The fate of Philadephia's citywide Wi-Fi deployment is still in limbo as EarthLink threatens to pull the plug.

EarthLink, which fronted $20 million to build the network and has completed 80 percent of the build-out, stopped accepting new customers last week, according to a report by Metro Philadelphia. The company has also supposedly given the city a deadline of this week to come up with a plan to take over the network or sell it to a third party.

EarthLink, which won the contract in 2006 to build what was at the time to be the largest citywide Wi-Fi deployment in the nation, said earlier this year that it's getting out of the Wi-Fi business.

The company had aggressively pushed its municipal Wi-Fi strategy. And Philadelphia was one of several large contracts the company had won to build citywide Wi-Fi networks.