Amid muni Wi-Fi flameout, Oklahoma City switches on 555 square miles

Just when municipal Wi-Fi seems all but dead in one place, it crops up full steam ahead in another.
Oklahoma City says it just turned on the largest city owned and operated municipal Wi-Fi mesh network in the world.
The wireless mesh network covers 555 square miles with 95% coverage in the city’s core, the city said. However, unlike dozens of other municipal Wi-Fi projects, the Oklahoma City network is only available for use by city staff such as police, fire, first responders. The city plans to eventually expand the use of the network to animal welfare, code enforcement and utilities.
The network, which took two years to build to the tune of $5 million, was paid for with public-safety capital sales tax and city capital improvement funds.
“Our state-of-the-art wireless communication system allows city government to be more efficient and provide a higher level of service to our citizens,” Mayor Mick Cornett said in a prepared statement.
Time will tell if Oklahoma City’s network will shut down as rapidly as other cities’ networks have been shuttered across the country. Indeed, Oklahoma City’s distinction may be its choice to limit the network to just city employees.
Philadelphia, the latest city to see its Wi-Fi network quickly disintegrate as a viable operation, was an early pioneer on municipal Wi-Fi, but still the city said the cost of maintaining and operating the network would be too much for the city to bear. This came even after EarthLink Inc. offered to give the network to the city or a non-profit organization for free.
Indeed, much of the troubles in the municipal Wi-Fi sector have been tied to EarthLink’s troubles. Ten months ago, the company said it had operations in about a half-dozen cities and contracts for another half dozen.
Plans in other cities have fallen like dominos. Chicago city officials scrapped a deal last summer, citing costs and new technologies coming to the scene with greater promise. AT&T Inc. also pulled out of its first such deal to build a Wi-Fi network in Springfield, Ill.
Silicon Valley is also unsure about selecting Wi-Fi as a technology choice for plans to blanket the entire 1,500-square-mile region with high-speed wireless Internet. Wireless Silicon Valley, the organization pushing for the plan, represents at least 28 cities spread across four counties.
EarthLink has now bowed out of its two biggest footholds in the wireless space; it declined to further invest in mobile virtual network operator Helio L.L.C., a joint venture with Korean-telecom operator SK Telecom.
Oklahoma City officials nor Tropos Networks, which provided infrastructure for the network, could be immediately reached for comment.