The $50M question: How well will muni Wi-Fi work?

There's something we've been wondering ever since we heard about Houston's coming municipal Wi-Fi network, and the Chronicle's Alexis Grant has finally asked the question for us: How well is the network going to work? The answer: not too badly, but don't get your hopes up — it'll be a step up from dial-up, but not nearly as fast as home cable Internet service.

According to EarthLink Municipal Networks President Donald Berryman, the city network will provide a download speed of 1 megabit per second, which is a bit faster than the basic AT&T DSL package and about one-fifth the speed of basic Road Runner cable service. In some cities, users haven't gotten maximum speed out of municipal networks because there are too many users and not enough access points, but Houston's network will have about 40 wireless nodes per square mile — more than twice what some other networks use. Still, people will have the choice of paying around $20 a month for muni Wi-Fi access or choosing a DSL or cable package for anywhere from $15 to $45. "You'll have a choice: Pay less for Wi-Fi and be able to use your service all around the city, or pay more for a slightly faster service that you can only use at home," Richard Lewis, the city's chief information officer, told Dwight Silverman.

Of course, it's not clear whether you'll really be able to use the city network all over town: There's still the issue of signal strength inside buildings, and if you've ever dealt with a wireless network at your house or office, you know how hard it can be to get the signal through walls and floors. To help with that, EarthLink says it will provide repeaters, which boost signal strength, to customers who sign one-year contracts to access the city network. (Grant has more on indoor signal strength on the Chron's City Hall blog.)

City Council still has to approve the contract for the $50 million, 600-square-mile Wi-Fi network before work can begin. If all goes as planned, the network would be up and running by the spring of 2009.