Wireless Washtenaw stimulus application gets county's endorsement despite Wireless Ypsi's emergence

Wireless Ypsi’s networks have attracted some 40,000 users since the company started in early 2008, including 800 daily users at its free network in downtown Ypsilanti. About 2,000 people use the Wireless Ypsi networks in a given week.

By contrast, about 550 people regularly use Wireless Washtenaw’s network.

The county’s decision to endorse a stimulus application in August by Ann Arbor-based 20/20 Communications, which manages Wireless Washtenaw, angers Wireless Ypsi co-founder Steve Pierce.

“That’s sort of frustrating,” Pierce said. “We had talked with the folks at the county saying we wanted to be part of that. We felt like we got shut out of it. We were told that we would be given a chance. I think they should have allowed other companies to partner with the county in an application.”

Wireless Ypsi co-founder Steve Pierce said his company is profitable.

File photo by Robert Ramey | For AnnArbor.com

Pierce said the county decided to “dust off a plan from five years ago” that “never worked.”

James McFarlane, the county’s Wireless Washtenaw project manager, confirmed that Pierce brought his request to him and David Behen, a former deputy county administrator who still chairs the Wireless Washtenaw committee.

“20/20 Communications opted not to partner with additional organizations due to the time sensitivity of the application process and the aggressive timelines for the stimulus disbursement period,” McFarlane wrote in an e-mail. “Partnering with organizations can take several months as business models, technology, support and funding all need to be considered.”

The tension between Wireless Ypsi and Wireless Washtenaw is hard to dispute, although county officials maintain that they believe both initiatives are independently viable and worth pursuing.

“I don’t think these are competing technologies,” McFarlane said in an interview. “These are technologies that complement one another and offer the residents of our community options.”

Wireless Ypsi and Wireless Washtenaw have fundamentally different objectives. Wireless Washtenaw was designed to provide wireless Internet access to the entire county. Wireless Ypsi aims to extend access to users in crowded areas such as downtowns, apartment buildings, schools, churches and parks.

Wireless Ypsi, unlike 20/20, is not an Internet service provider. The firm’s strategy revolves around installing Meraki mesh radios at existing Internet access points where the ISP allows “sharing.” The radios extend the wireless cloud, creating a broader network.

Wireless Ypsi, established in early 2008, quickly earned grassroots support from the downtown Ypsilanti business community. The firm convinced business owners to buy a radio and allow Wireless Ypsi to install it at their business.

Due to these efforts, free wireless Internet has been available throughout the entire downtown Ypsilanti area for about two years.

That was a community service, Pierce said. But the company’s business model involves creating similar networks at apartment complexes, communities and other areas. The firm charges apartment complex owners, for example, to install and monitor the service. The apartment complex still has to pay an Internet service provider for connectivity, however.

Pierce said Wireless Ypsi has about 800 daily users in downtown Ypsi. But most of its users are from other networks, such as the 480-unit River’s Edge Apartment complex in Ypsilanti and a recent installation in an Albuquerque, N.M. neighborhood.

Wireless Ypsi is “profitable,” Pierce said, although he wouldn’t provide specifics.

Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, said community wireless networks like Wireless Ypsi can work. But she said customer service is critical.

“Let’s say everyone decides to love your network and everyone signs up for it,” she said. “The minute you start paying for it, the customer needs to be able to scream at somebody when they’re mad. That’s where a lot of these initiatives fail, these community-based networks.”

Pierce said Wireless Ypsi, which has just a few employees but hopes to grow, has built a rapid response process to address network problems.

“We have customer service, we provide technical support via e-mail, we have dedicated phone lines for customers to call,” he said. But “the big portion of the people that want to scream,” he said, “have some sort of problem with their computer.”

Contact AnnArbor.com’s Nathan Bomey at (734) 623-2587 or nathanbomey@annarbor.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.