Municipal Wi-Fi Failing, Earthlink Pulls Out

[Mugu]

Shane McGlaun (Blog)

When some large and medium sized cities decided to try and roll out city wide municipal Wi-Fi service that would be used by paying customers and by low-income families for free or reduced rates, EarthLink was one of the first ISPs to jump on the project.

EarthLink pretty much cornered the market on municipal Wi-Fi and the projects in cities like Philadelphia were hailed as Internet for the masses. The New York Times now reports these lofty goals for Philadelphia and other cities that jumped on the municipal Wi-Fi bandwagon have all but come to a standstill. The main reason for the halt on the roll out plans for city wide Wi-Fi is being blamed on the abrupt about face by EarthLink who suddenly announced it was pulling out of the project.

Customers that previously had municipal Wi-Fi service in Portland, Oregon and Tempe, Arizona are now finding their access is no longer available. EarthLink announced in early February 2008, "the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company’s strategic direction."

snip

The problem according to some that has lead to the faltering Wi-Fi service is that the business model was flawed. It was found that to offer the quality of coverage needed required more routers than planned on making the cost of installing the network more expensive. At the same time the cost of access to paying providers on the municipal Wi-Fi service was more than what paying customers could get similar connectivity for from competing firms.


Complete article at:
http://www.dailytech.com/Municipal+WiFi+Failing+Earthlink+Pulls+Out/article11211.htm

[enlightenment]

1. So,

"the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company’s strategic direction" translates to:

"We aren't making a healthy profit on this venture, so we're going to take our ball and go home (and, while we're at it, increase our rates to paying customers to make up for the potential shortfall)."

I love the free market. It works so well for everyone. :sarcasm:

[Trillo]

2. I've been wondering how long it will be before

there's both internet connection sharing and P2P wireless in small local areas, coupled with load balancing, etc. Everyone's wireless-enabled computer could act as router until a random access point is found.

But of course that would be disruptive to Big Brother surveillance.

[Bigmack]

3. Yeah.... What you said!!!...

Can you explain that just one step lower on the tech ladder?

Also... you sound like you might know. Wasn't there a deal made with the major Cable/Internet/Broadcast media moguls that literally gave them the public airwaves, and in return they were supposed to provide free wireless access? I thought I remembered that from the Telecom Bill, but haven't been able to find anything more.

[Trillo]

4. I'm not a techie, more like a perpetual webnovice

but, with wireless cards, most people can access another person's access point. (I don't currently use wireless, but do have a PCMCIA wireless card sitting on a shelf for when it might be needed). Usually, these connections are encrypted so that only the computers authorized to the local network can access it, but not always. Most wireless cards such as that have a limited range, like 100 ft or thereabouts.

Anyway, if people's computers with ISP access, such as DSL, satellite, even dialup, also had wireless and were willing to share their connection and at least one computer, small local neighborhoods could have local computer-to-computer or "chained" networks that exist outside of Big Brother telecoms, and with the right software (I don't know if it currently exists, probably does in some form), open-source, all the computers that do have Internet access could be shared with those that don't.

Originally, that's how I understand Darpa net was conceived, as a locally distributed system that could rewire itself as needed when portions of the network went down. Now, the "Internet system" seems designed to use centralized backbones, that when one goes down, everybody's who's downstream is out of luck until it's repaired. While it's just a guess, this was likely to allow the telecoms to snoop for the government through control of the Internet access point and centralized architecture.

For an example of the hardware that can extend local wireless networks from neighborhood-to-neighborhood (greater than 100 ft (or a typical wireless card)), here's but one webpage that should stimulate the brain cells:

http://www.radiolabs.com/products/wireless/point-to-point-bridge.php

As to the legality of any of this, or your question regarding the telecom laws, I'd have to defer to others. I do seem to recall reading something about that, but it wasn't the law itself that I read, likely it was a news report, but I don't specifically remember.