As John Navas posted, a few high profile muni wifi projects are going south.
The San Fran project with Earthlink has had some bumps in the past, but it
appears that Earthlink has some internal problems and need to restructure
their business model anyway.
As for the projects themselves, some were a tad bit over ambitious to begin
with.
San Fran's project is a case in point. The city wanted Earthlink to cover
the city and offer free service to everyone. Well equipment and backhaul
costs money, hence that was doomed from the start.
Had the city used this wirless coverage for Police and Fire departments, and
paid for that service, then the city could have offered free service to the
people. Of course blanket city wide free service is also not a good idea,
they (the city) could have selected areas of town to cover, like say
downtown business district, bigger popular parks, the courthouse area, etc.
What I am trying to say, is that the technology is sound, but it is the
business model being used in places like San Fran that have resulted in the
falure of Muni WiFi.
Up here in rural alaska Muni Wifi is a great way of bringing high speed
access to the people. But instead of covering the entire village, we cover
an area around the government building and library, and allow the citizens
to use the excess bandwidth, and to use the bandwidth after the government
closes for the day.
With Wimax coming out, that equipment can be used a a WISP type of solution
to cover large areas with less equipment than what is needed with WIFI.