Wireless (and Wired) Minneapolis

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Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)

April 13, 2005

CITIES ASK: WHY NOT WI-FI? ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS CONSIDER OFFERING CITYWIDE WIRELESS NET SERVICE

BYLINE: BETH SILVER, Pioneer Press

BODY:
Minneapolis wants to pull the plug on the Internet.

In a proposal to be made public today, the city is calling on telephone companies, Internet service providers and start-up technology businesses to bid on a proposal that would provide citywide wireless access to the Internet.

Laptop users could search the Web from a grassy spot in the middle of a city park. Police could instantly download a suspect's mug shot. Fire crews could find an online map in their trucks, and building and health inspectors could keep connected on assignment.

And all of it would come at no cost to the city, said Minneapolis' chief information officer, Karl Kaiser.

"We could have our cake and eat it, too, so to speak," Kaiser said. "We could sign on to get all of our institutional needs met, and we could, at the same time, do something good for all our citizens in Minneapolis by having a ubiquitous network that people can reach from wherever they are."

The idea is to have private companies build the $15 million to $20 million in infrastructure required to set up the wireless and fiber-optic network over the city's 59 square miles. The companies also would run the service. In return, the city would offer to be the company's largest customer. Currently, the city spends more than $2 million a year on telephone and Internet connections, Kaiser said.

St. Paul also is considering its Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) Internet possibilities. City staff members plan to bring the issue, including whether to expand Wi-Fi to city operations or throughout St. Paul as a whole, before the City Council today. Officials have not decided whether the city should become a provider itself or farm out the project as Minneapolis plans to do.

To get private companies interested, Minneapolis would allow the city's tall building tops, power poles and traffic signals to serve as stations for the antennas needed to transmit the wireless signals, Kaiser said.

More than two dozen companies have expressed interest, among them Qwest Communications and Time Warner Cable, Kaiser said. The companies have two months to return their proposals.

The job is so big that a consortium of companies likely would construct the network and run the service, Kaiser said.

Minneapolis officials would like to choose one of the proposals by the end of the year, and the City Council would have to approve the contract, Kaiser said. Some of the service would be available a year after that and the full program could be running within two years after a contract is approved, he said.

"No matter where you are, you ought to have this access capability and you ought to be able to have it at a nominal fee," Kaiser said.

Kaiser said Minneapolis did not want to run its own citywide wireless network, as other cities have done, because city leaders thought to do so would give the government an unfair advantage over private businesses.

He also said the city didn't want the responsibility.

"We didn't want the management headaches. We're not in the business of managing a business," Kaiser said.

Glenn Fleishman, editor of Seattle-based Wi-Fi Networking News, said dozens of cities across the country have citywide networks under way with a combination of owners.

The city of Chaska runs its own wireless network. Philadelphia has set up a nonprofit company to manage its service.

Minneapolis is offering a private company a "de facto monopoly" because no one else would have access to all of the city sites where the private company would place its antennas, Fleishman said. To buy access to those areas would cost tens of millions of dollars, he added.

Wi-Fi in Minneapolis would be available to government workers, in the city's 300 buildings, including in schools and libraries, and to businesses.

Home users could pay a monthly fee of between $18 and $24 for the service, a discount of about half the current price for wired service, Kaiser said. A person who wanted access to the Internet through the city's wireless network could also log on with a password. The city likely would charge a small fee for the service, although Kaiser said he did not know how much.

The idea sounded good to Cory Olson, who was surfing the Web Tuesday on the wireless network available free at Heavenly Daze Coffee House across from the University of Minnesota's law school.

So-called "hot spots" already provide wireless service -- some for free, others for a fee -- at hundreds of Twin Cities coffee shops, restaurants and hotels. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport also offers the service. The wireless range usually stretches about 300 feet.

"If it's citywide, I could be at home, I could be at a coffee shop, I could be anywhere in the city," said Olson, a second-year law student who was toggling between an anti-trust law book and KFAN's Web site.

Staff writer Robert Ingrassia contributed to this report.