[tt] Forbes: America's Most Wired Cities

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America's Most Wired Cities
http://www.forbes.com/wireless/2008/01/09/wired-cities-wifi-tech-wireless-cx_ew_0110wired.html
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Elizabeth Woyke 01.10.08, 6:00 AM ET

Pop quiz: What's America's most wired city? You might guess
someplace in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or San Diego. East Coast
fans might bet on New York or even Chicago.

But you've got to head south.

For the second year in a row, Atlanta tops Forbes.com's survey of
America's most wired cities in the U.S.

In Pictures: America's Most Wired Cities

A variety of factors boost the Big Peach's techno quotient. As the
communications hub for the Southeast, Atlanta boasts regional
headquarters for AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) and Verizon (nyse:
VZ - news - people ) and a bustling community of Internet-related
start-ups. It's also home to BellSouth and EarthLink (nasdaq: ELNK -
news - people )--a major promoter of citywide wireless networks
until recent months--as well as cable giant Cox Communications. And
it got an early jump on cutting-edge technology after spending
millions to wire its downtown area for the 1996 Olympics.

Still, its leading status mystifies some. "It's a dynamic area with
a lot of young people, but exactly why it's No. 1 is a mystery to
me," notes telecom analyst Jeff Kagan, who coincidentally is a
long-time resident of Atlanta.

Here are some clues. To calculate our list, we looked at the
percentage of Internet users with high-speed access, the range of
service providers within a city and the availability of public
wireless hot spots. Atlanta ranks highest in broadband adoption,
access options and fourth in wi-fi availability. According to
Nielsen Online, 97.2% of the city's home Internet users accessed the
Web via a high-speed connection in November.

Some obvious choices finished high on the list. Techie Seattle, home
to Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), came in second, one
notch above last year. San Francisco, the closest major city to
Silicon Valley, was fourth for the second time. Though rich in hot
spots, both lagged behind other cities in broadband adoption. (It
works the other way, as well: Boston ranks second in broadband but
poorer showings in the other categories dragged it down to 13th
overall.) Two other major metropolises, Chicago and New York,
improved their standings from 17th to 8th and 12th to 9th,
respectively, to make the top 10, driven by more widespread adoption
of high-speed Internet.

Other top-10 finishers were more surprising, such as third-place
Raleigh, N.C. Raleigh Chief Information Officer Gail M. Roper
attributes the city's strong showing to its thriving entrepreneurial
culture, technology initiatives, major universities and
fast-growing, highly-educated population. As CIO of Kansas City,
Mo., (No. 22) from 1996 to 2006, Roper focused on digital-divide
issues, working to improve youth and student access to the Internet.
In Raleigh, she is considering building a citywide wi-fi network to
expedite public services, cut telecom costs and deliver tourism
information.

Fifth-place Orlando, Fla., and Baltimore also aren't top-of-mind
when it comes to Internet initiatives. But Orlando, home to
tourist-magnet Disney World, has "people coming in from all over--it
has to be wired," explains Kagan. Baltimore vaulted to a 16th-place
finish as the number of broadband providers and the adoption of
those services rose dramatically last year.

Los Angeles wasn't as lucky. The entertainment capital suffered the
biggest drop, plummeting from No. 11 to No. 27, based on lackluster
results in all three categories, particularly in the number of
broadband access providers. Close competition makes the tumble look
worse than it is. First-place Atlanta is home to 17 broadband
providers, while Los Angeles, with only 11, now ranks 25th in access
options this year. Houston, Cleveland and Detroit dropped off the
list completely, allowing newcomers Denver (No. 17), Indianapolis
(No. 24) and Milwaukee (No. 28) to make their debut.

Measuring a city's "wired-ness" is an imperfect science. New York's
less-wired outer boroughs weigh down its overall ranking. Some new
initiatives aren't yet reflected in the data we used. Several
lower-ranked cities, like Philadelphia (No. 26), are building
wireless networks that provide wi-fi to downtown areas. In New York,
CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) is constructing hot spots in
midtown Manhattan (See "NYC's Biggest Hot Spot.")

Start-up Meraki recently announced it would offer free high-speed
wireless Internet throughout San Francisco by the end of 2008.
Top-ranked Atlanta, meanwhile, has seen plans for such a system
fizzle in recent months. The ubiquity of such wi-fi networks is
difficult to quantify and not measured in our wireless hot spot
data.

Longer term, the outcome of the Federal Communications Commission
spectrum auction, which is pitting traditional telecom companies
against newcomers, including Internet titan Google (nasdaq: GOOG -
news - people ), will also have a major impact on the availability
of wireless service throughout the U.S. (For more on the auctions,
see "Phoning In Wireless Dreams" and "Google's Wireless World.")
Though hot spots are sprouting across the country, as major wi-fi
provider Wayport powers more than 10,000 in hotel chains, airports
and McDonald's (nyse: MCD - news - people ), most Americans still
rely on phone and cable firms for their Web access. Nearly half
(47%) of adult Americans had a broadband connection at home in March
2007, representing 12% year-over-year growth, according to the Pew
Internet & American Life Project. Of those users, 70% had a
broadband connection, while 23% used dial-up. A separate Pew study
done in December 2006 found that 19% of Internet users have wireless
networks in their homes.

Those figures may be upended soon. "Broadband adoption is starting
to plateau," says Bruce McGregor, senior analyst of Digital Home
Services for market researcher Current Analysis. Telephone companies
have traditionally offered digital subscriber lines (DSL) at lower
prices while cable firms charged premiums for faster connections.
But these days, the broadband industry's focus is bundling services,
such as voice, data and TV together for a reduced price.

The new model is pitting telcos against cable providers. AT&T and
Verizon have spent the past two years or so upgrading to
super-speedy, fiber-optic networks. Verizon's FiOS has had a
significant impact in the areas where it is offered, says McGregor,
with the company selling service to 6.5 million households by the
end of September 2007. AT&T says it will aggressively expand its
competing service, U-verse, to 30 million homes by 2010. Meanwhile,
Sprint Nextel (nyse: S - news - people ) still appears committed to
roll out a nationwide high-speed wireless network using its WiMAX
technology sometime this year.

To compile our list, we began with top markets in broadband adoption
as determined by Internet market research firm Nielsen Online.
Utilizing Nielsen market data eliminated some large, tech-savvy
cities, such as San Jose, Calif. (Nielsen aggregates San Jose data
with the San Francisco market area, and so San Jose's broadband
can't be accessed separately.) We also dropped cities that didn't
make the U.S. Census Bureau's top 100 list, including Salt Lake City
and Hartford, Conn. We then calculated the number of service
providers per city using statistics from the FCC and wi-fi hot spots
per capita via public hot spot directory JiWire.

More accurate data may be on its way. A "broadband census" bill
proposed by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and passed by the House
of Representatives in November asks the FCC to collect more detailed
information on the price and speed of broadband service and the
number of subscribers in a particular zip code. That could mean a
radically different list in 2009.

In Pictures: America's Most Wired Cities

Comments
http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=2008/01/09/wired-cities-wifi-tech-wireless-cx_ew_0110wired.html

Posted by onebread | 02/18/08 05:08 AM EST
Where do you get your information? You sure have not done your
homework! What city could be more wired than one that offers FREE
hi-speed broadband to the whole metropolitan area ... like Corpus
Christi, Texas? Once you get near the city limits, driving on the
Interstate, etc., you can fire up your laptop and get on FREE.
Corpus Christi didn't even make your list! That would be funny, if
it weren't such bad and irresponsible (should I say "erroneous"?)
journalistic reporting. How many other cities did you ignore like
that?

Posted by BillGu | 02/18/08 01:07 AM EST
The organization of this article lacked just that . . .
organization. Its content was confusing and I grew tired of trying
to decode what city is currently in what position. The position of a
city last year as opposed to this year was confusing and lost in a
word salad which gave me indigestion.
I would appreciate the information being capsulized in a table. If
you want to sabotage an article in rhetoric, this is a prime
example. A table might have salvaged some discernable information
but as far as I am concerned, this article was a waste of time.

Posted by nebbygirl | 02/17/08 09:37 AM EST
I was really interested in reading this article - until I started
to! It glossed over one of the real reasons new technology are big
in those cities - young people. I should know, I live in a city
where younger people are chased out - Pittsburgh. (By the way, I am
a middle-age 44).

Posted by ValleyBoy | 02/12/08 12:28 AM EST
"San Francisco, the closest major city to Silicon Valley" ? WTF ?
San Jose is the closest major city to Silicon Valley, because it is
IN Silicon Valley. San Jose (10th largest) has been larger than
S.F.(15th largest) since before 1990. In fact, S.F. is a suburb of
San Jose, not the other way around (check with the Census Bureau:
try to find "San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Area: it doesn't
exist). San Jose will soon be TWICE as large as S.F.
This is supposed to be a news article, but it's basic information is
no more recent than 1990. So, it it useless.

Posted by Hammypants | 01/31/08 12:02 AM EST
This is one of the most pointless articles I've ever read. Does the
author realize that this list of "the most wired cities" is just
some permutation of the largest cities in America?
Yes, in larger cities there is more competition, increasing
broadband options; it eludes me why some authors feel the need to
write an article on fundamental economics applied to [insert random
industry here]. What a waste of time.
Tags: Forbes, more, should, create, interesting, nonobvious, lists

Posted by olliestmartin | 01/19/08 02:22 AM EST
This article piqued my interest on yahoo, but failed miserably to
deliver. The highest number ranking listed in the body of the
article is number 28. Is this Forbes' list of the top 28 cities? It
doesn't state how many cities this list contains. Furthermore, it is
very tedious to scroll through the link that lists the cities one by
one (with a photo for each city) because you can't skip ahead to the
last city to see how many cities are on the list! Furthermore, the
entire page has to reload every time you scroll to the next city. I
live in Houston, and the article states that we've fallen off the
list. To where have we fallen? It was very irksome to read an
article about a list that never gets listed in the article! This
writer, Woyke, doesn't work.

Posted by spuddyboy | 01/18/08 08:31 PM EST
I couldn't agree more armeuli!

Posted by Cisco_CC | 01/15/08 10:36 AM EST
Why would anyone think San Diego is the most wired?!!
"East Coast fans might bet on New York or even Chicago."
This writer may want to get out a bit Chicago is going to beat San
Diego any way you slice it. ..."even Chicago" -- way out on the East
Coast....*rollseyes*

Posted by milermiller | 01/10/08 04:08 PM EST
Since when did Washington, DC have high rise buildings? And when did
the US Capitol move to Minnesota?

Posted by armeuli | 01/10/08 03:28 PM EST
Way too difficult to see the list. It appears you have to go through
the pictures to see a ranked list. I only made it to about 15 before
I got way too tired of clicking arrows to finish.