Philly Wi-Fi May Live After All

The people of Philadelphia, PA. may be getting a second lease on life to keep their Wi-Fi hopes alive and well. It now appears that a group of local investors have climbed aboard the Wi-Fi train and are going to support the first city owned service. As we have seen, other cities like San Francisco, have had their dreams smashed as teleco’s have pulled the plug on investing in city Wi-Fi networks.

It was appearing that any city Wi-Fi project was going to be doomed if a major teleco wasn’t providing the technology and bucks to fund the project. We have seen project after project fall to the side of the road. So it is refreshing seeing that the folks at ‘the city of brotherly love’ are getting their act together.

Although the details of the deal were unclear yesterday, the new company is said to be considering an advertising-based business model that would provide free Internet access to all, or at least in those places where the spotty network is available. Earthlink charged $20 a month for the service.

The sources said little, if any, taxpayer money would be used in the deal, which is expected to be formally announced at a noon City Hall news conference today.

This is going to be interesting to follow to see if the investors can pull this off. I am sure that other cities will be watching closely as well. As stated, the service is going to be free to all. It is unknown as of yet how the investor plan on getting a return on their investment but there is talk of selling services to local businesses and also advertising on the network.

This might be a good time for these investors to take a look at what Google had planned for San Francisco and what is currently in place for Mountain View, California which is subsidized by Google as a community service.

Philly to Google - Hello. We could use your help here.

Comments welcome.

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