City of Brotherly Broadband

A few years ago, Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization that partnered with EarthLink, was the darling of the municipal Wi-Fi craze. The Internet service provider negotiated free transmitter space on city assets in exchange for funding the network and offering inexpensive Wi-Fi service accounts for low-income citizens. The nonprofit, focused on digital inclusion, agreed to only refer clients to EarthLink. In areas where the network didn't function reliably, the organization offered dial-up accounts from EarthLink. The company banked on the network being a cash cow of Internet service subscriptions.

It didn't work out that way. The network was complete, and subscriptions proved elusive. "We did find the network wasn't as consistent for some clients as we had hoped," said Ryan Nichols, communications officer of Wireless Philadelphia.

Before long, EarthLink made its well publicized exit from the municipal-Wi-Fi market. But all was not lost. A group of investors formed a company called Network Acquisition and bought the network in June 2008. The new company plans to use underground cable and copper as a backhaul for the network, which should enable robust broadband services for large institutions, like universities and hospitals, according to Nichols.

After EarthLink's municipal Wi-Fi fiasco, Wireless Philadelphia decided not to hamper its focus of digital inclusion with any more vendor obligations. The nonprofit merely focuses on providing broadband access in the most appropriate way that each situation justifies. That could be cable, DSL or other technologies.

"We are even less affiliated with the new network than we were with EarthLink because we're not providing service through it. We don't have much oversight under the new arrangement," Nichols said.

Nichols said Wireless Philadelphia's digital-inclusion focus got lost amid the rash of negative EarthLink stories. "With EarthLink, there was sort of radio silence for a while," Nichols said. "We got all the questions about what they were doing, and in some cases, we were not able to answer because we didn't know or they had asked us not to say."