The City of Brotherly WiFi
Posted by Lance Koonce
In other municipal wifi news, Philadelphia has awarded a contract to Earthlink to build the city's 135-square-mile wireless network. Philly is the largest city thus far to formally put a plan for city-wide wifi into place; Earthlink will fund and build the system, and will also own all of the equipment.
As noted by CNET, Philadelphia's plan is not without controversy, and has drawn criticism from phone and cable companies. A Pennsylvania law that would potentially have blocked any muncipal wifi system that charged a fee to consumers was altered at the last minute in late 2004 as a result of a behind-the-scenes compromise. The Phildelphia project and other similar ones also led to a bill proposed by Texas Congressman Pete Sessions in May 2005, the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act of 2005 (H.R. 2726), that would "prohibit[] any state or local government, or an entity affiliated with either government, from providing any telecommunications, information, or cable service in any geographic area within such government in which a corporation or other private entity not affiliated with such government is offering a substantially similar service."