Philadelphia freedom

Philadelphia shook loose of its rust-belt image to make 2004 headlines for its visionary wireless broadband network. "Municipal WiFi"—using free, unlicensed airwaves and cheap, off-the-shelf radios—would cost taxpayers nothing. Private companies, given exclusive rights and specific social obligations, would hang those radios from street lights, linking local citizens to the Internet via high-speed connections. Presto! Government solves the digital divide.

The broadband duopoly—cable modems vs. telcos' DSL—had met its match. Mayor John Street triumphantly announced that "the initiative will turn Philadelphia into the nation's largest WiFi hotspot and help improve education, bridge the digital divide, enhance neighborhood development, and reduce the costs of government."

The innovation was hailed as "world changing" by public interest advocates who trumpeted "WiFi for the people." Venture capitalists dusted off their dot.com PowerPoint slides, showing the enormous opportunity. "Ultimately, it all boils down to disruptive economics," touted (PDF) one VC at a 2005 trade show. "The history of technology shows that Cheap and Good Enough always wins over expensive and purpose-built."



San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

And so city fathers everywhere said, as a fawning Washington Monthly article was titled, "let there be WiFi." San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, proclaiming broadband access "a fundamental right," majestically decreed, "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service." Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa boasted that LA's sprawl would be blanketed: "we are dedicating ourselves to the idea that universal access to technology makes our entire economy stronger."

New York City, New Orleans, Portland, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Washington D.C., Boston all moved to seed wireless clouds. Earthlink, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and a gaggle of corporate boosters joined the crusade. By Summer 2006, a law review article pronounced the issue decided: "Citywide WiFi as a public service is no longer a bureaucratic pipe dream, but has the backing of America’s technological titans."

Today the muni WiFi experiment is a shambles. The Philadelphia system was abandoned by Earthlink in June, and sold for scrap. It never performed as promised, and served fewer than 6,000 subscribers out of a population of 1.6 million. It had promised to serve tens of thousands of low-income households; the final tally of such users: 902. Those who did sign-up for $6.95 per month found slow speeds and spotty coverage. Alas, even tech-savvy early adopters eager to sip lattés while browsing via broadband were disappointed. On some occasion, it is possible that a connection strong enough to Google search results for "digital divide" was maintained, but that was likely as close as Philadelphia’s vaunted network got to impacting it.

Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago—all have gone bust. New York City, early on the bandwagon, got bogged down in politics, and now has simply given up. "We don't think municipal WiFi will succeed," offers a city official.



A WiFi repeater sitting on a streetlight

Fueled by the double helix of technological bravado and political hype, the war cry for muni WiFi was "market failure." The for-profit sector had overlooked a great opportunity to create a new broadband platform. Literally thousands of wireless Internet Service Providers exist, but evidenced scarcely a "wISP" of interest—absent a special deal with City Hall—in city-wide deployments. That might have been a clue. Markets had figured out that what links your desktop in the den to your notebook down the hall may not scale. Particularly in unlicensed frequencies, where government-set power limits are tight, and competing users impinge.

Problems engulfed deployments. Portland, Oregon residents were stunned when the ballyhooed network powered up, offering wireless Internet links only in select areas—outdoors. Citizens were offered $170 radios to boost reception inside, but not only did performance remain spotty, the price tag obliterated the "free broadband" promise. The network attracted little use, and has been abandoned by the contractor, which stuck Portland taxpayers with a $60,000 wireless node removal bill.

Tech-centric San Francisco eagerly plunged into muni WiFi. Google and its ISP partner, Earthlink, offered to develop and operate the network, promising free access. For higher speeds it would charge customers, and it would generate income from ads. San Francisco was willing to grant the firms exclusive use of city facilities. But then a "tide of requests" rolled in, according to Google, exactions demanded by the City. These included a cut of revenues and free computers for the needy. Google and Earthlink walked.