Opponents of publicly owned broadband networks often hold up examples of wireless networks that did not turn out as planned -- more often than not, they ignorantly use examples of privately owned networks like Earthlink networks in Philly, Houston, or proposed privately owned networks in San Fran and Chicago.

It is true that many wireless networks (especially those using Wi-Fi) came in above projected costs and late. It is also true that this happened across all manner of network ownership types. GoMoorhead, a publicly owned Wi-Fi network in Minnesota, was recently sold to a private company - and I am working on a report about that. However, there was also a recent announcement that the privately owned wireless network being built in Burnsville, Minnesota, is behind schedule.

Frontier Communications expects to extend its Wi-Fi hot spot service to Burnsville's performing arts center this fall, but a company official admitted Friday that knitting together complete citywide coverage has gone more slowly than expected.

The phone provider for the southern part of Burnsville as well as Apple Valley, Farmington and Lakeville, Frontier had expected to have 90 percent of the city covered with a network of broadband Internet Wi-Fi hot spots by now.

But Frontier is still moving its wireless service from the south, where it kicked off service in October 2007, into the northern parts of the city.

Additionally, the public-private partnership in Minneapolis remains behind schedule (privately owned but built with substantial amounts of public money).

The problem is the technology - not the ownership. We continue to believe that the future should feature wireless as a complement to the more reliable and faster wired connections that should be available to everyone. But the more we talk to communities, the more we learn that wireless is more difficult to work with and often more expensive than expected.

Another real-world example of why communities cannot depend on the private sector to build the infrastructure needed by the community, Scottsburg Indiana suffered from telecommunications underinvestment and was about to lose jobs because the companies could not get the connections they needed.

This article reports that the cost of T1 lines was $1600/month but other sources suggested they were as low as a mere $1300/month. Nonetheless, the costs were prohibitive and benefits from building a publicly owned system were immense:

The total cost to build the city-wide network was only $385,000, a figure that includes all systems and software. The result is broadband everywhere at affordable prices, meaning that businesses that need broadband can get it, and sometimes even save money, too. For example, school officials estimate that they are saving approximately $16,000 per month.

Municipal and industrial organizations that want to take advan­tage of the significant benefits of large-scale broadband infra­structure face the option of whether to build, own and operate their own infrastructure or “rent” services from incumbent cellular providers. In this paper we lay out the substantial business and technical benefits that are associated with organizations opting to own the latest generation of outdoor wireless networks.

This paper is targeted primarily at municipalities and discusses how a wireless infrastructure can benefit public safety, fire and EMS, and city departments such as water and building inspec­tions. Other wireless utility applications such as Advanced Meter­ing Infrastructure (AMI) or Automated Meter Reading (AMR) are also presented. This paper also examines wireless applications for mobile workforces engaged in industrial applications, such as port operations, construction and mining.

Registration required for downloading.

The United States, creator of the Internet, increasingly lags in access to it. In the absence of a national broadband strategy, many communities have invested in broadband infrastructure, especially wireless broadband, to offer broadband choices to their residents. Newspaper headlines trumpeting the death of municipal wireless networks ignore the increasing investments by cities in Wi-Fi systems. At the same time, the wireless focus by others diverts resources and action away from building the necessary long term foundation for high speed information: fiber optic networks. DSL and cable networks cannot offer the speeds required by a city wishing to compete in the digital economy. Business, government, and citizens all need affordable and fast access to information networks. Today's decisions will lay the foundation of telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Fortunately, we already know the solution: wireless solves the mobility problem; fiber solves the speed and capacity problems; and public ownership offers a network built to benefit the community.