MuniWireless

The city council of Anaheim, California voted to terminate EarthLink’s franchise for a municipal wireless broadband network. Under the termination agreement between Anaheim and EarthLink, the company is required to take down all of the wireless equipment installed on poles and other city property.

EarthLink has pulled out of the muni Wi-Fi market and stopped all of its projects in the US. In Philadelphia, a group of local investors took over EarthLink’s network, which is already deployed in some neighborhoods.

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I hate to resurrect old posts but I’ll make an exception here. This week the Wall Street Journal wrote a very flattering article about ConnectKentucky’s existing plan to bring broadband to Kentucky. While the ConnectKentucky model has its merits, it falls short in so many other ways and is NOT the best model for bringing 21st century broadband to the United States. Here’s an excerpt from an article written by Jim Baller several months ago arguing why ConnectKentucky does not…

Arezzo, Italy is working with FON to bring municipal Wi-Fi service across the city. Arezzo will install FON in strategic locations and encourage people to share their connections. Visitors and locals who are not Foneros can still access the network for free (for 15 min) by watching a 15 second ad or they can buy a daily pass for 3 Euros.

Arezzo is a beautiful, historic town in Tuscany which is very popular destination among people who are staying in Florence,…

I have been thinking of getting the new 3G iPhone, but refuse to stand in line with the rest of the Apple fanboys and fangirls. Today my resistance nearly broke down until I read an article by Susan Hanley about why she returned the iPhone after only six days. She must have been the only person rushing to the Apple store to return the device. Why did she return it? Lousy battery life, expensive battery replacement, poor synchronization with Outlook…

EarthLink says it wants to merge with other ISPs, possibly AOL, to keep its dial-up business alive. Although the company had a profit of $53 million in the second quarter of 2008, it had 30% fewer dial-up subscribers than last year with a significant drop (21%) in revenue. EarthLink pulled out of the municipal wireless business and its joint venture with SK Telecom, the MVNO called Helio. EarthLink lost a lot of money on Helio. They invested more than $200…

The Manchester (UK) City Council wants to extend the Eastserve project’s wireless broadband network to cover the entire city. It has issued a public tender for a citywide wireless network. The deadline for submissions is 8 August 2008; the city will announce the winning bid on 25 August 2008. Go to the Manchester City website for more information about the wireless broadband project. If you just want to view the documents, I have posted here the invitation to tender and…