Anaheim to Consider Citywide Wi-Fi Franchise with Earthlink

The Anaheim City Council is getting ready to consider granting Earthlink a 20-year franchise to operate a public Wi-Fi network throughout all 50 square miles of the city.

As proposed, this franchise is both good and bad. On the good side, Anaheim is recognizing that public wireless is a good feature to add to their city, and they’ve already completed an RFP for their network. And its also good that the City is providing access to streetlight poles and existing fiber deployments.

On the bad side, the franchise is exclusive, and it specifically enables Earthlink to be both network maintainer as well as the sole service provider. This aspect of the franchise clearly shows a lack of vision on the City’s part. Earthlink will be allowed to set prices, and the City has given them a complete monopoly for public wireless service for 20 years. What Anaheim should have done is provide a 5 year exclusive franchise for the operations of the network, but require the network be open to any ISP that wants to use it at wholesale rates. This would enable price and service competition that will ensure that affordable wireless broadband is deployed.

In addition, the 20 year franchise is far too long for Wi-Fi deployments, and its not clear that such a franchise will be useful for Anaheim once Wi-Fi has evolved over the next 5 years. The City is granting a very long term exclusive contract for a service that is brand new, and technology that is also in its infancy. Whether Earthlink will succeed and provide good service remains to be seen.

As cities increasingly move towards trying to deploy municipal networks, they need to recognize that they shouldn’t be giving away the farm. Too many cities and towns were burned badly by franchises handed out to telco and cable operators, but they haven’t learned their lessons. In cases like Anaheim’s, Earthlink would have been happy to get the network operations contract for a handful of years, without any franchise or exclusivity. The City could have bargained much harder and given away far less, thereby ensuring that they get full value for their physical resources.

And of equal if not greater importance, Anaheim should have required that competition be part of the marketplace. Having a single company that controls the creation, operation, maintenance, and service over a network is a terrible idea. Its exactly the type of behavior shown by telco and cable giants like SBC and Verizon, who provide expensive, poor service.

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Published:
10.26.05 @ 8am

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