Magazine

Philadelphia, a city mostly precluded from the excitement that accompanies an economic bubble, experienced its own case of irrational exuberance in late 2004 when then-Mayor John Street and his CIO announced a plan to make Philadelphia the nation’s first “hot city” — a border-to-border wireless hot spot that would attract business and integrate impoverished people into the digital economy. The New York Times reported that the City of Brotherly Love hoped to become the “city of laptops,” while National Geographic Traveler in 2005 hailed Philadelphia as “America’s Next Great City,” in no small part due to this initiative that promised to close the digital divide, boost tourism and draw in the young, tech-savvy talent of the area’s many colleges.

One year after the announcement and request-for-proposals, the city selected EarthLink’s pitch, largely because the ISP offered to cover the $20-million infrastructure build-out costs. In addition, EarthLink would pay the city $2 million for use of the 4,000 light posts to which they would attach transceivers; give the city 1,250 free accounts for its mobile workers; share a small percentage of revenue with Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit established at that time to facilitate digital inclusion of the city’s underserved and disconnected; and provide free access from 22 business district hot spots. The signing of this 10-year contract was followed in short order by similarly celebrated projects in several other large- and medium-size cities, from San Francisco, Chicago and Houston to Tempe and Santa Clara.