Hub's WiFi rollout starts in Grove Hall this month
Boston's plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet connections is set to pick up speed this month as companies jockey to play a role and a pilot WiFi project gets underway in a square-mile area of the Grove Hall neighborhood.
But the ambitious plan to create an "open access" wireless Internet environment citywide has hit some speed bumps, including the absence of major donors, delays in launching the pilot project, and blogger protests about Web filtering at WiFi hot spots.
WiFi enables laptops, cellphones, handheld computers, music players, and other devices to connect to the Internet via radio waves, allowing people to transmit and receive information on the go.
Pamela Reeve , chief executive of OpenAirBoston, the nonprofit corporation created by the city to manage the wireless program, said Boston is still on track for citywide WiFi by the end of 2008. But she acknowledged the target date is "aggressive."
Addressing the MuniWireless07 conference at the Newton Marriott this week, Reeve said OpenAirBoston seeks to raise between $12 million and $15 million from foundations, corporations, and others to build the wireless network and begin operating it through partnerships with multiple Internet service providers. When the city rolled out its plan last July, officials anticipated it would cost $16 million to $20 million, but the city has since identified ways to trim the budget.
Reeve would not say how much has been raised already, but she conceded that Boston has yet to line up the "key bucks" funders, such as companies, universities, or hospitals, it is hoping for.
"It would be great for someone to drop down from the sky and write a check for the whole thing," Reeve told the wireless gathering.
Most other municipal WiFi campaigns are facing similar obstacles, from fundraising shortfalls to technology problems, said Sally M. Cohen , analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge. "This is something that's evolving," she said. "It's like the early days of cellphone service. There are going to be glitches and bumps in the road."
Boston's model differs from those being used by other cities moving forward with WiFi programs because its nonprofit will provide "wholesale" access to more than one Internet provider, which in turn will compete to offer retail services to people living, working, or visiting the city.
More than 15 companies, representing equipment vendors, systems integrators, and service providers, responded by yesterday's deadline to a request for information on how they could participate in the wireless network. OpenAirBoston officials plan to meet with representatives of the companies before issuing their request for proposal in the fall.
By the end of June, meanwhile, OpenAirBoston plans to go live with its WiFi pilot project in Grove Hall, a Roxbury neighborhood stretching from Dudley Square to the northern border of Franklin Park.
The city has signed up about 20 families to give feedback about their ability to access city services, such as paying parking tickets or applying for food stamps, online . Some area residents have been loaned computers through a "taking technology home" program so they can take part in the program. "We do have a strong desire to address the issue of the digital divide," Reeve said.
Other city goals are stimulating economic development by creating an infrastructure that will attract businesses, and making city services more efficient. The wireless network, among other things, will enable Boston police, firefighters, meter readers, emergency medical responders, and other city employees to file reports remotely.
The pilot project in Grove Hall originally was scheduled to begin last winter, but the process of coordinating with members of the community, identifying poles and other city assets, and hanging radio transmitters on them, has been taking longer than anticipated.
Another problem that cropped up this spring was a flurry of complaints by bloggers over the filtering of some websites, such as the boingboing technology blog, at some experimental WiFi "hot spots" Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino switched on in October at City Hall Plaza, Faneuil Hall Market Place, and Christopher Columbus Park.
Galaxy Internet Services, the city's provider for the hot spots, had been using a filter that blocked certain word combinations deemed inappropriate for a public WiFi network. After hearing from city officials, who had fielded the complaints, Galaxy modified its filtering to unlock sites like boingboing while maintaining its general Web filter.
The minicontroversy reflects the natural growing pains of a project and a business model that are new, suggested Michael Oh , chief executive of Tech SuperPowers in Boston and a member of the Boston WiFi Task Force that drew up the city's wireless plan.
"One thing it does say about the process is they should have done more due diligence about what should be filtered," he said.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com. 
