Los Angeles is proceeding with a muni Wi-Fi study, reports MuniWireless.
Muni wireless deployments in major cities may be down since EarthLink announced it would rethink its approach to the muni market. But they may not be out. This week the city announced its June hiring of Civitium to conduct a feasibility study on its proposed network. A report is expected by the end of the year.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa outlined plans earlier this year to blanket Los Angeles with wireless Internet access in 2009, in what would be one of the nation’s largest urban Wi-Fi networks, reports the LA Times.
The $60 million proposal would be likely funded by telecommunications providers and advertisers. The price tag for covering Los Angeles’ 498 square miles could reach more than $62 million if figuring an average $125,000 per square mile to set up and maintain.
Meanwhile, the project to bring wireless Internet to Silicon Valley is deeply troubled, reports the Mercury Extra. The two-year-old, $150 million project, the brainchild of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, “is a mess” — so much so that organizers are trying to decide whether to pull the plug entirely.
As Vindu Goel of the Mercury News notes, the project is immensely complicated, has no leader and a shaky business plan.
And financing is the least of the project’s issues:
- Construction is vastly behind schedule. Test sites in Palo Alto and San Carlos were supposed to be built in March to showcase services to potential corporate and government customers. But equipment hasn’t even been ordered.
- Azulstar - the tiny Michigan company that is supposed to build and operate the valley network with the help of Cisco, IBM and SeaKay - did such a shoddy job in Rio Rancho, N.M., that city officials there are pondering whether to fire the company or accept its offer to rebuild the system with new equipment.
- More than a year after the bid was awarded, the project still has no boss. It’s led by a team made up of the vendors, the cities and Joint Venture. Because no one is accountable for the problems, the buck keeps getting passed around, stopping nowhere.
- Public safety agencies, which were supposed to be a key purchaser of services on the Silicon Valley network, are pursuing a different solution for police and firefighters to communicate in the event of a disaster.
Here’s Wireless Silicon Valley’s list of participating cities, counties, and neighborhoods as of 10/1/06 (pdf), an Amendment to the RFP issued June 13 (doc), a Request for Proposal issued April 28, 2006 (doc), Wireless Business Model (pdf), Vision of a Wireless Silicon Valley (pdf), Media Advisory for Release of the Business Model (pdf), and List of interested vendors as of May 17, 2006 (XLS).
Related DailyWireless articles include; MuniFi: What Now?, MuniFi: Not Dead Yet, Earthlink Restructures, MuniFi Holds Breath, Sacramento Approves WiFi, Vision for Silicon Valley: Cloudy, El Paso Unwired + Most of California, San Mateo: 1st Silicon Valley Cloud, Wireless SiValley: Mix & Match, Broadband Cities, New York’s 750 sq mile Cloud, San Francisco WiFi Dead?, Wireless Houston: Size Queen?, State-wide Wireless Broadband Access, Ten Cities Under Colorado Cloud, FiberNet for Calif Schools, Washington’s 1500mi Cloud, and Sacramento Regional Cloud
