The Chicago Tribune has learned that both AT&T and EarthLink are in a competition to build the city’s 160 square mile WiFi network.
Both AT&T and Earthlink have made written and oral proposals to the city and Hardik Bhatt, the city’s chief information officer (right). A spokeswoman said the city is making progress in reviewing the proposals, but Bhatt declined to estimate when a decision might be made.
While AT&T and EarthLink are vying to build Chicago’s municipal broadband network, Chicago will get Sprint’s Mobile WiMAX network by the end of this year. Sprint says Motorola WiMAX gear will be used in Chicago, as well as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis. Sprint expects the $3 billion project to reach more than 100 million Americans in 16 other cities by the end of 2008.
Both AT&T and EarthLink propose offering wholesale service over their Wi-Fi systems so that other vendors could use the network to market service to Chicagoans. Wholesale is a requirement of the city’s request for proposals, and just what price would constitute wholesale has yet to be negotiated, said AT&T’s Johnson.
AT&T and EarthLink also propose a separate WiFi network that would serve city workers and do things like read parking meters.
If EarthLink wins the city’s nod, Hulsebosch said his firm would approach adjacent suburbs to gauge their interest in getting a similar service to spread out from Chicago’s borders.
Johnson said that AT&T has no plans to move beyond Chicago’s city limits, should it win the bid. “We’re anxious to do Chicago’s 160 square miles,” she said, “but we’ve no plans to move beyond that.”
According to a survey conducted by pollster Ipsos, 9,000 respondents from 18 countries said the Internet has been the single-most important innovation contributing to productivity in the past half-century. They also predict that wireless networks will have the biggest impact on productivity in the next five years.
The most significant impact for increasing productivity:
- Internet - 60 percent
- Personal computers/laptops - 50 percent
- Mobile phones - 43 percent
- E-mail - 23 percent
- Cars and motorcycles - 22 percent.
In the coming five years, respondents predicted the most significant impact on productivity and saving time will come from:
- Wireless networks - 50 percent
- Greater computing speed - 44 percent
- Smart cards - 41 percent
- Internet/broadband - 40 percent
- All forms of portable computing - 39 percent.
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