(MSPAlliance) – Tuesday, April 18, 2006 – There are plans for city-wide wireless networks in many American cities in 2006, but the ambitious goal of providing free Wi-Fi access to the public has raised questions about how to pay for it. While there was 43 percent growth of public use of Wi-Fi between 2004 and 2005, 58 percent of the public would only use Wi-Fi if it were free, according to a 2005 report by JupiterResearch.
Even the largest cities simply cannot afford to maintain free Wi-Fi networks, so most subcontract the network out in return for access to key infrastructure points needed to maintain the hardware. Wi-Fi providers generate revenue from providing advertising space and collecting personal user information for marketing purposes.
Earthlink and Google have teamed up to move forward with building < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />San Francisco’s city-wide Wi-Fi network, and the companies are now in joint contract negotiations with the city. Google has been rumored to be rolling out its business model of advertising-supported Wi-Fi access nationwide, which allows anonymous use and marketing, as well as correlating data to a specific user, device or location.
With Earthlink already building city-wide networks in Philadelphia and Anaheim, it is not difficult to see Google teaming up with them in the future. The Wall Street Journal reported that Earthlink and Google have already made another bid to run a city-wide network, though a specific city was not mentioned.