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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wireless_philadelphia;_ylt=AgOpySp9ng6fbJt7Tfwb_wAjtBAF

So I don't get it. . .Earthlink says they would have given the wireless network to Philidelphia, but they didn't want it. So they sue Philidelphia instead to recoup some of the costs of tearing down the network and removing the wifi nodes from the street lamps. You take the city to court? Is Earthlink insane? WTF. . .and they are just going to stop the service!

Does this make any sense? Is Earthlink lashing out at Philidelphia now for giving them a bad name or something? Bizarre.

And for an idea of the service, I cut some of the comments for you to see. Read more of the complaints on the service here http://www.wirelessphiladelphia.org/blog_detail.cfm/blog/37

"I would advise you to choose the slowest most antiquated dial-up connection before considering the muni wifi as a viable option."

"This is the absolute worst product I have ever dealt with. I spent close to 6 hours on the phone over the coarse of about 8 phone calls. Canceled three accounts trying to get their special "antenna" which didn't work. Was hung up on while on hold three times after navigating through their automated"

What in the heck where these people thinking? Both Earthlink and Philly where to blame if you ask me. Obviously not everyone thought it was a good idea in the first place.
I have used the Earthlink wifi service a few times in Anaheim, testing it to see how it could be used by the city staff. I found it occasionally worked ok. . but I occassionally was VERY frustrated as something slowed the network to a crawl, and again like the other people you get a good signal but the backhaul is overloaded and or being jammed by RF noise from something. It will be interesting if the lawsuit has to reveal the network diagram for their system. It would be a good model of what NOT to do for outdoor wireless.

It's too bad the system can't be upgraded using a combination of other comm infrastructure to make it more robust. And the damn tropos nodes, can they be upgraded? I wonder how much it could cost to upgrade a Tropos node to use 4.9ghz?

Also it's funny that philidelphia says it would cost millions to run per year? How is that, I mean I know cities are not real efficient but come on, over a million to keep it going? I wwould maybe say millions to UPGRADE it, but not just to keep it going as is.
I'd like to see the cost model for how they figure the millions.

Even considering worst case, say you need to do like 250 bucket truck runs per year for defective units. Say $100,000 for bucket trucks/electricians.
Add two IT/Rf geeks per year, thats $300,000 at most (even with outsourcing)
Say $100,000 for new hardware/warranty.
Say $50,000 for backhaul circuits.

It's still far from a million per year. Maybe some other costs I don't see?