As with most Wi-Fi networks built or planned in 2005 and 2006, indoor coverage required wireless boosters, and the necessity of those signal bridges wasn't clear to early users. That led to early adopters rejecting MetroFi's and others' services, which didn't help spread use.

Can they succeed where EarthLink (and others) failed? Possibly. If they get the same deal that EarthLink previously offered, they're getting a lot of equipment for free and a quantifiable set of problems. I had written earlier it wasn't a good deal for Phila. to accept the network, but a private operator that's locally based and is trying to do good and get a return on its investment may be able to raise money and set more modest goals. Starting from scratch is a non-starter for any firm at this point.

What they desperately need to do if they acquire the network is immediately bulk out several critical square miles, convince the city to buy some service right away (point-to-point dedicated connections to replace wirelines comes to mind, but will an ex-Verizoner be able to convert municipal revenue that's going to his old employer without qualms?), and show that the network can work.

The advertising part is interesting. MetroFi has shown that their particular flavor of ad-supported Wi-Fi doesn't work. But their goal wasn't crossing a digital divide, and the Portland, Ore., network was never given high marks by local users as to its robustness and reach.

GigaOm's Michael Wolf rounds up what other forms of networks are needed in a home beyond Wi-Fi: Ethernet, HomePlug, MoCA, HomePNA, Wireless HD, personal networks (Bluetooth), and automation controls. (My home is a very stupid home, thank you very much.)

He who steals my Wi-Fi steals hash: Mike Rogoway at the (Portland) Oregonian poses the question as to whether using a neighbor's unsecured Wi-Fi is borrowing, stealing, or nothing at all. I pipe in noting that more people are securing their networks. In my current office, where I've been three years, I spotted over a dozen networks when I arrived, most unsecured. Today, all the networks are secured (only some are small business networks), and many of the names have changed. The reasons? Better security wizards, widespread use of WPA, improved Wi-Fi network setup in Windows Vista and XP SP2, start of use of WPS, and general fear of security issues. Rogoway also runs through what the options for connectivity in Portland are as MetroFi is about to hit its network shutdown date.

Philadelphia's mixed free airport Wi-Fi: I somehow missed this story months ago, but PHL (Philadelphia's airport) is offering free Wi-Fi on the weekends to every one, and free Wi-Fi on the weekdays to college students. Students go to an information counter, show their valid student ID, and get an access code. This is a very neat idea. The airport is otherwise $8 for 24 hours or $40 per month, although it's part of much cheaper roaming plans from Boingo Wireless and iPass.

Aurora, Ill., joins MetroFi cities turning down gear deal: Aurora, the city of light, the first electrified streetlit city in the U.S., opts to not buy the MetroFi gear. Along with all of MetroFi's other networks (excluding Riverside, Calif., operated with AT&T), June 20 will likely be the last day of service. About 160 of 600 to 900 nodes were installed in Aurora.

San Francisco paper wraps up MetroFi's shutdowns in their area: Ryan Kim writes in the SF Chronicle about the many networks being shut down by MetroFi around the bay. Santa Clara and San Jose are still looking at MetroFi's equipment offer. Neither city has complete coverage; Santa Clara is focused on some residential portions, and San Jose has some downtown service. Kim brings up the spectre of twice or three times dead Ricochet.

Santa Fe bypasses Wi-Fi health concerns: The city council voted unanimously to approve Wi-Fi service in libraries and city-owned buildings. This odd paragraph appears in the AP story: "Julie Tambourine, an advocate for the disabled and homeless, said after Wednesday's meeting that the legal analysis was flawed, because it didn't take into account those with diabetes, seizure disorders, respiratory ailments and other conditions that can be adversely affected by microwave radiation." It's unfortunate the writer didn't get a medical research in any of those areas to discuss that. I have never heard the strongest advocates of the view that EMF causes health issues mention any of those conditions.

Minneapolis suffers the heartbreak of leafage: Leaves are popping in Minneapolis, and Star-Tribune columnist Steve Alexander writes that residents are seeing some Wi-Fi reception problems on that city's Wi-Fi network. This is the only big-city network that can be currently described "successful," even though its long-term success has to be proven out. The firm responsible, USI Wireless, told Alexander they're working on adjusting about 5 percent of antennas to cope with the pesky greenery.

St. Louis Park sues ARINC over Wi-Fi network: The Minnesota town says the network never worked, and had earlier discussed a lawsuit. The city wants the value of the contract ($1.7m) plus a very modest amount in damages and fees ($50,000). The city plans to start removing gear if ARINC doesn't sometime in June. But they have to deal with 490 poles erected to hold the nodes and solar-charging gear--sunk into concrete. More recent testing showed that the network worked well in some areas, but the majority of the network did not, according to the Star Tribune.

Verizon builds out fiber in AT&T territory: Interesting sign of competition in otherwise monopoly-per-provider-type world. Verizon is using AT&T's hard-won statewide video franchising rules in Texas to build competitive fiber in Dallas suburbs. They're apparently not bringing telecom; they're acting like a cable TV firm with data. Verizon owns chunks of territory all over due to it encompassing GTE in a deal years ago. GTE serves suburbs west of Portland, Ore., and east of Seattle, for instance, while Qwest serves most of the rest of each state.

Foster City Wi-Fi dies on June 20: MetroFi is unlighting its cities, and Foster City opted not to spend the nearly $200,000 asking price MetroFi put on its equipment. MetroFi might still find a buyer, but June 20 is the network's current final day. Naperville, Ill., also expects a June 20 shutdown. They, too, were offered the network hardware for 200 grand.

Chehalis lights up: A small city in southern Washington votes to put in Wi-Fi hotzones. The cost is about $53,000 and annual fees $15,000. Funds will come from existing tax and grant sources. The city chose to install service to make sure they're not missing a checkbox on the amenities list for visitors and businesses rather than for a particular, measurable goal.

Nearby Centralia pulls its Wi-Fi: A pilot project in the larger city of Centralia, Wash., a bit north of Chehalis, is shut down when poles used to mount Wi-Fi radios are removed as electrical wires are buried. (The reporter here confuses broadband over powerlines (BPL) with broadband wireless.) The system might be restarted later.

Craig Settles writes up Pennsylvania's Cambria County wireless success: This is a network built for particular municipal purposes, part of Settles's long-time drumbeat about having applications first and then networks built for those networks second. He notes that Cambria built a 700 sq mi network that sounds nearly cost neutral through efficiency and cost conservation--it's cheaper to get much more service with this network than it was for a smaller array of services with incumbent-provided networks.

Santa Fe residents oppose Wi-Fi in the library on health grounds: You know what I have to say about how provable this has turned out to be in clinical studies. I am, however, as always, concerned about these people's health, even if I don't believe that Wi-Fi (or EMF) causes their problems. The group opposed to library-Fi is citing the ADA in this case, uniquely I believe. Six libraries suggested that EMF triggers seizures in epileptics, something I've never heard cited before; maybe CRTs (flickering), but EMF? Wired is substantially less kind than I am, pointing out that EMF other than Wi-Fi produces vastly higher signal strength. (They're sort of ignoring signal strength at a given point where an individual stands in relation to a transmitter, however.)

Creative drops Wi-Fi music player: The formerly leading portable music player firm, before Apple and Microsoft entered the biz, confirmed a report that the Zen Share existed, but that the company chose to drop that Wi-Fi-enabled player. An under-wraps player may appear in about two months that could include Wi-Fi--the name Zen X-Fi could be revealing or not, as X-Fi is an audio-processing technology.

Inspiair's physics-defying technology sold, relabeled Max-Fi: I express my doubts about the combination of marketing promises, including area covered, low latency, and speed, and the collision of those promises with the laws of physics as well as regulatory issues. The lack of sales, noted in the article, tends to confirm my opinion, which is precisely what happened with Vivato after early positive response led to devices being built that couldn't meet the mark. Current claims are 30 sq km with 14 access points for outdoor coverage at the port of Antwerp, a network that's in a test. I wrote about Inspiair back in 2006.

Foster City, Calif., turns down MetroFi equipment offer: The city decided against paying $200,000 for MetroFi's gear, which serves about 1,500 people a month, partly because yearly operations would top $125,000.

First, Karl Edwards of Excelsio, a firm that consults on municipal broadband, lays out a pretty straight case as to why EarthLink, Kite, and MetroFi's networks, among other one-offs, were designed to fail. I've written about aspects of this over the last four years, but Edwards is succinct. In part, EarthLink offering to build Philadelphia's network at no cost to the city set the mold wrong for all networks to follow. We're resetting now, and Wi-Fi's moment may have passed.

Edwards offers as one the constraints set by cities, "Expectation that the network would cover 90-95% of the City with wireless coverage as opposed to just in the areas where there was a solid business case." This has been a problem I've had for a couple of years when it started to become clear that 90-plus percent coverage wasn't in the interest of the ISP--nor in the city's interest because these networks couldn't be completed.

Edwards also notes that when consulting for Grand Rapids, Mich., which chose Clearwire as its wireless partner, EarthLink told the city that they expected a conservative 22-percent uptake for their Wi-Fi service by end of the fourth year. Given that in mature markets, a high-single-digit uptake is considered very good, that's shows how the Excel spreadsheets were skewed. USI Wireless's estimates for break-even require less than 10 percent of the population in their covered areas to subscribe, and their numbers of subscribers to date are tracking that number closely.

He closes with a set of eight principles for wireless network builders to come to the table with and cities to adopt, all of which I agree with.

Next, Esme Vos suggests a very modest proposal: San Francisco should have required all its cafes to offer free Wi-Fi, and then Fon or others could have aggregated and bundled access to these locations. There's a long set of comments accusing Esme of communism, socialism, utopianism, and other isms. The post and the comments make for lively reading.

Finally, Craig Plunkett, who operates hotspot networks around New York City and Long Island, chimes in with a summary of these opinions and the notion that muni-Fi jumped the shark when Ocean City, N.J., decided to put Wi-Fi in garbage cans. He points out that "an infill strategy" of providing service where needed and then extending from there is effective.

OpenAirBoston advisor editorializes that slow and steady is the way to figure out muni-Fi: An op-ed by Brian Worobey of the Museum of Science in Boston notes that the local non-profit's slow pace--accidental, he notes, as it intended to roll out faster--could produce more information and a better result than the many failed all-at-once attempts for deployment. My current line on this is that Wi-Fi's likely utility in a city is in site-specific, limited area networks designed to solve particular problems. Call it reverse redlining or bridging the digital divide or simply gapfilling, but Wi-Fi could be used effectively and relatively inexpensively as a tool to bring broadband where it is not. But that has to be coupled with goals and plans: what is the point of bringing broadband? Job opportunities? Education? Entertainment? Having these answers would help produce the right kind of network.