Tech Town, NC

Economics, apparently. Even as Chapel Hill activates wi-fi hotspots downtown this month, there is a disturbing trend of failed Muni wi-fi networks in larger cities. Slate is running an excellent analysis of the problems many cities are encountering in their utopian pursuits of free city-wide wi-fi access. The article illustrates how economic realities have belied the overly ambitious pronouncements of some well publicized wi-fi projects.

The most recent shoe to drop is the ballyhooed partnership between Earthlink, the City of San Francisco, and God, err, Google. Google was supposed to manage the free, lower bandwidth portion of the network, while Earthlink managed the fee-based high bandwidth access. Earthlink killed this deal by asking for partial funding from the city, after they had agreed to finance the whole thing themselves. The City balked, and the deal was killed.

City Supervisor Tom Ammiano summed it up, saying, “It’s done. Now we have to start all over again.”

So if Google couldn’t do it, who can?

To sum up the Slate article, it’s not that Google couldn’t, it’s that Google wouldn’t. While Google looks strangely mortal in being associated with this failed enterprise, the fact that they elected not to save it tells us a lot about these projects. If there is one thing Google is good at, it’s making money. Their revenues are like weeds, and their profit margins are massive, so for them to let this project go means it must have been a financial dud. Just like the projects in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Houston.