to the north, was No. 8 in the nation in terms of broadband penetration.
Google is picking up the tab for covering its home market of Mountain View with wireless broadband access. And I say good for Google, a company with enough money to pay for everyone in Mountain View to have broadband piped directly into their homes as well as to buy all of its citizens bigger homes.
It’s a noble idea for cities to try to provide broadband services to its citizens, but the logistics of using Wi-Fi does not seem to be fiscally prudent. Why not just provide subsidies to low-income people that would allow them to pick from one of the many broadband options already available in most areas and take the challenges of deploying an already outdated muni Wi-Fi network out of the equation?