Mayor’s Dream: Anaheim Online

Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle said Tuesday he wanted every corner of the city to be served by a wireless Internet network, enabling computer users to have high-speed access to the Web without phone or cable lines.

Pringle outlined the idea during his annual State of the City address -- a speech that usually is marked by more prosaic discussions about municipal budgets and urban development.

With a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, Anaheim already is developing a system for police and fire vehicles to retrieve computer data with wireless laptop computers from anywhere in the city. Pringle said he wanted to apply that system’s wireless technology to all residents.

Over the last year, several big cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, have announced plans to provide so-called WiFi service to everyone within their boundaries.

Cerritos is one of the few Southern California cities with full WiFi coverage. Others, including Los Angeles and Hermosa Beach, are looking into extending wireless Internet access to every resident. Riverside provides wireless Internet connections to computer users in its downtown pedestrian mall; other cities, including Newport Beach, offer wireless access at libraries.

Pringle said he wanted to develop WiFi coverage in conjunction with an Internet provider or telecommunications company.

He invited companies to propose a profitable business model that includes a municipal role in the wireless network. He stressed that he didn’t want the city to undercut companies already providing the service.

Pringle offered no details of what the city’s role would be in helping to develop a citywide WiFi network.

“While I think it is a good thing for more people to have Internet access, especially broadband,” Pringle said, “I do have concerns about the government competing with the private sector and essentially using tax dollars to give away a service that the private sector is already trying to create business models for and trying to fill the market demand.”

“We’ll see if there is a way to make this work and to provide greater WiFi access to all Anaheim residents and visitors,” he said.

Pringle said he hoped to avoid the kind of controversy that came with Philadelphia’s plan to build a citywide Internet network. Verizon, which provides Internet service, argued that cities enjoy unfair advantages, such as taxpayer subsidies and the ability to issue bonds, when they compete with private companies to offer phone and Internet service. Ultimately, Verizon dropped its challenge to the city’s plan for citywide wireless service.

Charles Golvin, a technology analyst, says it is difficult to avoid competition with the private sector.

“Fundamentally, the largest players in the broadband access markets are the cable companies and telecommunications companies,” said Golvin, a principal analyst with Forester Research in San Francisco “Anyone who offers broadband access is in competition with those companies.”