Is the bloom off municipal WiFi? Chicago scraps public wireless network

Chicago flew in the face of the public wireless broadband movement today and killed off an $18.5 million Internet access system.  And there are signs the rush to municipal WiFi maybe be slowing.Chicago  cited rising costs, spotty demand and uncooperative carriers as the main reasons for the cancellation of the rollout that would have covered the city’s 228 miles.  According to one report, EarthLink and AT&T reportedly demanded that Chicago become an “anchor tenant,” paying an annual fee to use the WiFi network to support city services.  When the city refused — and insisted that the system attached to city street lights and lamp poles be built, maintained and operated at the contractor’s “sole expense” the whole system came crashing down. This report says Chicago the latest in a string of municipalities to encounter troubles with their municipal broadband initiatives because of ballooning budgets and dwindling usage that’s led to scant revenue generated by the projects.  Anchorage, Alaska and Corona, California have discontinued their municipal wireless projects after MetroFi, the private industry partner in both cities, said it could not offer free service without a commitment from each municipality to be an “anchor tenant” on the system. About 175 U.S. cities or regions have citywide or partial systems.EarthLink has won contracts for networks in Houston, Corpus Christi, Texas, and other cities and has been chosen along with Google for a high-profile proposal in San Francisco that is currently embroiled in political controversy.  The Houston Chronicle reported recently that EarthLink is months behind schedule in getting started with Houston’s Wi-Fi project, and there are doubts it will go forward at all. And EarthLink has problems of its own.  Just today, the company announced it would restructure, cutting 900 jobs and shuttering several regional offices.  From a technology perspective, creating a full-blown mesh network across an entire city — from parks to tourist attractions to downtown skyscrapers to residential neighborhoods with brownstones jammed together — presents quite a challenge. And EarthLink’s experience with Chicago has said it was studying the performance of its existing municipal wireless Internet networks before deciding how to move forward with similar networks elsewhere.But there have been big successes as well. Philadelphia, for example,  is well on its way to becoming one of the world’s biggest Wi-Fi hot spots . Network World recently reported that Philadelphia gave EarthLink the green light to cover the 135-square-mile city with a wireless mesh network by year-end.  EarthLink is moving full-speed ahead, adding Tropos Networks access points to light poles around the city, testing and optimizing the network, and building out coverage at a pace of 5,000 potential households per workday. Today, coverage has expanded to 80% of the city.