Philadelphia to Be City of Wireless Web
By Arshad Mohammed
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 5, 2005; D01

Philadelphia yesterday announced a plan to build the biggest municipal
wireless Internet system in the nation, the latest of a growing number of
cities to treat high-speed Web access as a basic municipal service like
water, electricity and trash collection.

Philadelphia said Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc. will fund, build and manage
the 135-square-mile network, which will offer low-income residents service
for as little as about $10 a month and could threaten the profits of
telephone and cable companies.

"Increasingly, city officials view broadband in the 21st century the same
way they viewed electricity 100 years ago and telephone service 50 years
ago. It's falling into the category of a necessary and essential social
service," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a nonprofit group
that favors the development of municipal wireless.

"Cities see this as a way to spur economic growth: on the one hand to put
tools in the hands of the underprivileged and give them a leg up, and on
the other to provide incentives to small businesses to locate in these
cities and to expand their operations," Scott said.

EarthLink expects to provide its service, which will offer speeds of 1
megabit per second for both uploading and downloading, for about $20 a
month to regular customers in Philadelphia, with discounts to be offered to
low-income residents. It also hopes to make money by renting access to
other Internet service providers and by charging tourists and business
travelers for use.

EarthLink will compete against broadband service from Verizon
Communications Inc., which offers introductory prices of $14.95 a month for
maximum download speeds of 768 kilobits per second and uploads of 128
kilobits per second.

Philadelphia's decision to move forward with the system will add fuel to
the legal, legislative and public relations battle being waged by telephone
and cable companies that argue that public money should not support
competition with private firms.

Verizon said a sound business case should be made before allowing
municipal-backed systems to compete with private providers. "The city is
the steward of its resources. I am not going to tell it how to use them,"
said Link Hoewing, Verizon vice president for Internet and technology
policy. But in Philadelphia, he said, "I think the market has done a good
job of addressing the issue."

Seeking to address such concerns, EarthLink officials said that the company
would pay the network's estimated $10 million to $15 million cost by
itself.

According to Free Press, about 300 municipalities around the country are
undertaking broadband experiments, but only a few dozen are doing
full-scale networks like Philadelphia's. On Monday, San Francisco said 26
companies, including EarthLink, Google Inc. and Cingular Wireless LLC, had
submitted proposals to build its planned wireless network, which will cover
roughly 47 square miles.

In the Washington region, Alexandria has created a one-year pilot project
for free wireless Internet access along seven blocks of King Street
stretching to the Potomac River, but does not plan to offer the service to
residents on a commercial basis.

Manassas is experimenting with another technology -- the delivery of
broadband Internet service over power lines -- and plans to announce today
that it has completed citywide commercial deployment of the system,
according to Chantilly-based Communication Technologies Inc., which
operates the system.

Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer and the acting
chairman of the Wireless Philadelphia nonprofit group, which is setting up
the city's wireless network, said the city believed it had to find a way to
get cheap broadband to residents, along with computers and training.
"If you were to ask the local telco, they would say, well, 90 percent of
the city is covered. But if it's at a fee that people can't afford, if they
don't have the computers and the skills to use them, having it there hasn't
helped you overcome your digital divide," Neff said.

She said the service could also cut the city's communications costs by
giving building inspectors, property assessors or repairmen access to
information in the field rather than forcing them to return to offices.