1) Starting with Vivato who was claiming 2.5 miles to laptop users and that a switch could handle 1000 users. They failed to mention that they couldn’t handle more than 50 users simultaneously (the MAC address table could store 1000 users) a time or to get the 2.5 miles they had to turn off the power everywhere else on the switch making it a single beam access point. How far it went is a whole different discussion but it wasn’t 2.5 miles to a laptop in any city I know.

2) Every vendor with a single radio solution. A half-duplex radio handling users and linked in any kind of a chain has an effective bandwidth 1/4 of it’s rated maximum speed under full load. However, that’s not really mentioned anywhere in the marketing documentation.

3) Then there is the theoretical maximum number that is really UDP, not TCP/IP that is marketed in the brochure without a little asterix telling us it’s UDP. One vendor got me on that one until we tested the product. Then they admitted it.

4) Training classes for network engineers trying to teach them the basics of RF. However, very rarely did they cover the concept of attenuation. If they had, most of the cities wouldn’t have had to add twice as many access points as their original designs.

5) On that subject, who were the idiots that did the original designs? Did they not walk the areas or were the so inexperienced that they didn’t realize that a tree full of leaves has a higher attenuation factor than one without leaves. Of course there is also the, “I didn’t realize there were so many hill” statement too.

6) Consultants like Balco and Civitium that had no clue about the technology. They were touting their brilliant successes all the while having no idea how they were failing. I’m still not sure if Balco was in the pocket of HP/Tropos or if he was just incompetent but I know he screwed up the Sahuarita project so bad that they blew $300,000 dollars only to find out they didn’t have street lights to put the equipment on.

7) Government employees that were so busy congratulating themselves on getting “free” technology and so used to governments taking money from citizens that they had no clue what it takes to run a real business.

I could go on for hours with this kind of stupidity or incompetence. Hopefully our company can reinstate the idea that citywide WiFi can be implemented in a profitable manner by doing Businees 101 basics. Keep costs low, find clients, scale as needed, make sure the product delivers it’s stated value, and make sure the statement of work is clear up front.

You are forgetting to blame more of the real culprits

1)Civitium- they wrote and recycled that same RFP to everyone (scum bags, hey how is that lawsuit agianst me coming…slander, really?)
2)Esme – Had no idea what she was talking about but thought wi-fi was cool, so she helped create this wave of stupidity (dont make me start citing your push for the EL model, in retrospect you now think it was a bad idea? unreal)
3)Dinah Neff – The architect of philly deal who then took a job with Civitium after the philly project began breaking down
(ha this is the best one lololol)
4) You Glenn – for lending credence and the technical know how to convince those who had no clue and differed to your technical expertise in evaluating the feasibility of this boondoggle.

Earthlink actually lost, you four, I suspect, are still making money by riding this crashing wave to the shore. So blame others all you want but I know and you know (I hope) that you are just as guilty as EL.

Now that the 2 major egotistical idiot companies are gone along with millions of dollars of their poor sap investors, it’s going to be that much more difficult for legitimate and intelligent profitable models to be deployed. There are many areas with properly priced equipment where Wifi can make a huge difference. The problem is that the same people who make the decisions in goverment and are generally clueless about technology are going to point to this model failing. Of course it failed. Free is not a business strategy. That’s why we changed our business model when we saw what these guys were doing.

Starting over, Philadelphia has 5000-6000 paying clients. That means at least $120K in revenue per month. Get rid of the excessively overpriced equipment and outdate LEC data lines, minimize the Capex cost and there really is a reasonable business plan hidden in there somewhere. Add in other city functionality for utilies, public safety, and inspections, and gee, maybe this really works.

It’s time some intelligence gets applied back into the Wifi model. Real companies that are managed by people who really want to make money and have some clue of what a profit actually is, can now get back to work and start rebuilding the WiFi model the way it was supposed to have done. The managers like Chuck Haas and Earthlink’s wireless division managers need to go back to school and learn that businesses aren’t made by sucking up investors money until it dries up but by creating a reasonable business plan that makes a profit and has benefits for the client.