Council approves $2.5 million deal with Earthlink
Various media outlets note that City Council today approved the wifi contract with Earthlink to construct a municipal wifi bubble that will, according to proponents, bridge the digital divide, improve public safety, make Houston world class, boost economic development, save the city money on communications, AND solve the Darfur crisis (okay, the wifi bubble utopians haven't promised the last one just yet, but sometimes the rhetoric gets nearly that fantastic). Here's a summary from the Chronicle's Matt Stiles:
Downtown likely will have the first access to the planned wireless Internet network system approved today by the City Council, and the rest of Houston will be added in 100-square-mile sections over two years, officials said.
The council unanimously approved the contract with Atlanta-based EarthLink to build and maintain the system at its own expense, charging Houstonians for access to a network that would be the largest of its kind in North America.
The network's first large customer will be the city itself. The council approved spending $2.5 million over five years for access.
In a much-ballyhooed chat with bloggers nearly a year ago, the city's information technology director Richard Lewis responded to a question posed by Larry Hendrick about the cost of the service to the city, basically downplaying the notion that the city would have to pay.
What a difference (nearly) a year makes! About a $2.5 million difference. It's one of those data points that helps to explain why we are frequently wary of fantastic pronouncements from politicos.
That said, it was almost certainly a smart business move by Earthlink to secure the city as a $2.5 million anchor client for this network (never mind that it isn't quite in line with the White Administration's early PR efforts at selling the network as cost free). As Katie Fehrenbacher writes for tech-oriented GigaOM, existing municipal wifi networks are having trouble attracting actual paying subscribers. So, securing a big anchor subscriber/subsidizer makes sense for Earthlink. Perhaps it will make sense for the city eventually (if there are real savings and/or efficiencies for the city that can be measured). And it certainly will make sense as a campaign theme when Bill White starts looking at statewide office!
RELATED COVERAGE: KPRC-2, KHOU-11, KTRK-13, KTRH-740.
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Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/11/07 10:38 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (4)
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