Assessing municipal wireless network projects: the case of Wi-Fi Philadelphia

The City of Philadelphia adopted an ambitious broadband internet plan to provide the city with comprehensive wireless coverage. The decision to adopt this project involved a tradeoff between the benefit of high-speed service to all residents and cost of the project. The project represents breaking a relatively new ground, with few experiences of other government agencies to rely upon for guidance. This paper suggests the use of system dynamics modeling as a means to assess project risk and the result of the model simulation reveals the inherent risk of price manipulation by competitive service providers.