Geography

As a resident of Minneapolis and a brief (2 mo) subscriber the the USI service, I'll tell you that even in rolled out areas, the service is very sub-par. I signed up for 6 mbit and was getting less than 1 mbit even with their unsightly and inconvenient external directional antennas. I repeatedly called support and was given "our engineers are working on the problem" but when asked for an ETR they were unable to tell me whether we were looking at a Day, Week, Year, Millenium.

The failure of wi-fi to take off quickly in the public market is the same reason we have a high percentage of transformation failure through technology in all segments of public government and administration.
First and foremost most government technology officials are often are not resourced and qualified to lead these very complex efforts. This political minefield of public enterprise city wide wi-fi is just not a technical issue but it is a huge political issue that brings to bear the forces of local politics upon an already understaffed unqualified technology government support team. The public/private model is absolutely an excellent approach but there must be some political groundwork laid prior to any meetings with Mayor's office, city/county elected officials or any political decision making body. In addition, public safety police/fire/911/emergency mangment/homeland security
information systems have absolutely no business on public wi-fi networks a issue that will kill these projects right out of the gate. The most astonishing failure is the city/county government's inability to take advantage of both university/library/K12 opportunities of technology and web based education collabrative funding platforms available for wi-fi via regional and partnering efforts. It is my belief that the priority should be given to education and public access to those who can not afford it. Congradulations to the City of Houston Texas for recovering from its failed wi-fi effort and partnering with Rice univerrsity to focus on access and education. Without a doubt and no question about it broadband will rule and its time to put wi-fi future deployments in the rear view mirror.......