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Muni WiFi’s Failures & the Digital Divide
By Larry Hendrick | May 17, 2007
Business Week published two stories of interest today in the technology sector.
Muni WiFi
The first, Municipal Wi-Fi: A Failure To Communicate—Municipal Wi-Fi networks don’t quite deliver on the promise of wide-ranging access is true to its title. The article goes into greater detail about Earthlink and its decision to pull in the reins on further Muni WiFi projects. It is difficult convincing shareholders to expand a business group, when the managers of the group don’t see a way for it to turn a profit, confirming my columns over the last year about the true cost. Here are just three of many:
The Digital Divide
Hand-in-hand with this story is another, Equal Opportunity Speedway—African Americans are snapping up broadband–and closing the digital divide. This article shows that the digital divide, so often touted as a big reason for Muni WiFi projects, is curing itself in the free enterprise market. In two years the adoption rate for high speed Internet has gone from 14% to 40% in the African American market. All is not perfect, yet, but improving quickly.
Those promoting Muni WiFi, as the answer to this digital divide, have lost a huge spoke in their wheel, because if you look at how this growth happened, you won’t find Muni WiFi mentioned. High Speed Internet prices have dropped more than 50% in most markets due to competition in the free market.
Ask them the question
If you really want to understand the rational behind the Muni WiFi/Digital Divide issue, I have a suggestion.
The next time a politician holds this up as a reason to spend money, ask them for one example of proof that spending billions on Muni WiFi has closed the divide one percentage point.
I’ve asked that question several times and it stops them in their tracks. With all the money spent by cities on wireless Internet, there is no shrinking of the digital divide, there is no business development wins, and the money is gone, just the same.
If you would like another opinion on this, The Only Republican in San Francisco has two good articles from his experience there (here and here).
Topics: Technology, WiFi |
May 18th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I agree that Muni Wifi is not the solution to the digital divide but I do not think it will go away by itself. Private-public partnerships like Connect Kentucky http://www.connectkentucky.org/ have shown good progress and there are other good policy suggestions at http://www.speedmatters.org. There needs to be some kind of public policy on a federal level to encourage build out and require every neighborhood be served with affordable high speed broadband.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Hello Laura, welcome back to Business Unusual and thank you for the comment. As before, I disagree with your premise, but I do appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment.