Minneapolis has chosen two finalists; U.S. Internet and Earthlink to provide a citywide Wi-Fi. Each company will create a pilot, and a full system could be operating by late 2007 or early 2008 and is expected to cost consumers in the neighborhood of $20/month.
Both Earthlink and U.S. Internet appeared at Portland’s WiFi meetup last month. Other Portland bidders are likely to include Qwest and Verilan, as well as many others. Some guess 8-12 bids will be submitted this Monday at 4 pm.
The Portland Unwired Attendee List included both Qwest and Cingular (but not, Verizon, Google or Feeva). Others included Ericsson, Earthlink, Motorola, Tropos, IBM, HP, Lucent, MetroFi, NextNet, Nortel, Vivato and half a dozen ISPs with local roots. MetroFi is interesting in that it uses SkyPilot gear for a Wi-Fi metro mesh architecture. WiMAX may become the mesh backhaul, with Wi-Fi providing the access to clients. Broadband Reports has more.
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