W-B official: City’s deal for Wi-Fi removes risk

WILKES-BARRE -- As far as wireless Internet projects go, Wilkes-Barre is no Lompoc, Calif., and residents of the city can thank the mayor and his staff for that.

J.J. Murphy, Wilkes-Barre city administrator and chief executive officer of Wire Free Wilkes-Barre, says Lompoc’s approach to become a wireless city was not the model to follow. Murphy, who lived in Lompoc while he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1998 to 2000 -- before the wireless project began there -- said he feels Wilkes-Barre’s deal with Frontier Communications removes the financial risk from the city and assures a safer and more efficient operation.

Lompoc, a central California city of about 42,000, invested $3 million to blanket the city with a wireless Internet system, promising a quantum leap for economic development in the remote community near Vandenberg. Hard hit by cutbacks at the Air Force base, the Lompoc Net project is limping along, with a few hundred subscribers signed up, far less than the 4,000 needed to start repaying loans from the city’s coffers, according to an Associated Press story.

Securing a minimum requirement of subscribers doesn’t apply to Wilkes-Barre’s plan, Murphy said, because Frontier will own and operate the system and solicit subscribers.

‘The difference here is that we partnered with Frontier,” Murphy said. “It’s their system. They will market the system and they will sign up subscribers. The success of our system is based on the business model that Frontier lays out. But the key component is that we already have four anchor tenants committed to the project.”

Those anchor tenants are Wilkes-Barre City, Luzerne County, Wilkes University and King’s College. Unlike Lompoc, the city has not had to put up any tax dollars into the building of the system. The city will pay $75,000 per year for use of the system once it’s up and running, a cost Murphy feels any city would gladly accept.

“This system will aid our police department, fire department and other city services,” Murphy said. “There are so many opportunities available through wireless that two years ago weren’t even on the drawing board. Wilkes-Barre will be one of the most technologically advanced cities in the entire country. That’s something we all can be proud of. Any city would jump at this deal.”

Murphy said the city’s downtown will be completely wireless by Aug. 18. He said traveling around the country to research wireless systems enabled the city to put together a plan that will provide wireless access at the least cost to taxpayers.

“We looked at so many systems,” Murphy said. “We took all that information and decided the best way to go was to find key partners and reduce the financial risk to the city and its taxpayers. We’ve done that and the entire county will benefit.”

Lompoc and some other U.S. cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects are costing more and drawing less interest than expected. According to an AP report, more than $230 million was spent on Wi-Fi projects in the United States last year and the industry Web site, Muni Wireless, projects $460 million will be spent by the end of 2007.

Municipal Wi-Fi projects, AP reported, use the same technology behind wireless access in coffee shops, airports and home networks. Hundreds or thousands of antennas are installed atop street lamps and other fixtures. Laptop computers and other devices have Wi-Fi cards that relay data to the Internet through those antennas, using open, unregulated broadcast frequencies. In theory, one could check e-mail and surf the Web from anywhere.

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W-B has not had to put any tax dollars into building the system.

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