The Philadelphia experiment: Making muni Wi-Fi work
Wireless Philadelphia has not been without its problems. But, unlike a number of muni Wi-Fi deployments that are struggling to get off the ground, the one in Philadelphia is nearing completion and is starting to deliver on the promise of digital inclusion. Wireless Philadelphia CEO Greg Goldman talked with us about the challenges ahead.Not long ago, we featured an address by Greg Goldman on keeping the dream of overcoming the digital divide alive in Philadelphia. Since then, I spoke with Greg, CEO of Wireless Philadelphia, about the organization’s abilty to do just that, the peculiar chemistry that contributed to its successes, and the challenges ahead.
Wireless Philadelphia, you’ll recall, was the organization that spurred interest in municipal Wi-Fi as a means of addressing the digital divide. Its goal was to deploy low-cost high-speed Wi-Fi networks to bring last-mile connectivity to underserved populations in one of the largest cities in the U.S.
Like any effort to deploy muni Wi-Fi, Wireless Philadelphia has had its share of problems. Early on, network performance was spotty and EarthLink, the group’s service provider, had to nearly double the number of nodes per square mile. The network probably won’t meet its goal for completion this year but it’s remained close to schedule; presently, Greg reports, the build-out is about two-thirds complete. The original goal, to deploy a city-run free Wi-Fi network, yielded to a public-private model in which the non-profit Wireless Philadelphia partnered with EarthLink; service is not free but persons who qualify for the digital inclusion rate pay only $6.95 for the first three months and $9.95 thereafter.
There’s been some amount of grousing about the differences between the original model and the outcome. But outcomes in most ventures rarely match original intentions and, as a non-profit, it seems that Wireless Philadelphia has been surprisingly productive in ways that a pure city-funded model might not.
It succeeded in raising the funds needed to provide free computers to qualifying low-income families.Goldman attributes the group’s success in that area to its status as a non-profit. The group’s 501C3 status, he says “qualifies us as a social-mission entity. It’s not about a company or a commodity. It’s about a civic vision and, at a transactional level, it’s about a needed social service.” He doubts that Wireless Philadelphia would have generated the community and philanthropic support it’s achieved “if there was a guardianship laced in a for-profit entity.”
Similarly, he says, “there is no way it would survive if it resided in the mayor’s office or some other public agency.” Indeed, muni Wi-Fi was outgoing Mayor John Street’s pet project; mayor-elect Michael Nutter has never perceived it as a city priority. Additionally, its independence has given the group status within a foundation community that has made significant financial contributions toward its goals.
“So many entities and individuals have bought into what we’re trying to say–that people in transitional housing need computers and network access. Young mothers moving from welfare to work need computers and network access,” says Greg. “People understand this is an issue and we have raised the awareness and the profile of this issue in this community. There is a well of good feeling, overall, toward Wireless Philadelphia in the Philadelphia community.”
The advantage of being the front-runner in the digital divide crusade also cannot be under-estimated. Philadelphia was way ahead of other cities in promoting the need to address the digital divide, largely due to the efforts of its then CIO Diana Neff. “We are definitely benefiting from that,” says Greg, “but the other shoe is that this thing was pretty well hyped. We’re dealing with a set of very high expectations that we’re having a hard time maintaining.”
Perhaps. But the group has already far outdistanced my original expectation (and this is where your humble commentator eats some serious crow). Back in 2005 when Wireless Philadelphia was little more than a dream on a drawing board and I was a wireless editorialist at eWEEK, I wrote that the only thing larger than Philadelphia’s ambitions were the challenges it faced in achieving them. I, frankly, doubted that a city as big, as political, and as struggling as Philadelphia was in so many ways could make much headway at all. The city’s crime and poverty rates were and are daunting; the notoriety of its politics span generations. So today, it’s really quite heart-warming to be able to say I was wrong. Two-and-a-half years later, Wireless Philadelphia is not only scoring successes in addressing the digital divide, it continues the drive toward its goals when similar groups in communities like Sacramento, a fraction of Philadelphia’s size with a fraction of its problems, are struggling.
No doubt, Wireless Philadelphia was in the unique position of being the brightest star in EarthLink’s business plan at a time when the company was staking its future on the muni market. As such, its build-out was well ahead of cities that partnered much later with EarthLink and saw their build-outs go on hold when the company restructured in August. EarthLink scored several high-profile successes in the market. It achieved a high J.D. Powers ranking for customer satisfaction in both broadband and dial-up Internet services this year and its Philadelphia network won the Most Improved award in Novarum’s recent performance rankings. Wireless Philadelphia shared in the glow of those honors. But Goldman says that, in some ways, the group’s early successes have just escalated the challenges.
Despite recent moves to reduce its presence in the muni market elsewhere, EarthLink has said it is committed to honoring its 10-year contract with Wireless Philadelphia. On the flipside, says Greg, “we’re working with longer than expected time tables and working out bugs in the technology and customer services. A big part of what we have to do is level-set peoples’ expectations.”
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I am one of the owners of O3 World, the branding and web development company that has been working with Wireless Philadelphia on many levels for over a year. I very much appreciate the positive nature of your article, and that you even admitted your initial response to this initiative was off based.
This is a city brimming with negativity, and this is one of those things that should be welcomed by the community, not scorned. So many people seem to want it to fail, and by having that attitude and sharing those sentiments, they are slowing the momentum of an otherwise progressive movement run by an incredibly efficient non profit group in Wireless Philadelphia.
There are a variety of factors going against this initiative: being the first of its kind and having a corporate partner in a distant city are just a couple. Not to mention, I think people are completely underestimating the technical complexities of this. Philadelphia is the first with this….because this is an incredibly difficult challenge no other city had the courage to take on.
It would be nice if Wireless Philadelphia got the credit its due, and the city, frankly, would get off their back and got on track with providing a solution and helping, instead of being another naysayer. It doesn’t take much effort nor much courage to knock a cause, but it takes a lot of that, and a whole lot more to make a positive contribution. And as a city, we should be doing so collectively.
As a close observer of the Wirless Philadelphia, I’ve supported it, but I’ve also tried to point out where it could be better or where WP made mistakes that other communities can learn from. I agree that Philadelphia can be a tough place to take initiative and an easy place to pile on the negative, but the bland cheerleading that characterized the early support is almost as bad. That’s still all we hear in every article about the project, rather than solid information on the steps WP has taken to address its shortcomings.
There are two misrepresentations above that typify the problems with WP. First, it is absurd to say that Wireless Philadelphia has “remained close to schedule.” Which schedule? The only way WP has been able to make this claim over the past three years is by revising the schedule every three months. Since the original Executive Committee report, which completed its work in 90 days, the project has missed every single deadline it set for itself.
In an interview I did with Greg Goldman in October 2006, he said the proof of concept would be up by December 1 of that year, with approval and start of buildout a small number of weeks after that, and the completion of the entire network by October 2007. The POC was not approved until this May and now Goldman says, “The network probably won‚Äôt meet its goal for completion this year.”
In itself, the missed deadlines are not a big deal, or at least they are to be expected; I acknowledge the challenges of such a pioneering effort. The problem is that WP consistently insists it is on schedule rather than giving a straight answer about what they’re doing with their time. This contributes to the unnecessarily high expectations Goldman complains about. Their lapses in communication while their self-imposed deadlines pass by have also undermined the project by losing momentum and giving the nattering nabobs more of a chance to complain.
The second misrepresentation is in the comment above from Keith of O3 World (who built a beautiful website for WP that greatly improved the flow of information). Whatever it is or has done, Wireless Philadelphia is not “an incredibly efficient non profit group.” With its overhead, debt service, and payments for Earthlink’s electricity bill, none of WP’s share of EarthLink’s revenue is going to close the digital divide in Philadelphia.
WP does not provide any direct service, instead brokering subcontracts with existing providers. That’s a better approach than competing with those existing service providers, but it still puts WP in the position of a middleman, adding inefficiency to the system. They can make up for these inefficiencies by raising a lot of new money for Digital Inclusion programs, but that doesn’t make them efficient.
I want to give Wireless Philadelphia the credit it’s due ‚Äì including getting anything done in that complicated city and in the face of intense pressure from incumbents ‚Äì but that doesn’t mean we should give it a free pass.
Link to the Greg Goldman interview (in the above comment) is not working, please click here:
http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/103037
The headline of this article is misleading. Philadelphia has gotten some residents low-cost Internet access, but it certainly hasn’t made “muni Wi-Fi work.” Come to Philly and try to actually get Wi-Fi inside your apartment. (Not outside, mind you.) I dare you.
Goldman always acts as if he’s the head of a charitable organization, not of a utility or the overseer of a utility. If Wireless Philadelphia were fulfilling its promise, Earthlink would have tens of thousands of new full-rate subscribers, and the digital divide subscribers would make up a noteworthy but minor fraction of the total subscriber base. Would Earthlink spend $20 million or however much to get a couple thousand people on subsidized Wi-Fi? (By the way, no one knows how WP is really doing because Earthlink refuses to release subscriber numbers.)
The real story here, as Philly’s local weeklies have reported, is that Wi-Fi was supposed to provide a citywide alternative to the Comcast and Verizon monopolies, and the technology has proved inadequate in the places where it’s already built out. It wasn’t promised as a way to read parking meters, and god forbid if police or firefighters were to depend on it for communication. It wasn’t supposed to be a pretty but useless first adopter that tech pundits could crow about it and give awards. It was supposed to give us a less expensive, more accessible way to get online – all of us, whether poor or not so poor, and in that respect it is a crashing disappointment.
Will a gradual groundswell of subscriptions provide Earthlink, in a couple years, with the millions in annual revenue it was originally expecting? Or, a decade from now, will we all be shaking our heads at the folly of Wi-Fi and celebrating the city’s wisdom at not financing the buildout itself? I’m a wireless enthusiast, but I’m also betting on the latter.
Philly wireless does not work.I can connect to service only half the time. Only 10% of that is good, so I know it,s not my equipment.I get no help from earthlink.I am not alone.