With the massive restructuring at EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), one of the casualties is municipal Wi-Fi. The company was a backer of a roll-out in San Francisco – along with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) – and in Houston.

Yes, free Wi-Fi can be a boon for cities, such as in terms of bringing in new business. However, it's not easy to pull off.

So, might the actions of EarthLink mean the death knell to the movement?

I had a chance to interview Craig Settles, who is an expert on muni Wi-Fi and the author of Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless.

According to him:

"Last week's string of announcements by EarthLink serve as a huge exclamation point on the reality of where we are with the muni wireless trend - no more free lunch courtesy of the vendor community. What started off as a good idea, a marketing loss leader of building Philly's network for free because if was such a high-profile city in muni wireless at the time, created a Frankenstein as almost every city in America then wanted the same thing.

"I think, even if Frankenstein hadn't escaped from the lab, EarthLink would have hit other bumps on the road. I worked for Metricom in 2000 when its Ricochet service was the original muni network. One of Metricom's major failings was that it tried to sell consumers a service they perceived as too slow and too expensive, while ignoring the business community that would have bought the service because wireless mobile access offered an ROI to justify Ricochet's price tag.

"Even though EarthLink offers business-oriented service, if you look at Philly as an example, a lot of its marketing is consumer focused. If you read between the lines of its recent media release, it seems EarthLink is abandoning the general consumer market for the very reason I've given for months. Consumers are a weak play for muni wireless - expensive to get, more expensive to keep.

"If EarthLink is serious about finding lifelong subscribers, then it should re-package its muni wireless offering for governments in a way that shows governments the ROI potential of anchor tenancy. Cities are being too quick to dismiss becoming an anchor tenant without doing adequate needs assessment within their various departments.

"I think EarthLink also should develop an aggressive business-focused marketing campaign that capitalizes on a continually growing interest among small- and medium-sized businesses for mobile workforce applications. By businesses, I mean commercial and also medical/healthcare organizations.

"The right combination of anchor tenancies by government, business, medical and education constituent organizations can provide strong financial foundation for a network project. Then you can look at ad sales, or more likely, corporate sponsorships to provide supplemental revenue, and consumer subscriptions."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.