Long Island Wi-Fi project update

Evidently, there is no update.  Pete Weiss writes a review article in Long Island Business News that rounds up all the players and takes the pulse of where the project is or isn't right now.  E-path is still trying to raise money for the project, and the counties are patiently waiting to see something concrete in the test areas.  Bob Giglione took a nice picture of me for the front page, on the Huntington Harbor waterfront, where I was checking the status on two wi-fi networks I operate for the West Shore Marina and Huntington Yacht Club.  I get quoted in the piece regarding the diminishing customer acquisition prospects for the project in the face of competition.  I believe that this project can work, and I express my regrets about not bidding in comments on the LIBN blog.  I think that people have to be creative when they think about wireless networking, and build a Purple Cow, instead of just providing commodity bandwidth distributed over a unscaleable technology like wi-fi.  That's a surefire recipe for failure in the face of Cablevision rolling out its complimentary to customers public wi-fi hotspots and the cellular carriers' data plays.  You still need to pony up for wired bandwidth at home, but if you're out and about, you don't have to pay to get online in some of the more popular Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey downtowns if you are an Optimum Online customer.  MuniWireless and Glenn Fleishman's Wifinetnews pick up on coverage of the story.  My take on their comments after the jump.

Carol Ellison says that support for the project has vanished, but there was never a commitment for anchor tenancy from the beginning.  Certainly there is popular support for the project, just nobody wants to reach into their pockets.  E-path seems to be putting forth a valiant effort to raise funding, there just doesn't seem to be a business model to follow.  In the mean time, it has frozen the market place on the island for smaller municipalities that were interested in lighting up their downtowns.  We were in talks with several entities interested in building out, but they decided to wait to see what happened with the counties.

Glenn points out the difficulties of late with finding funding for large projects without anchor tenancy commitments, and the real estate issues with mounting assets.  In this case, I believe that LIPA is amenable to a third party pole attachment agreement, however, since there is little space left betwen the lowest useable location on a pole and the beginning of the safety zone underneath the high voltage lines, the utility is selective about entering into these agreements so as not to open the floodgates and use up that valuable space.  I don't know where the lack of progress resides, e-path may just be working on finding funding rather than wasting time executing an agreement that may never be utilized.