Philly's Muni Wi-Fi Network Down for the Count
May 13, 2008
After months of speculation about the future of Philadelphia's once-enviable plan for a municipal Wi-Fi network, EarthLink has confirmed that it will shut down the city's network on June 12th.
Ars Technica quoted a statement by EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff, who described the situation as follows: "EarthLink has worked diligently for many months to transfer our WiFi network to a new owner--at no cost...Unfortunately, our hope that we could transfer our network to a nonprofit organization that had planned to offer free WiFi throughout Philadelphia will not be realized."
Ars goes on to recount EarthLink's muni Wi-Fi woes, which culminated in Mr. Huff's announcement last November that he was trying to sell off the company's muni Wi-Fi business. According to the Associated Press, the Philly network has less than 6,000 subscribers, out of a projected minimum of 100,000, and EarthLink claims that it has been losing up to $200,000 each month to operate the network.
EarthLink will soon pull the plug on muni Wi-Fi in New Orleans as well, and it's moving forward with plans to turn over control of other networks to cities like Milpitas, Calif. and Corpus Christi, Texas.
The future of public wide-area broadband was the topic of one of the breakout sessions at Tech Policy Summit '08 in March. You can listen to the podcast here.
Tags:
broadband, EarthLink, muni wi-fi, Philadelphia, Tech Policy Summit, wireless
