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Municipal Broadband Efforts Succeed Despite Wi-Fi Meltdown

April 27, 2009 By Andy Opsahl

Given the implosion of the national municipal Wi-Fi craze, what should local governments that are still seeking some form of municipal broadband do next? The good news is they don't have to start from scratch. Not all the municipal-broadband efforts of the past few years failed:

The municipal fiber-optic network in Bristol, Va., earned the city a spot on the Intelligent Community Forum's Top Seven list of "most intelligent communities" -- the only U.S. city to make the cut. Bristol's network offers broadband, cable TV and telephone service.
Corpus Christi, Texas, purchased back its Wi-Fi network from EarthLink after the company left the muni-broadband business. The project saves the city money because the network is used for electronic-meter reading.
A government-installed Wi-Fi network in Greene County, N.C., diversified a local economy once reliant on tobacco.
And connectivity in downtown Houston that lets citizens pay for street parking with credit cards paid for itself after six months.

Where many highly publicized wireless failures -- like those in Philadelphia and San Francisco -- went wrong was relying on vendors' promises to build free networks in exchange for Wi-Fi transmitter space on city streetlights, towers and other assets. Vendors hoped the networks would create a bonanza of consumer broadband subscriptions that would pay for the installation costs.

Industry wisdom appears to have boiled down to this: Cities can't treat municipal-broadband networks like trendy clothes. As peer pressure to install municipal Wi-Fi networks grew, cities became convinced they needed municipal Wi-Fi to be "cutting edge."

Instead, successful municipal wireless networks fulfill specific community needs. Municipal broadband hasn't worked for every city, but for the ones in which it does, the advantages can be transformational.

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