Wouldn’t it be nice if Wi-Fi were everywhere? And cheap? Maybe even entirely tax-subsidized?
Unfortunately, that dream-turned-partial-reality is slowly deteriorating. Ian Urbina of The New York Times reports today that attempts to service cities in various parts of the US are offering more and more discouraging news. Some are even hanging up their hats. Urbina writes that “in Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity.”
This is surely a tough pill to swallow for many users. There are projects for Chicago, Houston, Miami, and San Francisco that have all been “temporarily tabled.” And even Philadelphia officials are reported as saying that they “are not sure when or if the promised network (EarthLink being the commissioned ISP) will be completed.”
To offer a microcosmic glance of what the construction of citywide Wi-Fi would entail, plans were for Philadelphia to provide 23 well-positioned free-access hotspots, while a broader network of beacons to deliver inexpensive Internet service to lower-income households. But Earthlink has been unable to complete the task. Underestimates were made, and with fewer access points installed, consumers found the weak signals obtained over the air to be not worth paying a regular subscription fee for.
Now most high-profile network-building efforts across the US have stalled with no indication or any sign of real progress to be made.