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January 16, 2008

Oakland County, Mich., Project Needs to Raise $70m

By Glenn Fleishman

It sounds like a litany, but another large-scale wireless project needs investment cash to proceed: The long-delayed project in Oakland County, Mich., which originally was planned to involve WiMax, and has suffered greatly due to issues around utility pole negotiations. Now, the network’s operator, MichTel, says that $70m is needed to move forward, according to the local paper The Oakland Press.

Unfortunately, Oakland County’s deputy executive isn’t reading up on the issues troubling other municipal networks, at least according to this report. Phil Bertolini noted that no county money, only mounting assets like towers and buildings, were involved. But then he explains why other municipal networks have failed: “They went with advertising supported models.”

Not so. MetroFi is still standing, and claims to have a good model for ad-supported service as long as cities are anchor tenants. We haven’t heard much from MetroFi lately, but it’s still standing.

Bertolini continued: “We realized we need to generate revenue from ads, subscribers, businesses that have a mobile work force and governments that can use it for meter reading and other things.” Right. That’s the foundation of a well-diversified network.

Posted by Glennf at January 16, 2008 2:38 PM

Categories: Financial, Municipal

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