King of Swamp Castle: One day, lad, all this will be yours.
Prince Herbert: What, the curtains?
– Search for the Holy Grail
S.F. citywide Wi-Fi plan fizzles, blares the Chronicle today and City Disconnecting from Wi-Fi Vision shouts the Chicago Tribune. After a euphoric two years for municipal wireless, it’s time to smell the coffee. Glenn Fleishman of WiFiNetNews wrote Reality Bites in the Economist today. It’s funny how all the pundits, including MuniWireless now claim they saw this coming long ago.
They didn’t.
The only one who accurately predicted the (hopefully temporary) downturn for municipal wireless was John C. Dvorak who said Muni WiFi Will Die in a Market Watch column, 30 November, 2005.
Meanwhile, Fleishman gets his facts wrong in the Economist:
EarthLink and MetroFi have responded by asking city governments to act as “anchor tenants” and agree to spend a guaranteed sum on the service. Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, accepted such contracts from the beginning; their Wi-Fi schemes are proceeding relatively smoothly.
Not so. As Corey Pein accurately states in his critical Unwired and Unloved story this week in Willamette Week:
Business Week reported earlier this month that MetroFi was pushing Portland to subscribe to its network. Kleier [Logan Kleier, Portland's wi-fi manager], says that about six months ago, the company asked him to buy more network subscriptions than the city “could possibly afford.”“We said our contract didn’t have any commitments. And that was the end of that discussion,” Kleier says.
Rumor has it that the power supply in SkyPilot access points is a root cause of many failures. Hopefully, everyone will work together and successfully address issues as they develop — calmly and reasonably.
Everyone wants free WiFi to work.
It’s a great idea whose time has come — especially as WiFi gets integrated into more devices like the iPhone. Working together, operators, governments and users can create practical and equitable solutions. Finger pointing just creates rancor. I’m probably just as guilty of it as anyone.
Muni Wi-Fi: “The End of the Beginning”, says Ron Sege President and CEO Tropos Networks.
Related DailyWireless articles on municipal wireless include; Houston Gets it’s Money Back from Earthlink, Earthlink Restructures, MuniFi Holds Breath, New York’s 750 sq mile Cloud, Connecting the Nation, Municipal WiFi — Under a Cloud?, List of US Cities with Wi-Fi, SF WiFi Goes to Voters, Portland MetroFi + Microsoft Ads, JiWire + MetroFi = Location-based Ads, Portland Chooses MetroFi for 134 Mile Cloud, National Broadband Wireless Projects, The World’s Largest WiFi Cloud, State-wide Wireless Broadband Access, South Carolina Statewide Wireless, Vermont Statewide Wireless, Rhode Island Statewide Wireless, Wireless SiValley: Mix & Match, Ten Cities Under Colorado Cloud, Washington’s 1500mi Cloud, Sacramento Regional Cloud, Cloud for Silicon Valley, Intelligent Communities of the Year, St. Louis County Cloud, Airspan WiMAXes Australia, Singapore Cloud, Intelligent Nation, Portland Cloud Workshop, and FCC Rules on 700MHz: Limited Open Access, No Wholesale Requirement.
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