W2i Philly: Competition Beneath the Collegiality As Wireless Business
Begins to Mature
Dec 14, 2006 By Joshua Breitbart
http://www.govtech.net/digitalcommunities/story.php?id=102873&story_pg=1
As the nascent municipal wireless industry has boomed in the last two
years, there has been a sense that a rising tide was raising all of the
boats. No longer.
You could sense the competition beneath the collegiality at the Wireless
Internet Institute's Digital Cities Convention, held December 5-6 in
Philadelphia.
Conference-goers scooped their lunch from the buffet at the center of
the room -- deli meats, assorted pastas, chicken, fish, and pot roast.
The vendors --
some hopeful, others expectant -- stuck to their booths lining the
walls, eyeing their potential customers and each other. The folks from
Firetide touting their 5
ghz surveillance network had their sample camera trained on the "big
spender" across the room: Earthlink.
"Some of these guys are on their fourth or fifth round of venture
capital funding," the Motorola rep told me from behind a laptop at his
booth. "That can't last."
He predicted many of the companies with booths at the conference would
be out of business within six months.
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