What’s Behind the Epidemic of Municipal Wi-Fi Failures?

September 4, 2007

With a rash of muni Wi-Fi projects collapsing, companies and cities realize their initial approaches to providing ubiquitous, free network connectivity aren’t working. The problem is Wi-Fi is too expensive to deploy, and there’s not enough user demand.

THE DREAM OF wireless networks bathing U.S. cities in free and pervasive internet access has come to an end, at least for now. As the number of failed or stalled municipal wireless projects continues to rise, the focus has shifted from closing the so-called digital divide to why plans for such networks, in only a year’s time, seem to be dissolving almost daily.

Last week, San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis all announced significant and perhaps fatal roadblocks in their municipal Wi-Fi projects.

“Frankly, I’m not surprised at all,” said Dewayne Hendricks of Tetherless Access, a provider of metropolitan wireless-networking services. “It’s been clear this was going to happen for a while now.”