Earthlink finally pulls out of Wireless Philly, but all is not lost

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City wide wi-fi just died in Denver this year, too.: For those who follow such things, Ricochet Networks (now "Civitas Wireless Solutions, PLC"), which began as a microcellular Internet access provider in places like Seattle, San Diego and Denver, stopped providing Internet service here in Denver this spring.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't disappointed to lose even relatively slow (about 130 kbps on a good day) city-wide wireless access. It cost me just about $25/month, and came with ten free Email accounts and a free Web site. All told, a very sweet deal.

It's also be a lie to say I'm shocked that it happened. Ricochet/Civitas existed in a niche that is going away now that the cell phone industry is getting cellular wireless Internat access to work at reasonable rates. It was never a very healthy business model - it went away when the tech stocks bubble burst and took a while to come back - but it WAS nice to have.

But here in Denver, home bailiwick of Qwest Telecommunications, there was no way that anyone else's municipal wi-fi network would not eventually be exorcised from the area. Especially not with a mayor whose previous job was running half the trendy brew pubs in town.

Qwest could make our new mayor a nice offer for the city's wireless comms needs (such as wi-fi police, fire, paramedic and utilities networks), and if the numbers worked better than a system that also wired Denver for wi-fi (you could actually drive around while someone else surfs on a laptop in your passenger seat, relaying directions from Mapquest or making reservations for just about anything you could reserve), that was too bad. All of us former Ricochet users were offered the standard crappy broadband deal from cable/broadband provider Comcast; We were using Qwest broadband wifi at home for a while now, anyway, so we just shifted all the way over to them (except for my Email account, which I still get from the same people who were running Ricochet's Email servers for them before.

I predict that Sprint will do as they've done with Boost cellular and either offer low-cost nationwide wifi themselves (perhaps minus bundled Email and Web services) or with a marketing partner. Their Boost service isn't half-bad (I use it) and has an amazing array of pay-as-you-go bells and whistles - GPS navigation and friend location, free directory assistance - much better than the $79/month deals of the majors.; Posted by: jlafitte Posted on: 05/14/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use