Chicago, Baltimore and Washington to Get City-Wide Wireless Internet

The Chicago Tribune reported April 12 that Chicago will soon become one of the first cities in the country to have a wireless high speed Internet network running through the entire city. The city-wide high speed network will be constructed by Motorola Inc., and will be operated by Sprint Nextel Corp. The innovative design will provide state of the art broadband internet connection through the entire city. Currently wireless Internet is available only in certain WiFi enabled spots like coffee shops.

Sprint customers will be able to access the Internet through their laptops at home, on the train, in a restaurant, or in any location citywide. The network will cost $3 billion but could cause a surge in new customers for Sprint. They are also hoping to cross promote their other products and services to new Internet customers. Sprint is banking on the desire of it's tech-savy customers to be connected to the Internet with a high speed quality broadband connection wherever they go.

In a city like Chicago where the average commute is about 40 minutes or more and hundreds of thousands people take the train to work every day Sprint's gamble could turn into a very big payoff for the company. The ability to surf the net, or to work, on the way into the office could help boost productivity for employers and make the daily commute far more tolerable for workers.

The City of Chicago administration is currently accepting bids from companies to provide the same time of widespread broadband Internet connection throughout the city that everyone could access for free, but it will be years before that project is completed. Currently the city is only in the very preliminary planning stages of the project.

Sprint plans on having their network in operation by the end of the year and will provide competition to Internet connections offered by Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. Comcast is one of the largest high speed Internet providers in the area.

Chicago, Washington and Baltimore are the first cities to get Sprint's new high-speed wireless service, which they plan to roll out to other cities next year. Sprint said it will take three years to build the entire new network across the country. By the end of 2008, Sprint hopes to have coverage available to 100 million Americans. Sprint has estimated the monthly cost to the consumer of the citywide high speed Internet will be in the $40-$50 per month range which is comparable to the cost of ComCast's high speed Internet connection per month.