Citywide Wi-Fi plans dying on the drawing board
EarthLink had been promising citywide Wi-Fi as not only their savior, but the promise of making a level Internet playing field for all. What went wrong?
EarthLink took a $46 million dollar loss in the first half of this year, and in turn, recently laid off 1,000 employees. Now the former big name ISP is saying that it simply can’t foot the bill to build these massive wireless networks.
The original plan, for San Francisco at least, was to charge $20 a month for a higher speed plan, but also offer a free lower speed alternative that would be supported by Google placing ads. As of this week, EarthLink has decided this business model is unsustainable and pulled out of plans in both San Francisco and Chicago.
This bring into question if such a plan will ever work for any city. According to MuniWireless.com, there are currently 455 cities across the United States of America drawing up plans for city-wide wireless networks. The situation now is can any city make it profitable to not only start a network, but to maintain it?
With the announcement that they would not be able to go ahead with the San Francisco plan, they hope to still fine other partners willing to assist them in the construction of their network. Google has pledged to stay on and assist as they can.
The idea of Internet access for all seems like a wonderful dream, but at this time, it seems to be staying just that, a dream.
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