The Ruins of Trenton

Palmer administration officials are set to ask for a $250,000 appropriation from City Council this week to allow a fledgling wireless Internet company begin its grandiose plans to put all of Trenton's seven miles of area under a “mesh” of broadband Internet access.

The only problem is, City Council officials were told when first introduced to the idea that the city would need to put up zero dollars of start-up money, and simply sign off on providing the right-of-way necessary for all of the routers and other devices needed to construct a strong broadband network everywhere in Trenton.

Residents and even some City Council members have begun asking exactly why the company and administration officials told the city’s legislative body that they need not pony up any dollars for the construction of the network, only to completely reverse that stance months later.

Sources in Long Island – where E-Path is attempting to create a similar wireless system in two New York counties – said this week that those networks have stalled too, despite initially being given a December start date.

Those same sources have been following E-Path closely, and now believe that the reason for the delay in Long Island and the monetary request in Trenton is that E-Path is having trouble getting investors to put up money for both of the ventures.

The feeling is that E-Path could not get money for either network – and like many of the City of Trenton’s business partners – would like an infusion of city funds to get the Long Island network going, and hopefully jump start investor interest in the plan prior to getting things started in Trenton.

But even if City Council were to put up the dough for E-Path, the track record on all of these ventures – even those involving companies much larger and more prestigious than E-Path – is that they have never come together as proposed.

It seems that this whole wireless network thing is just one more of Mayor Douglas H. Palmer’s Trenton fantasies.

The two defining features of Mayor Palmer’s fantasies are that they usually never get off the ground or off the drawing board, and the City of Trenton ends up paying for them, through the nose.