EarthLink Layoffs: What of Municipal Wi-Fi?
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EarthLink Inc.&#39;s announcement that it will lay off 900 people is a blow to broadband competition, but some industry followers say it doesn&#39;t signal the end of municipal Wi-Fi.
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California passes Wi-Fi user protection bill; AT&T eyes municipal deals. Plus: The mobile Internet--are we there yet?
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Wireless broadband isn't the only wireless game in town.  Columnist Craig Mathias describes a slew of short-range but very important types of wireless that are starting to become widely used.
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THE REGION Officials running Boston's wireless Internet program are expecting dozens of vendors, systems integrators, and service providers to respond by Friday to a request for information on how they could contribute to a citywide WiFi network, said Pam Reeve , chief executive of OpenAirBoston, the nonprofit corporation running the program. A pilot wireless program covering 1.1 square miles in ...
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A long-time wireless expert talks about a topics ranging from 802.11n and municipal Wi-Fi to the future of wireless technology.
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By Conning Chu, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  Jun. 22--WAUKESHA -- A Waukesha County information technology official said Thursday that a report on the citywide Wi-Fi project shows it could be less effective and more expensive than anticipated.
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EarthLink Inc.&#39;s current contract to build a municipal Wi-Fi network in San Francisco appears to be dead following a restructuring of the struggling Internet service provider.
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AT&T has called off its ambitious plans to roll out free municipal WiFi service over a 62-square-mile area covering St. Louis County. While the company had been wrestling with the problem of how to build a business model around this lucrative service, what may have ended up scuttling the deal was an unforeseen technical difficulty.
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But does it fit the bill for muni Wi-Fi? While the promise of free-for-all municipal Wi-Fi networks remains on the horizon for most â and a Googly mess for others â mesh wireless, the technology that utopians fancy will float us away on a cloud of education, is making practical progress.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Google and EarthLink's Wi-Fi contract with San Francisco would have a renewable four-year term and would require a proof-of-concept deployment before the full network is rolled out, if progress so far in negotiations holds firm, according to the city. TheÂ companies were chosenÂ earlier this year to build and operate a citywide Wi-Fi network with both free and faster paid services. San Francisco officials are now negotiating with them on the exact terms of the relationship, in which the vendors will bear the cost of the network while the city will provide the use of light poles and other city assets for deploying it. The city has said it expects the network to go live in 2007. The parties have made progress in the talks, which began in May, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst for the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. On Friday afternoon, he defended that progress to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) when asked about an article last week in the San Francisco Chronicle in which a Google executive said little had been decided. LAFCO is a county agency that provides oversight of cable TV franchises and other issues. Nothing is definite until the entire contract is agreed upon, Roberts said, but he highlighted some areas where he said there is accord so far. As negotiations stand now, Google and EarthLink would have a contract to provide the wireless broadband service for four years. At the end of that term, the city could shut down the arrangement without having to show a specific cause, he said. It could also demand the technology be upgraded as a condition for renewing the deal. The term could then be renewed as many as three times, for a total period of 16 years. The vendors first would have to roll out a test network, which would cover about two square miles, for as long as six months to show whether their technology would really work, Roberts said. The talks also have addressed some of theÂ thorny privacy issuesÂ that have generated criticism he said. Google and EarthLink would be able to collect information about a user's whereabouts while using the network, but that user would be able to opt out of giving that information, Roberts said. If they collect the information, the vendors could only keep the data for 60 days. During that time, they couldn't share information about specific users except in certain cases in which it's sought by law enforcement or courts. In exchange for the use of its rights of way, San Francisco is seeking 5 percent of gross revenue from the network, Roberts said. It also will seek a fee for use of city-owned light poles. That money would help to support city initiatives to narrow the digital divide between rich and poor residents. Negotiators haven't reached agreement on those financial terms, he said. Members of LAFCO were skeptical about some aspects of the talks so far, including the city's revenue demands. San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick said he feared the city was undervaluing the city's assets by seeking just 5 percent of revenue. Roberts said that percentage would be very competitive with what other U.S. cities have gotten.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Pah - we sneer at your global economies of scale! More dismal news for the US consumer. After the simultaneous failure of Municipal Wi-Fi projects in three major US cities - something we predicted four years ago - faster, cheaper mobile data looks further away than ever.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - San Francisco city officials could bring the city'sÂ proposed Wi-Fi networkÂ closer to reality at two meetings this week as a key leader proposes significant changes to the plan. The network, to be run by EarthLink, has been closely watched because it is one of the biggest of many proposed municipal networks in the U.S. and because it would include a free service offered by Google. The city would sell EarthLink access to some of its streetlight poles and other locations for Wi-Fi access points. Some leaders and activists in the famously liberal city haveÂ slammed the dealÂ on issues including privacy and service and called for a network owned by the city. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will reconsider an April decision by the city's Planning Department to exempt the network from an environmental review. The San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (SNAFU) appealed the April ruling, saying the access points could cause health problems. The board could let the Planning Department's decision stand, strike it down or decide to study the issue further. On Wednesday, the Board's Budget and Finance committee will vote on the full Wi-Fi proposal. Unless the vote Tuesday requires an environmental review, the only remaining hurdle then would be a vote by the full board. The Budget and Finance panel will hear proposals by board President Aaron Peskin that may boost support for the politically troubled plan. Both the mayor's office and EarthLink are aware of the proposals, Peskin said in an e-mail interview. The mayor's office seems to approve of them, but Peskin doesn't know where EarthLink stands. Peskin's ideas affect aspects of the proposed contract that have drawn much of the fire. Key points include: - Increase the speed of the free service from 300Kbps to 500Kbps. (A service priced at about $20 per month would still deliver 1Mbps.) - Provide for user privacy on the free service. - Add an enforceable requirement that the network provide adequate service in all areas of the city. - Shorten the maximum term of the contract from 16 to eight years and let the city buy the network at full market value at that time. As it stands, the contract initially would be for four years and could be renewed three times, an eternity in the world of wireless technology. - Ensure the city is properly compensated for giving EarthLink access to its light poles. The city and EarthLink settled on the terms of a contract in January. It gave EarthLink the right to pull out if the plan wasn't approved by the Board within 180 days. That time has passed, according to EarthLink spokesman Jerry Grasso, but the company hasn't given up. The plan calls for building a two-square mile test network first before deploying the whole system. Â
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Microsoft Corp. has been doing some soul-searching about the future of municipal Wi-Fi for consumers. The company's market studies are finding end user woes, but also market potential.
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The layoffs come as Motorola completes the spinoff of its semiconductor division. Also: Akimbo Systems signs a deal for content from Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System & hellip;. PalmSource introduces a smart phone operating system & hellip;. and more.
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With a rash of muni Wi-Fi projects collapsing, companies and cities realize their initial approaches to providing ubiquitous, free network connectivity aren't working. The problem is Wi-Fi is too expensive to deploy, and there's not enough user demand.
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By The Associated Press  In a May 21 story about municipal wireless projects, The Associated Press erroneously reported that EarthLink Inc. suspended new bids. The company said it won't seek as many bids, but isn't completely ruling out new ones.
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(InfoWorld) - San Francisco is going to kick the tires of an alternative to theÂ citywide Wi-Fi planÂ from EarthLink and Google. The budget analyst of the City and County of San Francisco agreed on Monday to study to financial feasibility of a wireless network paid for and owned by the city. The agency expects to finish its report by December, a representative said at a meeting Monday of the Board of Supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee. The city's Wi-Fi plan and the process of developing it has come under fire from several quarters, not least from some members of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Jake McGoldrick formally requested the feasibility study after criticizing the way in which the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom settled on theÂ EarthLink-Google plan. It calls for a network to be built at no cost to the city and owned by the two service providers. "It really got rammed and jammed and fast-tracked," McGoldrick said in April. If the city owned the network, he believes it would have more control overÂ issues such as user privacyÂ and prompt upgrading of the technology. The analyst's plan to deliver the report by December satisfied McGoldrick, who talked with representatives of the agency at Monday's meeting. The city also expects to wrap up its negotiations with EarthLink and Google in early December, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst for the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. The department has no position on the plan for the feasibility study, he said: The budget analyst's report will give the supervisors more information to decide whether to go with the EarthLink-Google deal, he said. Also Monday, a nonprofit organization said a city-owned network would pay for itself in just over four years. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) released the results of a feasibility study report that was sought by Media Alliance, an Oakland, California, group that has pushed for broader access to technology. ILSR envisioned San Francisco building the network for an initial capital investment of about $10 million, to be repaid over five years from services revenue. The city would create a nonprofit body to sell access to the network to service providers wholesale. Upgrades would cost about $9 million over ten years, the group said. The plan is similar to onesÂ advocated in some other cities, such as that of the Boston Wireless Task Force. ILSR said its estimates, which in part assume that 10 percent of households and businesses would become paid subscribers at about $15 per month, were conservative. A better plan would be for the city to expand its current 43-mile fiber network to eventually reach all homes, while deploying wireless in certain areas in the meantime, ILSR said. Fiber costs more to deploy but less to maintain. The city didn't provide enough information for a complete analysis of this plan, ILSR said.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.