The Muni Wi-Fi Future Deferred

I'm way into this municipal wi-fi thing. See, I believe the opportunity to be driven mad by wireless glitches should be available to all of the people, not just those of us lucky enough to have their own balky home/office Linksys routers.

(Balky Home/Office Linksys Router Update: I got my old Linksys Wireless-G router -- it of the miracle "push-button configuration" -- working again merely by holding down the reset button in the back for about five seconds. Such a simple solution! How could I have been so dumb? Oh wait, I also tried this trick with my new, identical Linksys Wireless-G router -- even muttering the same exact incantation -- and zilch. If I can't get it working by week's end, I will pursue a leveraged buyout of Linksys parent Cisco Systems. Just try to stop me.)

So it's disappointing to hear that EarthLink's financial woes not only are resulting in the layoff of 900 employees, but are delaying the ISP's ambitious plans to continue building municipal wi-fi networks that blanket entire cities.

From PC World:

EarthLink has been reining in its municipal efforts since earlier this year. Most recently, in July, the company said it would not take on any new municipal Wi-Fi projects until it's confident of a reasonable return. ...

EarthLink's troubles point to a couple of problems with many of the municipal Wi-Fi business plans, said Phil Solis, an analyst at ABI Research. "The whole premise of doing municipal Wi-Fi was that it would be extremely low cost," he said. "But the low-cost assumptions were built on having 30 or 40 Wi-Fi [access points] per square mile." In practice, operators found they might need as many as 100, which changed the economics, he said.

Those damned business models! No one had to worry about those things during the late '90s. Well, even if it's not EarthLink, municipal wi-fi is bound to happen eventually. The public will demand it, just as it demanded water, electricity and American Idol.