Cincinnati Bell to offer Wi-Fi to Newport, Ky., in public-private business partnership

Cincinnati Bell is going to offer free Wi-Fi to Newport, Ky., residential and business customers by getting local businesses to purchase managed services from the company.

While Cincinnati Bell and IT services partner Nexigen initially proposed installing Wi-Fi in Newport similar to how they conducted the "Light Up Cincinnati" program, the duo realized that it would require a large amount of money to pull it off.

Instead, the companies built a program that would get the buy-in from local businesses, according to a Cincinnati Business Courier article.

Under the Wi-Fi plan, which was jointly developed by Cincinnati Bell and Nexigen, local businesses would buy their managed Wi-Fi services from Cincinnati Bell. The managed Wi-Fi service also includes VoIP service.

As part of the deal, Cincinnati Bell would run fiber to the business and the business would host a public Wi-Fi access point.

The program, which should be approved in a few weeks, has already gotten the attention of a growing amount of local Newport businesses.

"We're at the point now where we have a list of 185 businesses that are interested," said Jon Salisbury, co-founder and CTO of Nexigen. "We sent that to Cincinnati Bell, and they're doing final analytics and doing a coverage map."

For more:
- Cincinnati Business Courier has this article

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