Muni Wi-Fi: teething pains or terminal symptoms?

By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 06/22/06

Chaska, Minn., has been the poster child for municipal Wi-Fi deployments. Now comes word that until recently, the wireless mesh net was a mess net.

Chaska's pioneering effort was heavily promoted by, among others, Tropos Networks, which supplied the 802.11-based wireless mesh nodes for the net. The vendor still has a February 2005 white paper on its site, entitled "Tropos MetroMesh Proven: Metro-Scale Wi-Fi in Chaska, MN."

"Network World" cited the Minneapolis exurb earlier this year in a feature story about the building boom in municipal Wi-Fi nets. And claims for its success were widely and uncritically accepted by publications and the blogosphere.

The Chicago Tribune finally took a close look at the network[registration required], including an interview with Bradley Mayer, Chaska's former tech manager, and the guy who proposed and installed the net...and who now works for Earthlink, which is trying to roll out similar municipal Wi-Fi services in vastly larger markets, like Philadelphia.

Mayer admits that it took 18 months before they had a "really good handle" on the network. From the Tribune story:

"In Chaska, "there was a lot of pre-conceived notions that you could just blast [Wi-Fi signals] through walls and trees and everything," Mayer said.
"Instead, Mayer made some unpleasant discoveries. Like the fact that wet leafy trees absorb radio signals, hampering Wi-Fi coverage. And this one: Wi-Fi signals don't pass through stucco like they did wooden walls, another negative for coverage."

Poor customer service, uneven coverage, and at one stage declining performance caused hundreds of early subscribers to become the first unsubscribers. The city shelled out an additional $300,000, over and above the original $600,000 investment, for more access points, gateways, and radio reconfiguration. According to the Tribune story, the city shelled out still more money this past spring for the latest generation of Tropos nodes, and additional money to outsource net maintenance and support to Siemens.

In a post on TechDirt, consultant Derek Kerton mentions that he actually talked with Mayer in late 2004 "and he again portrayed the Chaska WiFi network as a glowing example of how Muni WiFi works well."

Kerton continues: "Flash forward to the present, and imagine how frustrating it is, then, to see Mr. Mayer admit, ex post facto, that Chaska's network was actually quite a mess. Of course, the Tribune article claims that that is all in the past, and now the network is great. Well, I'm sorry, but there is a credibility gap to address now."

Blogger Glenn Fleishman at WifiNetNews is more succinct: "I feel a bit taken in, too."

Newsweek correspondent Brad Stone earlier this month looked at the fever of Wi-Fi hype that's sweeping municipal governments.

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