Let's face it, the business model that Earthlink and a few others took for Muni WiFi sucked wind in most places. San Francisco still doesn't even have a test site. Chicago is wireless-less while other cities that pursued a different plan like Minneapolis all have seemed to at least deploy. I'll admit in Philadelphia Earthlink is up and running, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that network get taken over by Comcast or Verizon at some point down the road at the request of the city, once Earthlink says No Mas.
For the past two years I have been both a champion for Muni-WiFi and at the same time verbally critical to those in the industry for the approach that was taken by the big players.
Going into markets where broadband was available was the wrong model. Creating systems that work only two stories high, and barely penetrate walls deeper than the first window basically created a service that I have dubbed "Homeless Wireless." Even in the city of my birth, unless I'm outside getting on the Feather by Earthlink network inside the city's finest restaurants is such a challenge, and is so consistently inconsistent, I end up using my 3G cards from either AT&T, Verizon Wireless or Sprint.
Too much money was spent seeking to make the networks end to end, city wide. Instead the cities should have been taking the approach of the creation of hot zones that really worked, and the system builders should have looked at communities where broadband wasn't broadly available.
That's why I'm actually intrigued by the move in New York City that CBS made this week. Leveraging their already installed asset, a network of outdoor billboard, the media company has in affect created their own advertising network within a 20 block radius. That means if you want access, you watch CBS sold commercials, see CBS content, but then get access to the Net.
This is a brilliant idea. With one move, CBS has bypassed the carriers, circumvented the municipality and because WiFi is in unlicensed spectrum, basically become free of the FCC for what they broadcast over the network. They have in effect made their billboards worth much more than anyone else's.
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