EarthLink to Build Commercial Citywide Wi-Fi Network in New Orleans

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EarthLink to Build Commercial Citywide Wi-Fi Network in New Orleans

6:00 am on May 31, 2006 | Category: Business, Wireless Technology, Internet, Wi-Fi

The city of New Orleans has given EarthLink Inc. the green light to build a commercial Wi-Fi network around the free city-owned system that local authorities created last year in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The Atlanta-based ISP says that it plans to continue offering free service to residents of the city, with reduced bandwidth speeds (300 kbps), as well as a much faster offering for those willing to pay about $20/month.

For the time being, the EarthLink service will cover 15 square miles of the 181-square mile city, but this will be expanded in the future, as deemed necessary.

“As the city grows and recovers, we plan to expand along with that,” said Bill Tolpegin, EarthLink’s vice president of development and planning for municipal networking.

It appears that there will be a definite market for the new Wi-Fi offering, which is set to be launched sometime this fall. The city’s existing free network currently serves several thousand users per day.