Wireless Philadelphia has selected three consortiums led by AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Earthlink as finalists to design, build and maintain Philadelphia’s planned citywide Wi-Fi network. The nonprofit organization plans to make a final selection, including a second “backup” bidder, on July 29. AP’s Deborah Yao reports that:
AT&T has partnered with Lucent and BelAir Networks while Hewlett-Packard’s group encompasses Aptilo Networks, Alvarion, Business Information Group and Tropos. Earthlink linked with Motorola Canopy and Tropos.
Wireless Philadelphia…gave preference to proposals offering a complete system instead of partial services, said Dianah Neff, the city’s chief information officer who is overseeing the effort…The nonprofit weighed the merits of 12 proposals - eight of which offered “turnkey” solutions…Neff said the group considered not only cost but coverage, performance and the technology’s “ability to scale.”
The cost to deploy, maintain and support the project is estimated between $15 million and $18 million, Neff said. It will be financed by bonds, foundation grants and low-interest bank loans. The initiative, which should go live by next summer, expects to see positive cash flow in its second year of operations.
According to the AP story, Ron Sege, president of Wi-Fi equipment vendor Tropos (part of HP’s consortium) pegs the monthly wholesale cost to operate and maintain the network at $8-$10 per subscriber, with retail ISPs expected to charge about double that rate.
Mitch Shapiro at 1:57 PM|Comments(0)
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