A city push to establish free Wi-Fi hotspots in business districts across all five boroughs was knocked offline by the abrupt insolvency of the program’s contractor.
Madrid-based Gowex went bust early this month after Wall Street analysts reported that CEO Jenaro Garcia had cooked its books.
Gowex had a $245,000 contract with the New York City Economic Development Corp. to establish Wi-Fi corridors in Harlem; Long Island City, Queens; Brownsville, Brooklyn; Roosevelt Island; St. George, Staten Island; and on East Fordham Road in The Bronx.
The EDC has paid $185,000 on the contract, said agency spokesman Ian Fried.
Since Gowex’s sudden collapse, “about a dozen” of the 60 hotspots have gone down, the EDC says. They include parts of the system in The Bronx and Long Island City and the entire Staten Island system.
“We are working on finding a solution,” said Fried.
Analysts at Gotham City Research, which exposed Gowex’s problems in a report posted July 1, says the company lied about the size of its EDC contract — and while it claimed to have 100,000 hotspots worldwide, the real number was closer to 5,000.
Garcia resigned on July 5 and admitted to faking his company’s books since 2005. He is under investigation in Spain.