Hey, we finally got numbers about Tempe, Ariz., in an article about the network operator's assets being purchased: I'm not sure what Telscape (incorrectly noted as Telescape in the article) Communications is thinking about. The coverage of the current network after three years of work is apparently inadequate, despite what is now called Kite Networks' increasing from 400 to 1,200 nodes to cover the city's 40 sq mi. (They don't say 1,200, but  they said 400 nodes originally at launch, 600 later after coverage was too poor, and "three times" the original count in this article.)

Telscape is a bilingual telephone company and has operations in parts of the country with large Hispanic audiences. Thus, Tempe isn't a bad place for them to concentrate on. The firm's chairman told Tempe's city council he was considering a buyout of the network because he thought he could market the network much more effectively, obtaining 10,000 customers, which would be 6 percent of Tempe's population. Seems unlikely. Wi-Fi market penetration hasn't exceeded low single digits yet in any city offering it unless the service is free; and free doesn't stop people complaining about it. In Tempe, particularly, the university population is concentrated, but fleeting and cheap (students don't have an extra $10 or $20 per month), while served in part by Internet access in dorms and on campus. (The university, last time I checked, has no campus-wide Wi-Fi.)

The company is researching the deal, but the chair thought the network was well built technologically. We'll see what due diligence brings. Meanwhile, recall that Kite Networks was bought by Gobility in a deal that required  additional funds to be raised that weren't. So I'm not sure in the end (there weren't any filings recently by Kite's former parent company) whether Gobility will be selling the assets or returning them to NeoReach for them to be sold.

I wrote about Tempe back in March 2006 for a feature in The Economist in which I discussed all the things that would be problematic for Wi-Fi networks and that weren't being addressed. I noted that Tempe already had a wireless network used for backhaul that had dropped their telecom costs from $1.7m to $0.5m a year (exclusive of capital). Tempe was supposed to be an ideal case, given its compact audience and rather flat terrain, as well as the large university population.

In a bit of understatement, here's my conclusion from the Economist article: "The real measure of municipal wireless networks will not be in places such as Tempe, where they are expected to work, but in bigger cities, where success is far from certain. Whether service providers will be able to meet the required technical standards and still make a profit will soon become clear."

Washington's capital, Olympia, opts out of Wi-Fi: They decided the small sum they'd allotted was too small to produce any interesting results. They had budgeted $20,000 for some amount of Wi-Fi, and learned it would cost $100,000s to build what they'd envisioned.

Philomath will get Wi-Fi, perhaps for free: A local provider might get a contract from the city which would enable it to build a network that could perhaps be offered at no cost. The same firm built a free, small hotzone in Corvallis, where the state's agricultural and engineering college, Oregon State University, is based, and they may be able to expand that network. The small Oregon city is pronounced fill-OH-muth, not, as you probably just said to yourself, FILL-a-math. (I spent formative years in Oregon.)