Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, Houston Chronicle call for city-wide Wi-Fi (in different ways): It's a very odd set of circumstances that led columnists and editorial writers in three major metropolitan newspapers to come up with the idea to write about this independent of one another.

The New York Times is least informed. It suggests that Internet access is "a basic part of the infrastructure of education and democracy." That conclusion is poorly drawn, however, due to several factual errors in their exegesis. They wrote: "...many American cities, caught up in a tide of technological and fiscal optimism, promised to try to make Internet coverage available to all by making it citywide, wireless and low-cost or even free." True! But they leave that statement hanging there as if that's how proposals were written.

As I have extensively documented over nearly four years, Philadelphia and San Francisco quickly dropped the "free" part, not requiring it in their proposals. Of all major cities in which plans were made, only Portland, Ore., had a free (ad-supported) option for a baseline service. (Google's offer for SF as part of EarthLink's plan called for 300 Kbps service.)

In discussing EarthLink, they take a recent specific statement about the future without backtracking it to last summer: "EarthLink is calling it a change in strategic direction. What that phrase means, simply, is where’s the profit?" No, it means: How, as a company, does EarthLink survive? By pour hundreds of millions of dollars it can't afford into projects that can't produce a return?

"The neighborhoods that most need low-cost, public wireless service now find themselves largely dependent on Internet access through public libraries." Right, and that doesn't require a 95-percent coverage commercial buildout. We'll get to that in a moment in Houston.

"Philadelphia gave EarthLink free access to utility poles for mounting wireless routers." Uh, no, editorial page of the New York Times, it did not. EarthLink and Wireless Philadelphia have a complicated arrangements with the local utility over placement and electricity. It wasn't free to either EarthLink or WP, the actual operator (ignored in this editorial entirely, by the way).

"The costs of building a network turned out to be higher than expected — at a time when prices for private Internet service were dropping. It also hurt, in Philadelphia’s case, that there was a major change at EarthLink, which went from being an advocate of municipal Wi-Fi to a company determined to cut costs." Again, some specious use of facts. "Higher than expected" is a gross understatement. Prices dropping, when they were cut in some markets by incumbents by a third, at least for 1 or even 2 year promotional rates, is "plummeting." And, finally, the "major change at EarthLink" was the clear realization that their Wi-Fi approach was disastrous (paying for everything with no municipal commitment) while Helio was also poised to bleed them dry.

"EarthLink should fulfill the commitments it made." Excuse me, bah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's columnist Chris Satullo has a short set of pithy advice: Don't let the goals of Wireless Philadelphia die. The mayor's office should hop on finding private partners, and make a significant commitment of its own. Save the partly built network, and make the economics work to preserve its potential benefit for the city. (WP continues to get high marks for it efforts in getting computers, training, and access to low-income folks in Phila., although Joshua Bretibart continues to question how some of the bills were paid and deferred by WP related to electricity, among other topics.)

Now, I'm biased on this last one, in the Houston Chronicle, as I spoke to the editorial writer, who solicited my views (among many others) on whether Houston's "bubbles" of access plan, which will involve about $3.5m of their $5m late fee from EarthLink, made sense versus an all-at-once strategy. As the Chronicle writes, and I agree with, working with the most needy neighborhoods, were computer ownership and literacy are lacking, to provide access along with systems and training, is a brilliant approach.

Why? For a few related reasons. First, bringing computers, training, and Internet in all at once could rapidly allow people to gain the skills necessary to pull themselves up slowly out of poverty or the edge of poverty. You need computer skills for better jobs, period. Kids who grow up in homes without computers aren't prepared for the demands of white collar jobs, medical jobs, and increasingly categories of blue-collar jobs.

Likewise, by building only in "bubbles" with specific disadvantages, Houston could become a place of experimentation by firms that want to donate gear or bandwidth, that want a tax write-off, or by local companies that want to fund such efforts further. Building a whole city is tough and, I'd argue at this particular technology junction, misguided. Building well-covered hotzones with a particular purposes plays into the ability to test ideas before shooting the whole wad of bills.