Philadelphia WiFi shuts down. What's next for Municipal WiFi Networks?

On May 13th EarthLink announced that is shutting down Philadelphia WiFi Network. Philadelphia WiFi Network has been often referenced as a unique business case of cheap municipal wireless broadband network; and it was started with a lot of fanfare. Yet, the facts proved otherwise.

Most of the analysts argue that it was EarthLink’s business model that was flawed, not necessarily the concept of municipal (wireless) broadband. The failure of many other EarthLink’s wireless projects (New Orleans, Corpus Christi, Texas, Milpitas, California & San Francisco[1]) increases the weight of this argument.

According to Glenn Fleishman “The failure in Philadelphia, and EarthLink’s exiting the entire muni-Fi business, represents the end of a bad model in which a company agreed to assume all risk and costs associated with building a public access network. When the assumptions were that networks would be cheaper and easier to build in 2005, and that citizens in many larger cities had few affordable broadband options, it made some sense to build a network on spec.”

“Three years into this, however, it’s clear that that capital investment is 2 to 3 times higher than what was anticipated to reach a level of service quality that people will expect; that, when presented with potential competition, DSL and cable operators will slash prices and offer cheap 1-year or “lifetime” rates with long-term contracts; and that wireless broadband delivered via Wi-Fi isn’t the best of ideas for indoor service.”

I would add that the short depreciation period (and expected ROI) of electronic equipment used makes WiFi business models very susceptible to miscalculations and bad decisions[2].

Nevertheless, municipal support to a broadband operator has to go much further than just letting the operator freely, at low or no cost installing the infrastructure. The municipal use of the network for back-end or front end operations (as an anchor tenant – as proposed in academic and business literature[3]) can provide the operator with

• significant incentive (i.e. a source of revenue for a pre-arranged period of time) to sustain its business during the first months (or years) of operation (where low penetration, limited brand recognition and reputation prevails) and
• certain degree of financial and operational flexibility to timely plan the expansion to the (business and residential) market.

In Greece, local governments are currently covering IT expenses through infrastructure/services funding projects such as “ΣΥΖΕΥΞΙΣ”. In this perspective, the transfer of all these services offered today to the new broadband infrastructures (FTTx & Wireless) that are currently announced, scheduled, under construction or completed throughout the country[4] may not be such a bad idea[5].

I will finish up in a more optimistic note. The WiFi Dinosaur is Dead – Make Room for the Mammals is an article providing a different view in municipal WiFi prospects:

“What reporters are not writing about is the other side of this story, the hundreds of communities in which networks are living up to their potential. Here in Lawrence, Kansas home of the 100,000 raving Jayhawk fans, the municipal WiFi network is not only healthy – it’s thriving.”