MuniWireless

The municipal wireless broadband network in Longmont, Colorado has finally gone live. DHB Networks, a service provider, took over the network from Kite which the city had contracted in 2006 to build the network. Kite went out of business after spending almost $2 million. DHB says that it has 1000 subscribers in Longmont and that its goal is to increase that number to 2500 by the end of 2009.

Colorado law prevents munis from upgrading infrastructure

Although the city owns the fiber…

EarthLink will shut down its municipal wireless network in New Orleans, reports Information Week. The company could not find a buyer for the network, nor could it get the city to take it over. EarthLink launched the 52 square kilometer network covering parts of Orleans parish in December 2006. They provided free and paid service to residents. The free tier had a bandwidth cap of 300 Kbps. EarthLink’s withdrawal from New Orleans is part of the company’s departure from the…

Dublin and Gahanna, Ohio will be getting citywide wireless networks by 2009, thanks to the city councils’ approval of contracts with DHB Networks. The cities are following the anchor tenancy model whereby DHB Networks does not bear all of the cost of deployment. The cities are paying part of the cost of building the network.

Details of the deployments

(1) Gahanna is a new project for DHB. There is no existing citywide network. DHB responded to the city’s RFP and won…

DHB Networks is planning to re-launch the citywide Wi-Fi network that was originally deployed by Kite Networks in Longmont, Colorado on May 1. DHB is adding more wireless access points to provide better and more coverage in the city.

I spoke to Chris Harris, president of DHB Networks, this week and he told me that DHB will be announcing the deployment of more muni wireless networks in the next few weeks. Unlike other wireless ISPs, DHB decided not to bid on…