Barbed wireless

LAST YEAR, a task force organized by Mayor Menino announced a bold vision to make all of Boston a wireless hotspot where people could get affordable access to the Internet.

Unfortunately, the plan has hit technical difficulties. Now Boston has to pursue its vision on a more modest scale. It's a disappointing outcome, but it does create a chance for the city to craft a more achievable plan.

Menino's vision for a wireless city holds great promise. He wants a system that will improve the quality of city services, close the digital divide, and promote economic development and innovation.

Other cities have tried to set up wireless networks with help from private companies such as EarthLink. In some cases, a company bears most of the costs of putting up WiFi equipment and tries to make back its investment by running ads and selling access to a network that it controls. Boston is trying to invent a more open model, with a network to be built and maintained by a newly created nonprofit using donated money. This nonprofit would pursue the civic mission and welcome commercial partners. So, for example, Verizon might offer low-cost e-mail service. A community organization might offer online courses. Or a city resident might start a Web-based business.

In March, the nonprofit OpenAirBoston.net was set up, and a pilot wireless initiative in the Grove Hall neighborhood is nearly complete. But the goal of making Boston wireless by 2008 has been scrapped, because progress citywide has been slow. A reliable network is harder to build than officials anticipated.

"We're learning as we go," says Pamela Reeve, the CEO of OpenAirBoston. And that has meant working out logistics such as boosting signals and finding places, including light poles and private property, on which the system's equipment can be mounted.

It might seem tempting to give up and invite a private company to do this work. But as San Francisco found with EarthLink, such partnerships can come apart. Faced with financial challenges, EarthLink had to scale back its municipal wireless ambitions. To achieve its civic mission, Boston is best off working with a nonprofit.

Now OpenAirBoston has to win public confidence by quickly finishing and aggressively marketing the Grove Hall project. Officials will study the results there, looking at usage rates and how well the system works, according to Brian Worobey, chief information officer at the Museum of Science and an OpenAirBoston adviser. Armed with these results, OpenAirBoston should be better able to raise the $15 million it needs to build a wireless system without spending taxpayers' money.

Next, OpenAirBoston has to move quickly, plowing what it has learned into creating other wireless systems around the city. Regaining momentum is essential to attaining the overall goal of a truly wireless Boston.