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Earthlink's current quarter loss a bad omen for MuniWi-Fi? |
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Written by Chris Price
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Thursday, 30 August 2007 |
 Rolla Huff, new CEO of Earthlink told San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom during a
telephone call "they were not going to be able to fulfill their end of
the bargain," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's spokesman. "Mr. Huff made
it clear it wasn't going to happen with Earthlink; they are getting out
of the Wi-Fi business." Earthlink is one of the biggest champions of Municipal wireless. This is definitely not a good sign for Muni Wi-Fi installations across the country.
Huff delivered the news Wednesday, a day after he announced that the
Atlanta-based Internet service provider planned to cut costs by
eliminating 900 jobs, about half its work force, and closing its
offices in four cities, including San Francisco. EarthLink’s new CEO, Rolla Huff, is in no mood for funding projects that, while promising, are failing the subscriptions test. He claims, however, that the company isn’t giving up completely. “We have repositioned the Wi-Fi business to have real option value without the high cash spend that we were incurring,” he said in a conference call with analysts and media.
Yesterday,
EarthLink said it would cut 900 jobs and close offices in
Pennsylvania and three other states. As part of the cuts announced Tuesday, the company said it will
close offices in Harrisburg; Orlando, Fla.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and
San Francisco, and "substantially reduce its presence" in Atlanta
and Pasadena, Calif.
Bottom line, Muni Wi-Fi might need a new business model to survive. Wi-FiGurus: what do you think?
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Wi-Fi & Wi-MAX applications in local government make enormous sense. 
In the course of my IT consulting work, I recommend Wi-MAX solutions time & again for interconnecting remote locations, Wi-Fi for mobile workers and for temporary network access applications. Local governments should stick to using Wi-Fi & Wi-MAX for delivering basics such as emergency & protective services, mobile worker access support and interconnection of remote sites for e-mail and access to critical municipal application information, i.e. GIS (infrastructure maps), finances & budgets, time sheet entry and so on.
