by KYW's Mike Dunn

Philadelphia's effort to blanket the city in a WiFi signal has collapsed, as Earthlink, the firm building it, ended negotiations with the city on the network's future.

Earthlink, an Internet service provider based in Atlanta, says that talks to give away the $17-million wireless network for free to either the city or a nonprofit organization have fallen through.
   
Earthlink spokesman Chris Putala says the firm has ended talks aimed at turning over control of Wireless Philadelphia:

"Earthlink has tried every way we possibly can, up to and including an offer to give the network -- which cost us millions -- at no cost to the city."

City officials have said it would cost taxpayers millions each year to operate the network. Mayor Nutter had insisted that taxpayers would not have to pay even for operating the network, but then efforts to have a third party take over proved fruitless.  

But Nutter points out that Earthlink is still bound by a ten-year contract, and this will likely end up in a legal settlement:

"As far as I'm concerned, we are far from over in terms of having discussions with Earthlink."

Earthlink says it will find alternate service for the approximately 6,000 remaining Wireless Philadelphia customers. 

Earthlink will give current customers until June 12th to switch to another provider. After that, they said, the signal will go dark. 
  
And in hopes of recouping some of their costs, they have asked a federal judge to give them permission to remove the wireless transmitters that have been installed on utility poles (right) across 80 percent of the city.
   
Earthlink has been getting out of the municipal wireless business across the country, and has been negotiating with the Nutter administration for months to get out of its contract to build the project here, called "Wireless Philadelphia." Its construction work had ground to a halt earlier this year.

"Wireless Philadelphia" was the grand vision of then-mayor John Street, to blanket the entire city in a wireless Internet signal and make it available at low cost to the city's low-income residents.

Dear EarthLink Wi-Fi Subscriber,

This email contains important information about your EarthLink Wi-Fi service. EarthLink will stop operating its wireless network in Philadelphia. EarthLink is providing our Wi-Fi subscribers with a thirty (30) day transition period through Thursday, June 12, 2008. This means that your EarthLink Wi-Fi account will terminate on June 12, 2008.

In addition, your EarthLink dial-up access and email account that EarthLink provides with the Wi-Fi service will also terminate unless you transfer your account to another EarthLink Internet access service.

EarthLink values you as a customer and we apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. We would like to assist you in transitioning to another EarthLink Internet access service.

We are making several special offers on our DSL and dial-up Internet access services available to our EarthLink Wi-Fi subscribers in Philadelphia to assist in this transition.

EarthLink will try to contact you by telephone shortly to answer any questions you may have about your EarthLink Wi-Fi account and to explain how you can transfer your account to another EarthLink Internet access service. You may also call us at 1-877-WIFI-HELP (1-877-943-4435) with any questions.

Please Note: To avoid an interruption in your EarthLink Internet access and termination of your EarthLink email account, please contact us before June 12, 2008.  If you purchased or are renting a modem from EarthLink for your EarthLink Wi-Fi service, our service representative will provide details on how to return the modem at no cost to you. If you purchased your modem from EarthLink, we will give you a refund of the price you paid to us for the modem once we've received your returned modem.

When your EarthLink Wi-Fi account is terminated, we will credit to your account any remaining time that you paid for. Depending upon your credit card company or bank, this credit may take up to 30 days to appear on your statement.

Thank you for being our valued Wi-Fi subscriber. We look forward to providing you with Internet service for years to come!

Sincerely,

EarthLink Support