EarthLink Wins Philly Muni WiFi Deal

Wireless

from the water-gas-and-wifi dept

EarthLink has been chosen to build Philadelphia’s municipal WiFi network. Knocking back some of the plan’s critics, EarthLink will bear the cost of building and maintaining the network itself (like Google wants to do in San Francisco), which should be up and running by the end of 2006. As expected, EarthLink will be a carrier’s carrier and sell access wholesale to other providers, as well as selling to end users itself. Like we noted before, Philadelphia’s approach looks to be the right one: little financial risk to the city and its taxpayers, a common network that’s available for wholesale, and cheap connectivity for consumers. Expect whining from incumbents to continue, though.