SmallBizResource Blog -- Networking & Communications

Where City WiFi Went Wrong

Posted by Judy Mottl Friday, Aug 17, 2007, 09:34 AM ET

It seems like just yesterday every city in America was jumping and screaming to get a citywide WiFi network plugged in and running. It was a great idea and still is. There's just one small problem. For some reason no one enlisted support from those who would likely benefit the most: the small business owner.

For some reason most city planners bent on WiFi, and even a good portion of WiFi vendors, hungrily eyed the consumer market--students, families, and, for some inexplicable reason, those who have yet to connect to the Internet. They simply all forgot, or chose to ignore, a huge user base staring them right in the face.

Small business could reap huge rewards from low-cost WiFi connectivity run by a municipality. Yet I have not read one mention of any city deploying a WiFi network even mention the SMB marketplace. This despite that early citywide networks are failing miserably when it comes to subscriptions.

At this point, as a Newsfactor article notes, the shine is clearly peeling off citywide WiFi projects with service providers and vendors no longer fighting for contracts, and city officials taking more than a few steps backward to re-evaluate such municipal efforts.

That's a darn shame because citywide WiFi could provide something every small and medium business could use: a break on telecom and networking costs.

It's time that small business organizations and chambers of commerce join forces to keep current citywide WiFi efforts moving ahead. It's time to start lobbying city officials on the value such networks will provide the business sector and the trickle down benefit to the city economy. It's time to push citywide WiFi back on track.

Networking & Communications