I ran across an interesting article on Ars Technica's news archive reporting the poor results EarthLink has seen with their Municipal WiFi offering. I didn't even realize that my ISP was involved in providing WiFi service on this scale and had thought that as described in the article, that support for these types of "citywide" wireless networks had flagged when the demand and usage from the residents wasn't as heavy as hoped.
It sounded as if they're not abandoning this sector altogether and press releases from their site report new Muni WiFi projects still being contracted, but this will no longer be a "cornerstone" of their business:
"After thorough review and analysis of our municipal wireless business we have decided that making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value," EarthLink president and CEO Rolla Huff said in a statement.
Huff's statement comes just a few months after EarthLink decided to undertake a thorough review of the company's wireless business. That decision came in the wake of massive losses in the business due to higher-than-expected deployment costs and lower-than-expected usage by residents of the cities where wireless networks have been built.
In many cases it sounds as if cities were actually hoping that networks would be built at no cost to them and ad-supported access would make it free for the end-users. I don't know how realistic that is, especially considering the cost of implementation and environmental factors that always seem to require more nodes, and therefore a more extensive infrastructure, to provide the necessary coverage.
We offer free WiFi for the traveling public in the Orlando International Airport and our customers are pretty happy with this service, but we have gotten some flak from other airports that want to and do charge for the same service.
Corpus Christi was reported as a success story for Muni WiFi where the network was originally built to support city government and then made available to residents for as little as $6.95 per month. This sounds like a much more viable concept: Build the infrastructure for "business purposes" and then extend the service to other customers with a reasonable fee structure. So, do you think Muni WiFi is a dead concept? Will WiMAX breathe new life into this effort or will troubles there only help sound the death knell for wireless projects on this scale?
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