Holland said he and the task force spent considerable time talking to Philadelphia and San Francisco officials about their approaches to issuing requests for proposals (RFPs). But the contractors, such as Earthlink in Philadelphia, which eventually won the business, told the cities "we don't like the specifications and we will do it this way, so the city was stuck with what the vendor wanted to do," he said. "We tried to benefit from their experiences."

None of the major ISPs have shown an inclination to provide low-cost services to Boston, Holland said. The plan is that once the nonprofit begins to oversee the building of the network, small and large ISPs will use the network to offer Internet access via their sites. "Even a mom and pop ISP will be eligible to buy broadband access and remarket and resell it," Holland said, so that even a neighborhood might be represented by a smaller ISP.

The nonprofit approach, which relies on raising $16 million to $20 million from local businesses and foundations, avoids tapping taxpayer dollars, Holland said. Even so, "we see huge demand from residents and businesses," he said.

The service will bolster city services such as emergency response and inspections, Holland said. For example, housing inspectors would use wireless handhelds to file reports The service could also provide building maps and diagrams to firefighters arriving at the scene of an emergency or fire, Holland said. In addition, residents and businesses could have high speed access wirelessly, he said.

The biggest motivation for the nonprofit organization was to avoid over-promising what the service would provide, Holland said. When San Francisco put out its RFP, the public first thought the service would be free, but it later was dubbed "affordable" and now involves higher costs for deployment because of the hills and valleys in that city, Holland said. "We are trying very hard not to over-promise, and we think we have a solid plan," he said.