The city of St. Cloud, Florida, a suburb of Orlando, created one of the first municipal Wi-Fi networks in 2006. The city, with a population of 28,000, covered the entire city, 15 square miles, with free WiFi.
Now, faced with a $1.3 million budget shortfall, city leaders are shutting its free Wi-Fi network (pdf). The network will close to the public on Thursday but it will continue to be used by city departments including police and code enforcement.
By eliminating the public portion of the wireless network, the city will save $370,000 in maintenance costs, which include operating a technical support phone line. The network used approximately 300 Tropos 5210 mesh nodes connected wirelessly to a direct Ethernet connection at City Hall utilizing Motorola Canopy in a Pre WiMax configuration.
The city spent initially spent $2.6 million to build the wireless network according to Howard DeYoung, the city’s director of information technology. He said the WiFi network cost the city about $600,000 a year.
MetroFi also offered free WiFi in several cities, including Portland, but shut down service before most were built out.
Approximately 1,000 square miles of north-central Oregon is protected by Fred Zari’s Wi-Fi network. It is considered one of the largest Wi-Fi hot spots in the world, and was built to warn of a chemical leak in the area. Ziari recovers his investment through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies and the area’s big farms.
