A more realistic approach to citywide municipal wireless networks: the anchor tenant model?

Municipal wireless networks (MWN) strive to provide broader access to the internet with some form of governmental support, usually from a city. They have generated considerable interest this decade with hundreds being launched, and recently have garnered notoriety with the withdrawal of providers like EarthLink, MetroFi, and Kite from the MWN market leaving a number of large cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Portland, OR, scrambling with half completed systems, and many other cities scuttling ambitious plans to “carpet” their jurisdictions. This paper discusses the rationale for providing a public service in general; the specific arguments used for and against municipalities developing MWNs; and the various most common business models. We then briefly review the Philadelphia case and contrast it with the case of Riverside, CA, which employs a different business model. We conclude by reviewing the generalizations that can be made about the policies surrounding MWNs at this point in their evolution.