Earthlink has effectively killed their muni wifi efforts. According to MuniWireless.com:

Don Berryman, EarthLink's top municipal wireless executive, is out of a job. So are 899 other EarthLink employees amid a massive company reorganization. The shake-up includes office closings in cities that EarthLink had been targeting for public broadband deployments. The upshot for municipal leaders: Our collective focus is moving from big, feel-good public access efforts to government applications that deliver ROI.

This explains why Chicago killed their initiative today.

I certainly understand that rolling out municipal wireless is big undertaking. What's interesting to me is how quickly it has gone from the next great thing to quagmire. This is not a frivolous tech bubble, this is about giving people access to a vital service. In essence, municipal wireless is an infrastructure project. Like roads. Or phone lines. Or fiber. Each time we have taken on those projects, there have been push-backs and set-backs, but we've made each infrastructure project work.

Why?

Because infrastructure is the cornerstone of a healthy society. Infrastructure gives us access to the ideas, people, goods and services that help us all lead better lives. Ask a villager in Mali if a road would help get goods to market.

We need to invest in infrastructure, and invest in giving people access to it.By "we", I mean our local, state, and federal governments.

And we need to fight for it.  This time, I mean the nonprofit sector when I say "we".

Right now, the meme around municipal wireless is that it's cheap and free Internet for you and for me. Hooray for cheap Internet access! There's a lot of talk about delivering hi-speed access to areas where service isn't so great. There are myriad reports on the potential economic impact of muni wireless. But this doesn't really tell the most important part of the story. Our sector needs to stand up and speak for and with the clients we serve. We need to demand municipal wireless projects so that our clients can:

• Access city services and information online instead of taking the day off work to stand in line at City Hall
• Find better job listings and resume writing help
• Research and build community with people facing similar problems

We need to tell those stories and make municipal wireless a social justice issue, not an economic one.