MetroFi has announced that's planning to sell its municipal networks - or simply shut them down if nobody wants to buy them.

"MetroFi's chief Chuck Haas emailed me this evening with the news that his firm has decided that they will sell their networks in nine cities, including their first cities in the Bay Area (Cupertino, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale), and their largest muni deployment in Portland, Oregon," writes Wi-Fi Networking News' Glenn Fleishman.

Even without MetroFi's demise, Fleishman says, the muni Wi-Fi model is in trouble. "The near-future certainty now is that there will be multiple providers offering wired broadband speed service starting later this year with Sprint/Clearwire's WiMax, and continuing through into 2012 with significant network buildout by Verizon and AT&T in several bands (including their new 700 MHz holdings)," he writes.

"MetroFi is the latest service provider to exit the municipal wireless business," notes MuniWireless' Esme Vos. "EarthLink has decided to shut down its network in Philadelphia and to stop the rollout of its network in Houston; Kite Networks, which had deployments in a number of municipalities, has gone bankrupt."

More here from GigaOM ... more here from BetaNews ... more here from the Oregonian ... and more here from the Portland Business Journal.

I was listening to Alec Saunders' Squawk Box podcast today when a bombshell was let loose - something that makes the news that Verizon Wireless chose LiMo over Google's Android make total sense: LiMo is arguably not open source.

Skip ahead to about the 21:30 mark on the 16 May 2008 Squawk Box podcast.

The major points:

• The only thing open about LiMo is that it runs on Linux and that the APIs are relatively open, but the APIs only allow very limited functionality.
• A fee of $400,000 a year is required to be able to contribute source code to the project.
• You can only use commercially-friendly open-source licenses in your code.

Sounds a bit like what people thought about Verizon Wireless: they say they want to be open, but really, they're not going to open up. This surprise any one?

Crossposted from The Mobile Technology Weblog

The Wall Street Journal's Sara Silver and Cassell Bryan-Low today broke the news that Research in Motion plans to launch a touchscreen version of the BlackBerry, called the BlackBerry Thunder or BlackBerry 9500, as a direct competitor to the Apple iPhone.

"The new BlackBerry, slated for introduction in the third quarter, will be sold exclusively through Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone Group PLC in Europe," the article states.

And to be fair, the WSJ references this article at The Boy Genius Report as the original source.

"We doubt that this is the end for a real QWERTY on the CrackBerry," notes Wired's Charlie Sorrel. "Instead, it shows that BlackBerry is feeling the heat from the iPhone and possibly releasing a copycat device. Let's just hope there's a decent web browser and an iPod in there too..."

More here from Silicon Alley Insider ... more here from eFluxMedia ... more here from InformationWeek ... more here from Reuters ... and more here from infoSync.

Image above (which is not in any way an actual photo of the actual device...) is from The Boy Genius Report.

Verizon Wireless this week announced that it's joining the LiMo Foundation, choosing the open-source Linux-based mobile platform for future mobile phones over competitors like Google's Android.

"Verizon Wireless, the second-largest U.S. mobile operator, have dealt a blow to Google... the company said it would throw its weight behind an Android rival," writes BusinessWeek's Jennifer L. Schenker.

And despite Verizon's promise that joining with LiMo doesn't necessarily mean it's snubbing Google, eWeek's Clint Boulton writes, "Verizon's strong support of the LiMo Foundation could color in the battle lines between not only Google and Verizon, but also the Google-backed Open Handset Alliance and LiMo."

More here from the Chicago Tribune ... more here from The Register ... more here from Reuters ... more here from ChannelWeb ... more here from The Motley Fool ... and the press release is here.

EarthLink today announced the termination of its Wi-Fi service in Philadelphia - the company is giving its Wi-Fi customers 30 days to find new service before it shuts the network down on June 12th.

"A few weeks earlier, Atlanta-based Earthlink announced it would shut down a similar network in New Orleans," notes the AP's Deborah Yao. "EarthLink has reached agreements with the cities of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Milpitas, California, which are taking over ownership of their networks. EarthLink also has been running a network in Anaheim, California."

"Unfortunately, our hope that we could transfer our network to a non-profit organization that had planned to offer free Wi-Fi throughout Philadelphia will not be realized," says company CEO Rolla Huff. "Since we have exhausted our efforts to find a new owner of the network, our only responsible alternative now is to remove our network at our cost and assist our Wi-Fi customers with alternative ways to access the Internet."

"The failure in Philadelphia, and EarthLink's exiting the entire muni-Fi business, represents the end of a bad model in which a company agreed to assume all risk and costs associated with building a public access network," writes Wi-Fi Networking News' Glenn Fleishman.

More here from Forbes ... more here from AHN ... more here from BetaNews ... more here from Digital Trends ... and the press release is here.