Muni-fi Madness!

My former colleague Cord Blomquist has a helpful post on the blundering efforts of San Francisco to set up city-run wi-fi:

Over the last two years, San Francisco has been in negotiations with Earthlink who, in partnership with Google, has had plans to build a Wi-Fi “cloud” over the 47 sq. mile geek-infested city. The goal, set out in 2005, was to blanket the city with 1,500 wireless hot-spots which would be accessible free of charge, supported by ads from Google. For those who wanted faster, ad-free service, a subscription fee could be paid.

Now rumors are circulating that Earthlink is pulling out of the deal, while the San Fran government is moving forward with a non-binding referendum in September that will presumably decide the fate of this boondoggle.

But San Franciscans needn’t worry. According to a 2005 paper by Steven Titch of the Heartland Institute the number of San Fran hot-spots that year was 396 (making it the #1 Wi-Fi city in the country). The latest jiwire.com numbers show that number is now over 800. It seems that hot-spots are following Moore’s law and doubling in 2 years!

With over 800 public hot-spots (halfway to Earthlink’s goal) already covering this 47 square mile area, why should the city give away special privileges to Earthlink for a city-wide build-out? The competitive marketplace is already taking care of spreading the wireless love around the city. Why not open up the city to more competition by easing right of way access, eliminating or cutting taxes associated with Wi-Fi installation, and opening exclusive franchising? Rather than looking backward and modeling themselves after past state-run follies, cities could take a leading role in increasing competition.

I’m sort of baffled that cities are still pursuing these projects after all the failures they’ve resulted in.  Oh sure, free internet everywhere sounds nice in theory, but it rarely benefits the poor and lower-class residents it’s primarily pitched at—most of them don’t have expensive wi-fi enabled laptops.  Just look at how things turned out in Orlando: 

Orlando’s downtown wireless district pilot project was launched in January 2004 and provided free Internet access to computer users in a downtown area including Lake Eola Park, Wall Street Plaza and parts of Orange Avenue. It was designed to support as many as 200 users at once, but only about 27 people a day were using it. City officials kept the system running for 17 months–long past the initially planned six-month trial period–but eventually concluded that low user rates didn’t justify the $1,800 per month it took to keep the system running.

 
$1,800 a month so a handful of laptop owners could lounge in the park and mooch off the city’s internet connection—there’s bureaucracy for you.