Earthlink Inc. has finalized a 10-year contract to provide citywide high-speed wireless Internet service, and deployment should start as early as spring 2007, a city official said Monday.
Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer and head of Wireless Philadelphia, said the contract will go before the City Council for approval in February.
Earthlink will own the network and charge a wholesale rate of $9 a month to Internet service providers that would then resell the services to the public, she said.
Neff said the contract doesn't specify the monthly rate that would be charged to consumers, but she said the wholesale price is low enough to enable ISPs to offer low-cost services. City officials had been trying to keep the monthly price to $20 or less.
Construction should start right after the contract is signed. Earthlink will build the network initially over a 15-square-mile area in Northeast Philadelphia to prove the system will work, Neff said. If successful, citywide access could be turned on by spring 2007, she said.
Under the terms of the agreement, which can be renewed, Earthlink will carry the cost to build the Wi-Fi network to cover 135 square miles.
Earthlink also will pay the city and Wireless Philadelphia, the nonprofit handling the project, a fee to mount wireless Internet equipment onto city infrastructure, such as lamp posts.
Neff said talks are ongoing with six ISPs interested in reselling the service.
Philadelphia was the first large city to announce plans to build a wireless Internet network and provide low-cost rates to residents as a way to span the digital divide
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