To Σικάγο εγκαταλείπει τα δαπανηρά σχέδια για το δημοτικό Wi-Fi

[lewton]

Οι υπεύθυνοι του δήμου του Σικάγο ακύρωσαν τα σχέδια για τη δημιουργία ενός δικτύου Wi-Fi που θα κάλυπτε όλη την πόλη, ονομάζοντας ως αιτίες το κόστος της κατασκευής του δικτύου και την αυξημένη πιθανότητα να μην προσελκύσει το ενδιαφέρον του κοινού.

Ύστερα από τις συζητήσεις που είχαν με διάφορες εταιρίες, συνειδητοποίησαν ότι το ποσό που θα απαιτούσε ένα Wi-Fi δίκτυο έκτασης 228 τετραγωνικών μιλίων ήταν εκτός των δυνατοτήτων τους. Σε αυτό συνέβαλαν τα οικονομικά προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζει η EarthLink, η εταιρία με έδρα την Ατλάντα που έδειξε το μεγαλύτερο ενδιαφέρον για το σχέδιο, και η οποία πρόσφατα μείωσε το εργατικό δυναμικό της περίπου στο μισό.

Το Σικάγο δεν είναι η πρώτη αμερικανική πόλη που αναγκάζεται να βάλει φρένο στα σχέδιά της για δημοτικό Wi-Fi δίκτυο που θα καλύπτει ολόκληρη την έκτασή της, καθώς και άλλες προσπάθειες έχουν κολλήσει στο μεγάλο κόστος ενός τέτοιου έργου.

Ωστόσο οι κάτοικοι της πόλης θα έχουν σχετικά σύντομα την ευκαιρία να δοκιμάσουν ευρυζωνικό ασύρματο Internet, καθώς η πόλη τους είναι μια από τις τρεις πρώτες πόλεις όπου θα τεθεί σε λειτουργία το WiMax δίκτυο της εταιρίας κινητής τηλεφωνίας Sprint.

Πηγή: computerworld.com

[Kongas]

τώρα μάλιστα

[whitecat]

αν δεν υπηρχε η προοπτικη του Wi-max θα το εγκατελειπαν αραγε?
προβληματισμο καταθετω....

[lewton]

Και στο Houston:

EarthLink pays $5 million to delay Houston Wi-Fi buildout

A day after EarthLink said it would lay off nearly half its workforce, the company has agreed to pay the city of Houston a $5 million penalty fee for missing its first deadline in building the city's municipal Wi-Fi network.

Houston Mayor Bill White announced the settlement with EarthLink at a Houston City Council meeting on Wednesday. EarthLink, which had agreed to blanket nearly 640 square miles of Houston with Wi-Fi service, failed to meet its first deadline by not signing an agreement with CenterPoint Energy to lease its utility poles for the Wi-Fi project.

"EarthLink appeared to try to discharge their contract obligations by not signing the agreement with the electric utility," said Richard White, the city's chief information officer. "But now they've decided to settle the dispute."

Once EarthLink signs this contract, a two-year time clock will start ticking for the company to build and complete the construction of the wireless network.

Now EarthLink will have nine months to sign the utility contract and start construction. During this time EarthLink may reconsider how it will fund the project, which is expected to cost somewhere between $40 million and $50 million. EarthLink declined to comment on the deal.

The city of Houston is also free to consider proposals from other vendors during this nine-month period. And it could decide to dump EarthLink as its provider if it gets a better offer from somewhere else. White has indicated that he won't be soliciting new bids, but he will consider unsolicited proposals.

EarthLink's stall tactics come as the company tries to figure out what to do with its municipal Wi-Fi strategy. The company's former CEO Garry Betty saw Wi-Fi as a growth engine for the future, as the company's traditional dial-up business withers. But since Betty's untimely and sudden death in January, the company's priorities have shifted.

Rolla Huff, the new CEO since June, is now focusing on returning shareholder value. And in addition to the massive cuts across the company announced Tuesday, he has also scaled back investment in new citywide Wi-Fi projects until the company comes up with a more viable business model that doesn't require EarthLink to foot the entire bill for building these networks.

Huff has said publicly that the company is committed to fulfilling its existing contract obligations. But this latest skirmish with Houston is an indication that EarthLink may be trying to get out of some of these deals, too.

In the short term, it makes sense for EarthLink to get out of its contract with Houston. The Wi-Fi network in Houston will cost roughly three times more than what it's costing to build a similar network in Philadelphia, and the networks will serve roughly the same number of residents. But unlike Philadelphia, Houston has already agreed to be an anchor tenant and pay about $500,000 a year for Wi-Fi services for the first five years the network is in operation. And Houston will likely increase its spending on Wi-Fi services as it mobilizes more workers, said Lewis.

For now, it looks like EarthLink has nine months to figure out if it wants to continue with the Wi-Fi project or whether it's going to abandon it. As for the city of Houston, regardless of what EarthLink decides, the city will move forward with a wireless network.

"It's hard to say if EarthLink will be the company to build the network," Lewis said. "But wireless is the future. And wired infrastructure is the past. For us it just means that we may not have our wireless infrastructure in place as early as we had hoped."

[lewton]

Και στο San Francisco:

Free San Francisco Wi-Fi project dies
Posted by Marguerite Reardon

EarthLink said late Wednesday that it is bailing out of a contract to build San Francisco's free Wi-Fi service.

EarthLink backed out of the deal a day after the company announced it was laying off 900 employees--nearly half of its staff. EarthLink, which is trying to get its finances in order, announced earlier this summer that it would not invest in any new citywide Wi-Fi deployments until it came up with a better business model.

But it was assumed the company would fulfill obligations with cities where it had already signed contracts. Now it looks like EarthLink is trying to get out of any deal where it hasn't already begun construction, even if it has a signed contract.

Earlier on Wednesday, the city of Houston announced that EarthLink had agreed to pay a $5 million penalty to the city for not meeting its first deadline for building its wireless network. EarthLink has nine months to start construction or figure out a way to get out of the contract altogether.

And now, the company has also dissolved its contract with San Francisco, which was approved in January but was awaiting final approval from San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.

Under the contract signed in January, EarthLink would have paid the city $2 million for the right to build, install and run a free Wi-Fi network that would be supported through advertising from Google. EarthLink was also going to offer a paid service that offered higher-speed connections for $20 per month.

Earlier this summer the Board of Supervisors tried to tweak the contract, asking for changes in three areas. First, it wanted EarthLink to increase the speed of the free tier of service to 500 kilobits per second. It also asked EarthLink to reduce the length of the contract from 16 years to eight years. And finally, it asked EarthLink to extend privacy provisions it offered for its paid service to the free service.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who had stated publicly that he felt the current contract was sufficient, blamed the Board of Supervisors for dragging its feet and blowing the deal.

He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "I'm disappointed because we had a chance to get it done, and it didn't happen.The board delayed it, and now EarthLink could not be more pleased."

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said the mayor was completely wrong in his assignment of blame.

"The mayor wanted us to rush into a deal that was half-baked," he said. "And now he's trying to cover his tracks instead of looking at the real reason this deal fell through which is the fact that EarthLink is having a complete financial meltdown."

Mirkarimi said that it was EarthLink and not the Board of Supervisors that delayed the contract approval. He said that the supervisors were simply trying to get EarthLink to answer questions about the contract.

"They were dragging their feet all summer," he said. "I would expect a company that is trying to do business with the city of San Francisco to really be wooing us. So we knew there was something going on with the company. And it turns out our instincts were right."

EarthLink was expected to appear before the Board of Supervisors on September 12th. And a final vote was expected at that time.

EarthLink declined to comment further on the San Francisco deal. But earlier this week, EarthLink's new CEO, Rolla Huff, told CNET News.com that its citywide Wi-Fi business doesn't make sense for the company right now. He said the company needs to come up with a new business model before it spends anymore money to build these networks.

"We simply have not found a way in the old business model to make a return on our investment," Huff said in the interview. "We need to get our cost structure right, so we aren't burning so much cash that shareholders want to get out of the market altogether. We need to make it a valuable option. We have a real interest in ultimately making municipal Wi-Fi successful."

[kennyyy]

Μόνο το mountain view θα μείνει στο τέλος με το (άθλιο κατά βάσην, αλλά απτο τίποτα...!) free wi-fi
Μήπως παίζει πάντως λίγο μεγαλύτερο ρόλο η αντίρρηση που φέρνει κάθε telecom μπροστά στα Δημοτικά Δίκτυα;!...
Συν το wimax, συν το κόστος χωρίς προφανές revenue stream etc...