Minneapolis has narrowed their selection of who will operate a city cloud to either Earthlink or US Internet, reports the Star Tribune . DailyWireless reported this back in October and not much has changed.
The 50 square mile network would contain more than 1,000 interconnected Wi-Fi hot spots. City residents would pay an estimated $16 a month. US Internet says they could have the network built in 12 months for $25 million.
Both US Internet and EarthLink have bid to build and operate a Minneapolis network at no cost to taxpayers. The network would make money by selling Internet access to the city, consumers, businesses, visitors and third-party Internet service providers such as AOL, as well as by selling advertising.
Minneapolis would become an anchor tenant on the network, shifting about $1.5 million to $2.5 million worth of current telephone and cellular phone expenses to the network.
If we’re Tech City, where’s our WiFi, asks Boston.
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