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City of Philadelphia to revive Wi-Fi project |
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Written by zen
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Wednesday, 18 June 2008 14:12 |
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With a new group of investors available, Philadelphia will revive the original plan to provide Wi-Fi throughout the city. The effort is to make the city the largest Wi-Fied area in any US city covering 135 square miles. The service is provided free-of-charge. Launched in 2005, the project came to a halt and was nearly terminated when EarthLink, the company in charged of installing the transmitters abandoned it. So far, there are 6000 subscribers among the 1.4 million people under the EarthLink programme.
The network will be taken by Network Acquisition Company LLC. The company, made up of mainly local investors will complete the project which is now at 80%. EarthLink could not solve the problem with beaming the signals into homes and the new company will allow people to buy a repeater that costs USD$200.
Michael Nutter, the Mayor of Philadelphia stressed that the economic opportunities that can be derived from having increased internet access in the city is behind the reason of the revival. He said "We now have the potential to reach more people with this network than in any other city in America,"
EarthLink had difficulty beaming the signal into homes, which City Councilman Bill Green cited as a reason the EarthLink model failed. But he also praised EarthLink for helping to save the network. -Zen, MalaysiaToday.com
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