{"id":3336,"date":"2012-06-07T19:34:31","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T00:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3336"},"modified":"2012-06-07T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T00:34:31","slug":"the-failed-promise-of-city-wi-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3336","title":{"rendered":"The Failed Promise Of City Wi-Fi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Minneapolis began building its municipal wi-fi network in 2006, locals like me had high hopes that it would offer a compelling and affordable alternative to broadband offerings from Comcast and Qwest (now CenturyLink). But the network&#8217;s success <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/business\/157369725.html\">has been underwhelming<\/a>, suffering from low subscriber numbers and competition from both wired and cellular providers. The wi-fi network couldn&#8217;t match the higher speeds offered by Comcast or the ubiquitous coverage offered by the cellular companies. A wi-fi network becomes much less essential when people can get online anywhere with their smartphones.<\/p>\n<p>I still think municipal broadband can be a good idea, but perhaps Minneapolis should paid more heed to other cities that abandoned their plans to build wireless networks when they realized the technology doesn&#8217;t provide great coverage or speed. Or perhaps the city should have focused on developing hotspots in public places rather than attempting to ensure access for every resident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Minneapolis began building its municipal wi-fi network in 2006, locals like me had high hopes that it would offer a compelling and affordable alternative to broadband offerings from Comcast and Qwest (now CenturyLink). But the network&#8217;s success has been underwhelming, suffering from low subscriber numbers and competition from both wired and cellular providers. The <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3336' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-wonkery","category-10-id","category-15-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-RO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3337,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions\/3337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}