Powering up Tomorrowland

updated 7:33 p.m. ET June 23, 2006

In the past decade Garry Betty has experimented with just about every possible way of connecting his customers to the Internet — and wiped $1 billion of his shareholders' capital off the balance sheet in the process. But now the chief executive of Earthlink says he sees a way to take his revenge on the giant rivals who have long beaten him bloody.

In Anaheim, Calif. Earthlink has attached little white boxes to 1,500 traffic lights. At the end of the month Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle will cut a ceremonial wire, turning on those boxes and powering up America's first big-city Wi-Fi network, which will offer residents high-speed wireless Web access across Anaheim for $22 per month.

While many cities have fought bitter public battles over building urban Wi-Fi networks — phone and cable companies loathe the idea of the cut-rate competition — Anaheim is about to become the first major-league city to do it.

The 49-year-old Betty hopes to repeat Anaheim across the nation, turning Earthlink into the leader, by far, in building and running urban Wi-Fi networks. He has won contracts to build networks in Philadelphia and New Orleans, both of which will go live in the last quarter of this year. He hopes to finalize similar contracts with Honolulu, Minneapolis, Arlington, Va. and, with help from Google, San Francisco. Dozens more cities are eyeing Anaheim before deciding to sign up.

It's a sweet moment for Betty, who has spent most of the past decade trying to beg, borrow or buy access to the networks owned by big phone and cable companies. His larger rivals had no interest in letting him turn a profit selling dial-up or high-speed access using their wires. Government efforts to force them to share — which Betty lobbied for — did little to create real competition.

"For the first time I don't have to go crawling on my hands and knees asking for a better deal," says Betty.

Anaheim just the beginning
Earthlink, based in Atlanta, has spent $5 million building the Anaheim network and expects that it can earn a decent return on that cash once 15 percent to 20 percent of Anaheim's 100,000 homes sign up. The monthly $22 buys a customer access at 1 megabit per second. That's not as fast as cable or DSL, but it's cheaper and, unlike most Internet connections, is accessible from a car or a park bench as well as home.

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