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Muni-wifi going down

This entry was posted by Lorenzo Viscanti on May 6th, 2008. Post a comment

The NYT posted an interesting article about what seems to be the fading point of municipal wireless projects: many cities are rolling back their projects, as it seems there are no more hopes of revenues that can help sustain the infrastructure.

The problem was in the original approach that many cities had towards the creation of such projects:

“The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects” says Sascha Meinrath on the NYT’s article. Many companies have seen those projects as a new way to enter the ISPs market. Obviously that market is pretty crowded, revenues are already fading away for traditional ISPs, and newcomers are having bad days.

Wireless technologies (both wifi and wimax) raise many infrastructure problems (radio signal issues, compatibility problems, small coverage range, ..) and many networks aren’t profitable at all (in most cases they represent a big loss for both companies and cities).
As a result of this situation many companies are pulling out from projects they were involved in (as Earthlink did in Philadelphia and other cities). This is a problem for cities who need solid partners to build such services. Residents are also concerned, especially low-income families who were expecting municipal networks as a way to get cheaper connections. This is particularly important for children, as Internet connection is tightly tied to their education.

Fortunately a new approach could be the solution to those issues.

Meraki jumped in the market with a different strategy: they are selling cheap devices that plugs into existing home connections
extending them with public wifi signal. Additionally they sell cheap devices to be used outside (mainly on light poles). As you probably know Fon has a very simlar approach since almost two years: they are offering cities free (or almost free) wifi routers for residents, that would allow the inhabitants to build their own networks. Routers installed on DSL connections at home team up to create a public network that could cover the entire city.
This grassroot approach could be a way to overcome failures. The fon city project is already active in five cities across Europe, while many others are interested in such projects.

While cities are still trying to find the right approach someone is already thinking about giving free wifi routers to homeless people, who can then sell connections to people who are around them for a small tip.


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