Orlando pulls plug on free WiFi

The City of Orlando has pulled the plug on its ambitious free WiFi program. It was costing the city almost $2000/month, and only an average of 27 people a day were using the system. There are several things we can learn from this.

• As I've been saying for a long time, start small and make sure something works before pouring a lot of money into it. Orlando should have tried a few hotspots and kept the cost down to a few hundred dollars. If they had done this and monitored usage, it would have been a clue that usage was not what they expected.
• IT folks love big projects because it allows them to justify bigger budgets and more staff. Higher level managers (read elected officials, in this case) often allow themselves to get railroaded by their IT staff as IT folks throw around a lot of buzzwords and make everyone feel ignorant and behind the times. I don't know if this happened in this case, but think about the Philadelphia project, led by the city's IT director, that wanted to build a massive, multi-million dollar citywide WiFi system. It never made much sense to me--I don't ever recommend spending that much money in advance of understanding the market direction. And the market direction for WiFi has always been muddy.
• Beware of vendors promising big benefits. Vendors love muni projects because they can usually get muni IT staffs excited about buying a lot of stuff, and it is usually then easy to wow city leaders who are feeling some pressure to "do something about broadband." WiFi is only part of a comprehensive approach to broadband. Despite what vendors say, it does not solve the broadband "problem."

So what should communities be doing about WiFi? I think that muni WiFi makes sense only when you understand what the bigger community goals are. Are you trying to get tourists to pull off the interstate and visit your community? Then a free WiFi hotspot at the tourist center makes a lot of sense, and is easily justified.

Are you trying to help with Digital Divide issues in your community? Then offering WiFi at the library, where people can bring a laptop and work quietly may make sense. Are you trying to attract more youth and foot traffic downtown? Then a few public hotspots with convenient outdoor access (e.g. a downtown park) may make sense.

There may be neighborhoods and communities where a WiFi blanket over a larger area is justified, but you need to know what you want to accomplish first, and be able to place the technology investment in a larger context, like a Technology Master Plan.