December 17, 2009
The big news today from the tubes is that The City of Philadelphia has purchased what was Wireless Philadelphia from the Network Acquisition Group, the company that bought Earthlink’s assets back in June, 2008. NAC sells it for the same price it bought it for, $2 million.
But the big question is, “what is ‘it’? What were the assets? if the assets included the legacy network equipment from Tropos vintage 2004-2006, this is not an asset, but a liability. It was perhaps the most promising platform at the time, but at this point this is all obsolete technology. If it included telephone poles, rooftops, backhaul, then it becomes worth it.
By Marshall Brown
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From the release:
“It is expected that the network will start to be used in a pilot mode as early as this Spring as the City implements handheld and public safety applications requiring broadband connections.”
As noted, nothing at all on the docket to address the issue that the network was first built to address — the Digital Divide.
Worth a read is Craig Settles’ guest piece at Muniwireless is worth a read, as Craig has been a long time analyst of the Philadelphia project.
http://www.muniwireless.com/2009/12/21/philly-wireless-third-times-the-charm/
Given Philly’s direction — muni — and timetable — over the next five years — I would say that there is ample room for a private initiative in Philly to be undertaken in parallel that would address the Digital Divide issue.