Philly's WiFi experience so far

There's good news and not-so-good news in this story on Philadelphia's experience with municipal WiFi as provided by EarthLink.

Testing by the Houston Chronicle and a private consulting company show that the first phase of Philadelphia's project works -- most of the time. But while the technology only needs tweaking, the company likely has a bigger obstacle to overcome: residents' skepticism.

Some residents say they won't subscribe because they found the service to be unreliable months ago, when EarthLink was still making significant adjustments. Both EarthLink and a private consulting company say the service has since improved, but those potential customers say they don't plan to give it another shot.

"It's pretty useless," said Joanna Bacelli, a 21-year-old Temple University student who lives off campus and tried unsuccessfully to get an EarthLink signal in the past. She doubts the service is any better now.

But in much of the area where the network is up and running, it does work, at least for outdoor users.

Signal strength varies significantly depending on the user's proximity to an access node, but online speed tests show the connection speed averages about 1 Mbps, sometimes a bit slower. That's fast enough for the average user to surf the Internet, check e-mail and watch videos on YouTube.

In some areas, however, the signal is weak, particularly when an access node isn't within sight. At several locations, including two free hotspots, this reporter's computer couldn't connect to the network even though the signal appeared to be strong and an access node was clearly visible.

[...]

A review of the EarthLink network by a consulting group called Novarum Inc. showed the service has improved in the last six months and now ranks as "one of the better performing metro WiFi networks deployed so far."

Using a laptop equipped with a standard WiFi card, the same equipment available to most residential customers, Novarum found the service in early June to be reliable at 74 percent of the outdoor locations tested. Back in December, just before EarthLink began its monthlong trial phase when it offered free service, the group found the network's first 6-square-mile coverage area reliable at only half the locations tested. Cell phone networks, by comparison, are usually reliable in about 85 percent of the coverage area, the group reported.

"Our experience the second time through was that it was much better," said Phil Belanger, Novarum's managing director. "So we think they're making the appropriate investment to improve the network."

Basically, it sounds like the technology has lagged the marketing a bit. There's nothing terribly unusual about that - there's a reason the word "vaporware" exists - but it is potentially worrisome for EarthLink's business plan. As with the technology itself, I hope they use this experience to figure out how to do it better here in Houston. We shouldn't suffer the same early-adopter problems as Philly (thanks for beta testing for us, by the way).

Dwight has more. I too will be interested to see how EarthLink rolls it out here in Houston, both in terms of what their progression will be and how they structure the promotional phase. We ought to know pretty quickly how well they've learned the lessons Philadelphia has given them.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 18, 2007 to Technology, science, and math