Higher-flying Wi-Fi

Sheldon Mains was a skeptic about Minneapolis' Wi-Fi Internet access service, but he says he's changed his mind.

"For the last month, it's been working great," said Mains, who lives in the 2700 block of E. 24th Street. "If you'd asked me what I thought four months ago, I would have been extremely pessimistic because the service was pretty bad for a while. But it's a new service and [network builder] US Internet is figuring it out. Their technical support people were helpful, and I got credits on my bill whenever I asked for them."

Others who have had problems also say things are getting better.

"I'm satisfied at this point," Steven Stilwell, who lives in the 2300 block of Minneapolis Avenue, said recently. "We've had the service for two weeks, and while initially there were some outages during the day, there has been less of that recently."

The two men represent something of a turnaround for the Wi-Fi project, which in recent months drew some grumbling over the slowed pace of installation and problems with intermittent or poor service. Now the Minneapolis project is moving ahead while similar Wi-Fi efforts have stalled in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago because of rising costs, technical problems, business model flaws or the financial travails of network installer EarthLink.

(That company lost the bid to install the Minneapolis network to US Internet of Minnetonka.) The service is available downtown and in eastern parts of Minneapolis, but the addition of part of southwest Minneapolis is imminent.

But many consumers have been impatient for the service to arrive because of its price. Minneapolis customers on a two-year contract will pay $17.95 a month for 1 million bits-per-second downloads, $24.95 for 3 million bits and $29.95 for 6 million. (The modem recommended for indoor use is an additional $5 a month, or $80 to $85 to purchase, depending on model.) The service also can be used on a portable laptop computer.

By comparison, telephone company Qwest and cable TV firm Comcast charge higher prices for equivalent broadband speeds that lack portability.

For Internet-only service, Qwest charges $25 a month for one-quarter of a million bits per second download speed, (and, on a two-year contract) $32 a month for 1.5 million bits and $42 a month for 7 million.

Comcast charges $60 a month for Internet-only service at 6 million bits per second download. (Both companies offer lower prices if bundles of phone or video service are also purchased.)

A bright spot

But price aside, Minneapolis remains a bright spot in the national municipal Wi-Fi movement. EarthLink recently pulled out of the San Francisco and Houston Wi-Fi projects, then announced layoffs in its own Wi-Fi staff. Chicago said it had been unable to reach a Wi-Fi cost agreement with AT&T or EarthLink.

In contrast, the Minneapolis Wi-Fi project is dealing with lesser problems: It's six weeks behind schedule, and US Internet says its construction costs have risen from $20 million to about $24 million because of the need for additional equipment and some remedial work. But the project is still on track to be completed this year, the additional costs won't be a barrier for US Internet (some will be paid by the company, some by suppliers) and the cost overruns won't affect consumer prices, according to US Internet and city officials.

"I'm happy with the job US Internet is doing." said Lynn Willenbring, the chief information officer for Minneapolis. "When you talk about a project of this scope, and where you're dealing with the weather, a six-week slip in the schedule is not all that surprising. I think it's realistic that the network will be done by the end of the year, but it's not something I absolutely promise."

Construction speeding up

One reason US Internet believes it can meet a year-end deadline for network completion is that the speed of construction is going up, said Joe Caldwell, US Internet's sales vice president. Network construction was slowed downtown because there were so many existing business Wi-Fi networks that caused radio interference, he said. The installation has now moved on to residential areas where there is little radio interference and construction is easier, he said.

Caldwell declined to say how many people have signed up for Wi-Fi service because of a planned announcement later, but said there are "thousands" of customers.

Analysts say Wi-Fi in Minneapolis benefits from something Houston and Chicago lack -- relatively small geographic size that creates a favorable balance between network cost and potential revenue.

"Midsized and smaller cities seem to be the right size in terms of making Wi-Fi work," said Stan Schatt, a vice president at ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y. "When a city gets above a certain size, it faces so many insurmountable issues," such as the cost of building out the network over many more square miles.

That's not to say there haven't been problems here. Half the six-week delay in the project is a result of problems encountered by US Internet, while the other half occurred when the city diverted the company to provide emergency communications after the Interstate 35W bridge collapse and to build more Wi-Fi-enabled security cameras and gunshot-spotter microphones in north Minneapolis, Willenbring said.

Coexisting with trees

The biggest problem for US Internet has been Wi-Fi reception inside homes because of the radio barrier formed by the city's ocean of trees, said Kurt Lange, the company's vice president of operations and customer service. As a result, US Internet is now putting up 45 Wi-Fi access points per square mile, up from the 30 envisioned in the original plan. At the same time, it is adding booster antennas to most of the access points in the city, rather than just a few as originally planned.

For difficult reception problems, US Internet will provide special antennas that fit atop the Wi-Fi modems the company has long recommended for indoor reception, Lange said.

For more intractable reception problems suffered by an estimated 5 percent of customers, the company is willing to install an additional outdoor house antenna for a one-time fee that hasn't been determined yet, he said. However, the more elaborate indoor and outdoor house antennas won't be available until December, Caldwell said.

In addition, city Wi-Fi won't be available to people more than three stories above street level until the owners of high-rise buildings negotiate for coverage with US Internet, Willenbring said. US Internet is just beginning conversations with building owners about that, Caldwell said.

"We don't want people to mistakenly believe that there will be ubiquitous coverage inside buildings," Willenbring said. "I don't think we've done a good job of setting people's expectations on that."

Caldwell said suburbs have expressed interest in installing similar Wi-Fi networks but are waiting to see how things work out in Minneapolis first.

"And from our standpoint, we're busy doing Minneapolis," Caldwell said. "I don't see us putting up a network in another city until after the Minneapolis network is done."

Steve Alexander • 612-673-4553

Steve Alexander • alex@startribune.com