Dan Costa


Municipal Wi-Fi represents everything that is noble about public technology projects. It is based on the premise that connecting people to the Net—and each other—is a social good that can raise the levels of everything from education to income. I loved the idea as soon as I heard it—open, free access to a public network over public spectrum for the benefit of the public. Who could be against that? Alas, municipal Wi-Fi is another case of a great idea that founders in the real world.

There are some success stories for muni Wi-Fi, but the failures far outnumber them. Every deployment has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Minneapolis, which has its network up and running, is often heralded as a muni Wi-Fi success story. Still, the project was late in coming online, and even today, only about one-third of the city's residents have Wi-Fi coverage. And the performance is pretty poor, at that. One explanation is that the stucco houses and trees create a very unfriendly wireless topography. As one Minneapolis resident recently asked me: Didn't anyone see those houses and trees beforehand?

Muni Wi-Fi's crushing blow came last year when EarthLink simply gave up on the concept. EarthLink had been muni Wi-Fi's biggest corporate backer and had signed on to build and run networks for cities across the country. And then the company imploded, laying off 900 workers and putting all its new muni Wi-Fi deployments on hold indefinitely. Despite its broad vision, EarthLink never had a business plan that made sense. And now it's too late.

The concept of municipal Wi-Fi emerged in a very different technological and competitive environment from today's. Broadband DSL and cable connections have since become much more available and a lot cheaper. Jerry Ellig, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, says this trend started in 2005 when the FCC declared that DSL would be a lightly regulated "information service" instead of a more heavily regulated "telecommunications service." A broadband Internet connection today can cost less than $40 per month. That is still a lot of money for low-income Americans but little enough to make broadband affordable to much of the middle class—and to kill widespread enthusiasm for muni Wi-Fi.

With all great public projects, the support of the middle class is essential. Right now, that support for muni Wi-Fi is elusive. In fact, there may be too much Wi-Fi in many middle-class neighborhoods. When I log on to the Web at my apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey, I see 11 Wi-Fi networks, half of them open. So why should my neighbors and I pay taxes for muni Wi-Fi ?

The other problem is that the technology moves too fast for the public sector. As Ellig explained to me recently, the cell-phone companies acquired more spectrum, built out wireless broadband networks, and cut the price of their wireless broadband cards by about 25 percent—from around $80 to about $60 per month. This is still more expensive than wired broadband, but cellular modems give customers who want mobility the opportunity to have it across a much larger network than muni Wi-Fi could offer. Better still, networks like EV-DO and HSDPA have a profitable business model. Muni Wi-Fi has EarthLink's smoking ruins and broken promises. —next: Not A Dead End >