ELN Wins St. Pete

The City Of St. Petersburg (Florida) announced that they have accepted a Muni Wi-Fi Proposal from EarthLink (who beat out locally owned City Wi-Fi Networks who runs the Dunedin network).

According to Wireless Week, EarthLink says the network will take about 6 months to build and will cost around $6.8 million.

A tidbit missed by most: "As part of its proposal, EarthLink has committed to locate its Gulf regional distribution office in St. Petersburg." [Source].

More details from Telecomweb: "The St. Petersburg mesh, at 60 square miles, will be only 10 percent of the size of the massive 600-sq.-mi. mesh EarthLink is to build in Houston - the largest mesh so far announced in North America (of course, they do things big in Texas). Still, St. Petersburg is the first of Florida's 10 largest cities to choose a muni Wi-Fi mesh provider and, thus, represents yet another feather in EarthLink's war bonnet.... EarthLink, which won a 7-1 victory at the St. Petersburg City Council, said it's planning to spend $6.8 million to build the mesh - 2,400 nodes - and a total of $9.3 million in construction and operational costs during the next few years.....Technically, EarthLink still has to negotiate the final details of a contract with the city before it can start building the network but no issues are known to be standing in the way. Assuming all goes according to schedule, the network will be in operation before the end of the year, EarthLink says."

ELN also won the Houston Muni Wi-Fi contract [Source].