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January 27, 2008

Dade County Wireless Project Halted

By Glenn Fleishman

Before it really began, the Dade County, Flor., wireless effort shuts down: Miami-Dade mayor Carlos Alvarez has dropped his plans for an ambitious county-wide network after the departure of a key aide. It seems that WiMax was always part of the thinking for this 2,000 sq mi network, but Alvarez was optimistically relying on the separately politically organized county school board to give them valuable 2.5 GHz frequency for use! Rather than, you know, lease it to Sprint or Clearwire for tens of millions of dollars. Very optimistic.

I’m quoted in the articles saying that there are no successful countywide initiatives anywhere in the world (replace county with similar political units where unavailable). I can’t think of a one; all I know of are abandoned plans and struggling projects likely to shut down.

The mayor is quoted stating, incorrectly, “Several communities before us attempted to do too much too soon, only to learn that their models were impractical, and more importantly, costly to taxpayers.” That’s really wrong. In all the Wi-Fi networks across the U.S., only a handful involved more than a few tens of thousands of dollars, and even in those cases, there was typically a public benefit. St. Louis Park, Minn., Chaska, Minn., and St. Cloud, Flor., are the most notable examples of public dollars spent to build networks; each is a relatively small town, and each has a different story to tell about outcomes.

A few large hotzones in Miami-Dade will still be built.

Posted by Glennf at January 27, 2008 9:23 AM

Categories: Metro-Scale Networks, Municipal

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