The City of Lompoc, Calif., plans to use a municipal wireless as a spearhead into municipal fiber to the home. Too bad trials have found that network can’t support high-speeds or download an attachment or even maintain a connection for long. Launch of the network has been on hold since Jan. 17 as city officials scramble to engineer the system, which has cost the town $1.5 million so far, according to the Pacific Coast Business Times.
“We’ve had some network issues that the manufacturers are trying to resolve,” said City of Lompoc Network Manager John Greenly. “From the subscriber standpoint, the biggest issues are drastic fluctuations in speed, and difficulty downloading large files.”
After blaming his vendors for supplying technology that was not “mature” enough, Greenly then blames his predecessors for the problem, a sure sign that the Lompoc’s muni system is never going to deliver on what was promised.
“The expectations that were set before my arrival were, I think, too aggressive,” Greenly said. “Once they’re moving in the right direction to resolve these issues, then we’ll look at setting a new launch date.”
When that will be? Well at this point, we don’t know. Watch Lompoc’s officials dance as fast as they can here. For more about how cities have begun to manage expectations, see my entry from yesterday.