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April 13, 2007
The March of the Muni Wireless Failures
And here they come….
Lompoc, Calif., which spent $3 million on a citywide municipal wireless network reports that has signed up a whopping 281 customers since it launched service in September. That’s an investment of $10,676 for every customer, for those scoring at home. The town’s original feasibility study said the system would need 3,000 to break even. Town leaders say the system is attracting 24 customers a month. At that rate, in 12-1/2 years, Lompoc will finally be in the money.
The San Francisco Examiner reports that in Foster City, Calif., “for better or worse, a citywide free Wi-Fi Internet signal has enabled Foster City residents to take their e-mail, homework and digital assistants just about anywhere they go.”
Except in places the wireless network doesn’t, which in Foster City’s case is 40 percent of the town. The city, which contracted with MetroFi, had promised residents 95 percent coverage by now. It blames the coverage problems on the layout of homes in Foster City and the geography of the city itself, as if these factors didn’t exist when the network was originally designed.
Meanwhile, Willamette Week Online, in an article eloquently titled “Portland Wi-Fi Sucks Inside and Out, says Independent Evaluation,” reports the findings of Portland’s own Personal Telco Project.
“When the city was soliciting bids for the network’s construction, it sought 90 percent coverage within 500 feet of a WiFi point. But Personal Telco members found the network being established by Metro-Fi supplied just over 50 percent coverage.”
“‘The probability that they’re meeting the 90 percent threshold is one in a billion,’ said Russell Senior, who along with Caleb Phillips, performed the evaluation.”
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And the latest news from St. Cloud, Fla., is that the town had to replace every antenna on its network due to water damage. WiFi Net News says the change-out did not cost the city any money directly, but it did require considerable time from city employees.
These towns should feel bad. The municipal wireless system in Taipei, Taiwan, often held up by muni advocates as a paragon of government planning, engineering and efficiency worthy of U.S. emulation, has had trouble signing up enough subscribers, according to Broadband Reports, in part because of performance issues -- but also because of competition from free AP's and 3G services.
“The city predicted 250,000 users for the system but has only 30,000. Taipei, like many cities in the U.S., sees Wi-Fi as a sort of economic panacea -- a competitive edge in a global marketplace. Unfortunately the technological limitations of WiFi are making those dreams hard to attain.”
Posted by steve.titch at April 13, 2007 01:10 PM
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