Philadelphia citywide WiFi officially shut down

We knew it was coming, but Philadelphia's citywide WiFi is now officially being turned off, and Earthlink is planning on pulling down all of its access points. Like basically every other municipal WiFi project, it seems like the cost of keeping the system going outweighed the benefits, and Earthlink couldn't find a buyer willing to take things over. Current Earthlink customers will get 30 more days of service, until June 12, and then it's lights bytes out. Here's hoping Philly coffee shops are ready for an influx of urban warriors.

[Via Philebrity, thanks Andy R.]

[Colin @ May 13th 2008 3:34PM]

This hurts. As a resident of Philadelphia, I feel embarrassed that we actually believed Earthlink would live up to their end of the agreement. The service was always shoddy anyway, so in its current form, I doubt it will be missed. What will be missed is what this network *could* have been and *could* have done for our city.

[chrisaroz @ May 13th 2008 3:43PM]

I hope Philly sues the crap out of Earthlink. They're such a laughing stock, how many cities have they done this in now? And my understanding is that the contract in Philly was the toughest on Earthlink so they have the best shot of vindication.

[Jimmy Rivera @ May 13th 2008 3:45PM]

For those that didn't know, this service was a slow, outdated Wireless Internet service that you ACTUALLY HAD TO PAY FOR!! Seriously, not free, not anything nobie or anything like that. For profit, and Philadelphia turned its nose up to sub DSL speeds at equal to/more than DSL costs. Simple case closed. Dumb decision by the city of Philadelphia.

[IT-Accountant @ May 13th 2008 3:56PM]

Well, with the widespread adoption and expansion of 3g networks (and of course the 700mhz band freeing up) hugely-wide-coverage wifi was kinda doomed anyway.

[fred @ May 13th 2008 4:03PM]

Muni WiFi was a fad.

Great PR for mid-sized cities competing for the "creative class" or trying to close the "digital divide", but in reality a pie in the sky load of hot air that never could have worked as a free service. More so in the age of P2P and YouTube.

[Jeff Lewis @ May 13th 2008 4:03PM]

WiiiiiiiMaaaaax.....

The problem with WiFi is that cells are just too tiny - you need way too many nodes to cover any serious area. WiMax solves that problem.

[p3t3b2 @ May 13th 2008 5:34PM]

Current Wimax test have shown that a single Wimax tower has a 30 mile range running off a massive back haul. When Wimax is fully deployed they predict the Wimax speed will at least double. GigaCom developed a microwave link specifically designed to act as the ideal backhaul for the WiMAX: a carrier-class, native IP, full duplex 200 Mbps Fast Ethernet microwave link, which can support the total bandwidth needs of a full WiMAX Base Station.

In California Caltrains has begun testing Wimax on it's trains, on those same trains wifi is being shut down. Let's not forget that Rev-B and C have yet to be deployed by Sprint and Verizon. Rev-B should have an ave 3Mbps down and C should have an ave of 6Mbps down. Right now you can get Rev-A on a train in Cali. To my understanding The airports will follow suit. Why Verizon and Att chose to go with LTE is beyond me. By the time test begin on LTE Wimax will be deployed in most metropolitan markets. Wimax is currently running in 90 countries.

[gungel @ May 13th 2008 4:04PM]

Another one to add to the list of shut down free WiFi service is Oakland County, Michigan (Wireless Oakland). At least they pulled the plug before investing to much into this Wi"slow"Fi system. Its not official yet, but the web site says temporally suspended.

[gungel @ May 13th 2008 4:05PM]

temporarily

[Pochi @ May 13th 2008 4:06PM]

Wow, you spam a lot.

[Greg @ May 13th 2008 4:09PM]

Looks like all eyes are on Minneapolis now. Hopefully their business model will make municipal Wi-Fi successful. The city is an anchor tenant that pays US Internet (a local telecom) for city buildings and employees which is helping to keep the revenue stream up while they try to reach a number of subscribers that will make it self-sufficient.

[Colin @ May 13th 2008 4:16PM]

Funny, sounds like the same business model as Philly's.

[Jons @ May 13th 2008 4:21PM]

Apart from being sorry for Philadelphia... this reminds me of that simpsons episode with the monorail. just thinking of that reference makes me chuckle.

[Mike @ May 13th 2008 5:14PM]

One of my favorites!

[THJ @ May 13th 2008 5:44PM]

The ring came off my pudding can
Use my pen knife my good man
....

Simpson! Homer Simpson!
He's the greatest guy in history.
From the! Town of Springfield!
He's about to hit a chestnut tree!

Okay, I'll stop now.

[Phoenix @ May 13th 2008 4:35PM]

Cos the real iPhone don't have WiFi...

[ByronGman @ May 13th 2008 5:05PM]

Oooooh don't worry Rod, I'm sure your desire for a Iphone Clone will somehow reemerge by the time the next article is posted.

[Silas Miller @ May 13th 2008 5:30PM]

I live in Burlington, VT and we have a municipal fiber-to-doorstep(phone, tv, net) program running that seems to do alright. Except for the threatening letters that have been showing up at subscribers houses after trying to bittorrent that episode of lost they missed.

[ByronGman @ May 13th 2008 5:46PM]

The way you write reminds me of all those emails I get from the disposed King of Nigeria.

Did you guys go to the same school?

[lou @ May 13th 2008 5:47PM]

Another shutdown in the city of Philadelphia to occur tonight at the Wachovia Center....

GO PENGUINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Razor @ May 13th 2008 6:01PM]

Damn, you beat me to it...

Go Pens!

[Dach @ May 13th 2008 5:49PM]

It's still running in Anaheim, for the time being. Fullerton, Anaheim's neighbor to the north, still has free wifi downtown, but not all over the city.

[Sean @ May 13th 2008 5:50PM]

I hope the city doesn't turn to crime because of this.

[Rod K @ May 13th 2008 5:51PM]

uh? what relevance does kings have to do with no wifi and no wifi on iphone? hehe... you all get all sore when there is a phone that has more functions than yours....

[Rod K @ May 13th 2008 5:54PM]

prolly won't... but maybe Obama would make free wifi mandatory in all states!

[Tragedy @ May 13th 2008 5:58PM]

outweighted??? Who writes this stuff? A 7-year-old?

[Rod K @ May 13th 2008 6:02PM]

lol, give these guys a break... they have lots of articles to write and want to get the info out as soon as possible....

[TeddynLisa @ May 13th 2008 6:11PM]

actually don't look to shabby.....

[Jimmy @ May 13th 2008 6:46PM]

URBAN WARRIORS!!! Come out to playayay...

[rishi @ May 13th 2008 6:51PM]

And another one bites the dust...

[Mitch @ May 13th 2008 7:50PM]

As one who actually tried this network, I can say it will not be missed. It never worked and had data rates so low that dial up was fast alternative.

[Pen's Fan @ May 13th 2008 8:36PM]

Philly's wi-fi had a better chance of surviving than their hockey team...GO PENS!

Check out the cool anti-Flyer's song at http://TheAnswerIs.homestead.com

[Stem $ell @ May 13th 2008 9:06PM]

Rocky Wiips...

[George @ May 13th 2008 9:17PM]

I live in Philadelphia, and signed up for this one two separate occasions. At the beginning, it was horrible. I canceled service.

I decided to try it again, because 20$ a month was a ton less than 60$ for Comcast. I even bought their "Wifi Router." Was even worse this time. Canceled again.

It would have been great if this actually worked. I live in Center City, were it should have worked. It was a waste of time and money.

Now I just steal a connection from other people. Free is the way to go.

[Nick Carchidi @ May 13th 2008 10:13PM]

As a long-term resident of Philly, this is disgraceful. To think that setting up a simple Wi-Fi network for a city-wide region would be so difficult. It's only a " wireless home network" on a MUCH, MUCH larger scale. How hard could it be? I was in the Double-Tree Hotel back in October, (for those of you who are Philly natives, here on Engadget, like myself - right on Broad Street) and tried the crappy service.. Unbelievable. That's all I have to say. Prices were a little high, signal always fluctuated, etc.

[Jamie @ May 13th 2008 10:18PM]

breaking news.....Philadelphia Flyers officially shut down. Go Pens!!!

[pji @ May 13th 2008 10:47PM]

I thought the NHL went under a few years ago.. or it may be that no one cares that they still play :)

I have never been able to connect to any manner of public WiFi, free or paid, in Philly and I've been there a few days per month over the last 10 years.

[Barry @ May 13th 2008 10:38PM]

The Pens are so sweet. Get our your brooms! Aside from the Pens embarrassing the Flyers, here's another reason why Pittsburgh is the best of the Pennsylvania cities: we have had a functioning and free wifi network in the whole golden triangle for at least two years now.

[Murphy Mac @ May 13th 2008 11:00PM]

I like that photo.

[jakeyjake0080 @ May 14th 2008 12:12AM]

In corpus we have the exact same wifi cloud and its also leaving as well, i think its on june 15 or somewhere around there... The service was great in the beginning when it was free but as soon as they started charging people quit using it. Plus on my iphone i can only pull about 1 bar of service from them

[jamesFF @ May 14th 2008 12:29AM]

I didn't know that Philadelphia had a citywide WiFi until Engadget mentions that it was shutting down. I will be passing through Philadelphia this Thursday.

[The_Steven @ May 14th 2008 12:56AM]

So how much do you want to bet that some of their lamp-post radios are going to "disappear under mysterious circumstances".

[T.H. @ May 14th 2008 8:47AM]

Coverage was sporadic. I live just out of the Center City region in Philadelphia and it's not available. I see it in certain spots but certainly not the blanket coverage one would expect. Shoddy service overall. I can deal with slower speeds if it was cheap, like $10 a month and covered most of Philadelphia with only spots here and there that had weak coverage. This would have been ideal for when I lug my laptop around.

The problem is that it is the exact opposite. It covered only spots here and there with weak coverage while costing $20. That's a lot of money for crap service. No wonder not many bought it. Especially when my 7 down 1 up DSL line cost $60 which includes a VOIP line.

[Darren @ May 14th 2008 9:22AM]

The biggest problem earthlink had was that there service sucked! You can only get it up to '3rd floor'? It connects and disconnects all day. Just horrible service overall.

[keithwwalker @ May 15th 2008 8:05PM]

The problem was that Earthlink had a great way to convince cities to buy into it. It required cities to do NOTHING, promising added infrastructure.

Thereby the politicians signed away bandwidth rights and patted themselves on the back for 'creating' a free WiFi system that will extend into poverty stricken neighborhoods and lift city into a new era of understanding and enlightenment...

When the financial and advertising model didn't pan out, Earthlink went crying back to the cities and started asking for money.

The politicians who were busy slapping themselves on the back on what a great (non)job they did, quietly changed the agreement

That's when the 'free' service (and infrastructure) became a low cost pay service.

It was all downhill from there.

Worst of all, instead of installing the equipment in the poorer neighborhoods, they installed the system in center city. Ask a poor kid with a hand me down pc if slow internet is better than no internet...
Good job (ex) Mayor Street, you managed screwed over your constituents even after you left office!