A different model for delivering WiFi

13th Floor contemplates the death of Philadelphia's municipal WiFi service and wonders if there might be a better way to deliver the same thing.

Sipping my coffee and tapping out e-mails at Powell's Books, I couldn't help thinking about a proposal made last month by Esme Vos, the Wi-Fi evangelist who founded the MuniWireless blog. A few weeks back, she looked into a cup of cappuccino at a San Francisco coffee shop and saw a way that city could have gone about creating wide-reaching Wi-Fi network for its citizens:

"San Francisco could have required cafes to install Wi-Fi networks and also required them to offer Wi-Fi service free of charge to the public. Then, companies such as FON, could have offered these free (or cheap) FON access points. ISPs would have competed for their business or even done very interesting bundled deals that would have resulted in cafes getting cheap broadband service. Users could rate and rank the cafes based on the quality of their broadband service like they rate them today on the quality of their cakes, coffees, muffins, bagels, etc.

"If San Francisco had done this two years ago, there would be Wi-Fi in nearly every part of the city without going through the RFP process, the lengthy period of setting up access points, without a provider having to spend millions of dollars on equipment and installation."

My most creative ideas are generally coffee-fueled too. In this case, however, Vos's Wi-Fi mandate probably would not sell well in most U.S. towns and cities. Plus it would not bridge the "caffeine divide" -- the gap between those neighborhoods that have a Starbucks on every corner and those that do not.

But the concept of tapping the desire for fast and affordable Internet access among small businesses, including plenty of mom-and-pop shops, as a way help spread broadband access in communities that need it is certainly worthy of a few stirs. And Vos might really be on to something with the idea of offering a tax credit, rather than a mandate, as an incentive for those businesses to share their connectivity -- as first suggested by Vos's friend and fellow blogger Andy Abramson of VoIP Watch.

An "enterprise zone" for wireless broadband? Hmmm... I'll order another cup and ponder that some more.

It's an interesting idea, one that deserves some consideration as cities like Houston plan their next moves in this space. It wouldn't cost anything up front for the city, and it could reach places that weren't originally on the priority list a lot faster than a city-directed rollout would have. Seems like a reasonably low-risk thing to study and maybe pilot. What do you think? Thanks to William Pate for the tip.

On a side note, it looks like the presumed-dead Philly WiFi experiment may not be dead after all.

A group of local investors will rescue the city's trailblazing wireless network from what seemed like imminent shutdown, with a new for-profit company that will replace Earthlink Inc. as the system's operator, according to multiple sources close to the deal.

Although the details of the deal were unclear yesterday, the new company is said to be considering an advertising-based business model that would provide free Internet access to all, or at least in those places where the spotty network is available. Earthlink charged $20 a month for the service.

[...]

Though it remains to be seen if the new company can turn a profit, its business model is not at all like Earthlink's. In addition to advertising income, the company is likely to pursue paying institutional subscribers such as hospitals and universities. Those institutions could extend their own secure internal networks into the city over the wireless system, for a price.

I don't know how well this reboot will work, but good luck to them for trying. Link via Dwight on Twitter.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 18, 2008 to Technology, science, and math