Whatever Happened to Municipal Wi-Fi?

After hype and despair, hundreds of mobile networks emerge.

In 2006, hardly a week passed without a news story about municipal Wi-Fi. It was going to be truly pervasive and change the landscape for mobility. As municipalities around the world announced plans to roll out city-wide Wi-Fi service, with advertisers footing the bill, people wondered whether these free blankets of wireless coverage would make Wi-Fi a universal technology—both replacing traditional DSL and marginalizing emergent 3G mobile broadband.

The Muni Wi-Fi Hype Cycle
As often happens in technology, market reality didn't match the initial industry hype accompanying municipal Wi-Fi. It turned out that many cities didn't have financially viable business plans, and the ISPs courting them had been overly optimistic in their technical and market assessments. Even in a small city, it costs millions of dollars to set up a large-scale wireless network—which then requires continuous monitoring and maintenance.

Notions of funding such a project solely with advertising dollars turned out to be unrealistic, leading to debates over whether to charge fees or offer government subsidies to supplement the shortfall. Municipalities that favored subscription fees were often overly optimistic about uptake rates, mistakenly believing that users would adopt Wi-Fi to replace DSL and cable for residential Internet access.

Technical plans for serving an extensive outdoor environment with Wi-Fi were also overly optimistic. Poorly-designed networks left many users with limited or nonexistent connectivity. And ground-level access points in metropolitan areas couldn't always penetrate thick walls or reach the upper floors of high-rise buildings.

Finally, many city leaders promised that municipal Wi-Fi would bridge the "digital divide" for all, through free, citywide access, creating unrealistic expectations that turned into public animosity when it became clear that users and taxpayers would have to subsidize services that might not perform as advertised.

Trying to work through these complex issues in the public eye and negotiating the framework of city politics led to delays of months and even years. To boot, there were also legal pitfalls. In Philadelphia, for example, the local telco sued in order to block the city government from delivering service directly to residents.

And then came the crowning blows. Early this year, Earthlink—a leading American ISP that was a driving force behind municipal Wi-Fi in many large cities—announced it was exiting the business. More recently, MetroFi, which had built networks in Portland, Oregon and other cities, shut down operations. Articles began to proclaim the death of the municipal Wi-Fi dream.

Muni Wi-Fi Is Dead, Long Live Muni Wi-Fi
While the much-hyped "free for everyone" model has met its demise, municipal Wi-Fi has survived in many other forms. In fact, as of last February, Wired magazine counted 116 municipal networks in operation in the U.S. alone, with another 86 under construction. While a few large cities such as Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are up and running, the list is dominated by mid-sized cities such as Boulder, Colorado, Annapolis, Maryland and Anaheim, California, where the political process is probably less burdensome. Many cities have created a successful business model by leveraging the municipal network concept to support public safety and other city services. This allows the city to become the network's anchor tenant, saving them money on their own operations while also providing Wi-Fi access to the public.

Outside the U.S., many large cities have successfully implemented large hot zones that cover the densest areas of the city—such as London's Square Mile, Sydney's Central Business District and the Yamanote Loop in Tokyo—or even citywide networks such as those in Taipei, Seoul and Moscow.

The truth is that demand for urban broadband mobility will be satisfied one way or another, and until new technologies such as WiMAX and LTE are deployed and proven, properly designed and funded Wi-Fi networks are still the most reasonable approach.

iPass: Making Muni Wi-Fi Part of Enterprise Mobility
In iPass' view, municipal Wi-Fi networks are no different than traditional hotspot networks. They can be an integral part of the mobile worker's connectivity footprint as long as certain requirements are met. To be ready for enterprise use, municipal Wi-Fi networks must meet these key criteria:

• Coverage and availability: Do users get a strong signal and adequate throughput in advertised coverage areas? Is performance reliable on a 24/7 basis? Some municipal networks offer spotty coverage in certain neighborhoods, while others are growing in a grassroots fashion by extending coverage through people's personal Internet connections.
• Application interoperability: Can users successfully log into their corporate networks through the VPN? Port usage and connection latency within the provider network often create problems for business users.
• Security: Does the network take adequate measures to protect user credentials, enterprise secrets that are part of the login process and session data?

For its part, iPass ensures that these criteria are met through our Enterprise-Ready certification program. Once certified, these networks become part of a unified footprint— including commercial hotspots as well as other connectivity options like 3G, Ethernet and dial-up—so that mobile workers get an easy-to-use solution supported by a robust, ubiquitous footprint.

At iPass, we are used to the technology "hype cycle" and understand the practical challenges of making new technologies enterprise-ready. As municipalities have launched viable Wi-Fi solutions, we have integrated them into the iPass virtual network. In fact, our Mobile Broadband Index showed that usage of Wi-Fi locations in public areas more than tripled between the first half of 2007 and 2008.

So, as new municipal efforts come to market, you can count on iPass to help make them useful tools for your mobile workforce.