Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out - New York Times
Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said.
In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.
But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in…
It’s tempting to say “we told you so,” but we’ll give in to temptation. We told you so back in discussions in 2006-06.
Municipal Wi-Fi | Reality bites | Economist.com
IT WAS supposed to democratise the internet and turn America’s city-dwellers into citizen-surfers. In 2004 the mayors of Philadelphia and San Francisco unveiled ambitious plans to provide free wireless-internet access to all residents using Wi-Fi, a technology commonly used to link computers to the internet in homes, offices, schools and coffee-shops. Across America, hundreds of cities followed suit. Yet many municipal Wi-Fi projects have since been hit by mounting costs, poor coverage and weak demand. This week Chicago became the first big city to abandon its plans for a city-wide network. “Everyone would like something for free,”…
Tags: America, Chicago, Chuck Haas, city-wide network, EarthLink, fee-based wireless service, free wireless-internet access, MetroFi, Philadelphia, SAN FRANCISCO, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi systems.
What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? - New York Times
“Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000.
That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.
Like Taipei, these cities hope…
Tags: Chicago, citywide network, local Internet, New York Times, Philadelphia, priced wireless network, Q-Ware, taipei, wireless data services, Wireless Network, wireless networks.
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