The City of Santa Clarita has scrapped an ambitious plan to build a free wireless internet network across Santa Clarita due to the failure of such efforts in other cities, SCVTalk has learned.

The plan, conceived in 2005 and 2006, would have involved placing wireless internet devices on Edison light poles and delivering free, advertiser-supported internet access to Santa Clarita residents city wide.

But the economics of such a network have changed since 2006, according to Kevin Tonoian, the City’s Technology Services Manager.

“More then two years ago there were multiple companies all interested in working with cities to construct wireless networks at their own private cost,” Tonoian told SCVTalk in an email.

Today, however, Tonoian says companies are still willing to invest the millions of dollars necessary to build free public “Wifi” networks, but they want cities to foot much of the bill.

“While there are still private WiFi vendors willing to construct these networks for cities they are no longer doing so without significant public financial contributions,” he said.

The city’s original plan was to contract with a private firm to build a City-wide wifi network at their cost and to offer free, outdoor wifi to the public. Tonoian says such a project would have cost between $3 million to $5 million dollars over 5 years, all paid for by the private company.

To make the project worthwile for the private firms, the company would have displayed advertisements on users’ computer screens.

That model -offering free, ad-supported wifi to the public- has been tried in other cities, but Tonoian says few used it and the companies weren’t able to turn a profit.

“One of the highest profile public/private WiFi ventures undertaken in the country that occurred between EarthLink and the City of Anaheim has since been terminated by EarthLink as the customer and revenues they anticipated were never realized,” Tonoian said.

After Santa Clarita staff looked at other city’s experiences with free public wifi, they decided to scrap the project before it ever got off the ground.

The City’s plans for a free, public wifi network garnered much media coverage in The Signal and the Daily News in 2006.

The project appeared to be underway for awhile, and the city even built a wifi transmitter system at Central Park, but the larger project was stalled when Southern California Edison delayed approving the use of its light poles for the wireless internet devices.

That delay, Tonoian says, worked to the benefit of the City.

“As a result of Edison’s review process City staff was able to observe the changing dynamics of the municipal WiFi industry as an observer and better understand the level of interest in WiFi among residents,” Tonoian said.

Tonoian said the city has no plans to build a wifi network now.