MuniWireless

Businessweek has an article about ViaEuropa, a Swedish company that manages the fiber networks of sixty Swedish cities, based on the open access model. The chairman of ViaEuropa is Jonas Birgersson, a flamboyant (by Swedish standards) entrepreneur, who in the late 1990s, started several companies including Bredbandbolaget (an Internet service provider) which he sold to Norwegian telco, Telenor, for $730 million.

Birgersson wonders why the US does not move to the open access model, which creates more competition in the market…

Glenn Strachan has written an article about what he thinks is wrong with the US view of municipal Wi-Fi. While the title of his piece seems to focus on wireless, the article itself deals with America’s failings in broadband:

“In my opinion, America has the wrong view of broadband. It doesn’t see the connection between broadband deployment and national economic gains. It doesn’t consider, the way other countries do, that the people in rural communities, not just large cities, can leverage…

While Naperville, Illinois has said no to free Wi-Fi, San Francisco is forging ahead, this time riding on the coattails of Meraki, a Mountain View based company, whose goal is to cover the city with free Wi-Fi access. Meraki has begun providing free Wi-Fi service to the Altamont Hotel and Dunleavy Plaza, two of the city’s low-income housing projects. They plan to extend coverage to other areas in the city. Already parts of the Mission, Noe Valley and Bernal Heights…

Naperville, Illinois has decided not to  take over the Wi-Fi network deployed by MetroFi after the company abandoned its plans to offer Wi-Fi service in a number of US cities, including Portland, Oregon. Taking over the network would have required Naperville to invest $3.7 million. Unless another ISP takes over the network, residents will no longer have free Wi-Fi access after June.

Related stories:

MetroFi selling muni Wi-Fi networks in Portland and other cities

Aurora, Naperville, networks won’t be built out

St. Louis Park, Minnesota has filed a lawsuit against Arinc, the company it hired to deploy a citywide Wi-Fi network, for damages and attorney’s fees exceeding $1.7 million. St. Louis Park, unlike other cities deploying these networks, chose to use solar-powered Wi-Fi nodes, in a project that was considered bold and ground-breaking. Now the city is dismantling those nodes (what a waste of time and money).

Arinc says that the project is only delayed and that the city was premature in…