Someone is interested.

Radford received one proposal to take over Radnet, the city's wireless internet system.

Launched in 2006, the system hasn't made enough money to pay back the city's initial investment. In July, city council voted to withhold the last $50,000 of the $1 million it had allocated to the project.

The city aimed to take the service throughout Radford, but expected Radford University students to provide much of Radnet's customer base.

About 5,000 Radford University students live off campus, according to Basil Edwards, the city's director of economic development. If 1,500 of them would subscribe to Radnet, he said, the system would make enough money to perpetuate itself and pay off the city's investment in three to seven years. But Radnet has only about 300 paying customers.

Radnet has generated enough money to keep itself going, but it's not generating enough money to keep the system up to date.

Edwards wouldn't identify the lone responder to the city's request for proposals, except to say it was from out of state.

"I don't want to do that yet until council has a chance to review the proposal and make their suggestions," he said.

Edwards said he expects the issue will be on council's Dec. 8 agenda.

Several groups and people called to talk about the proposal, Edwards said. "I spent quite a bit of time with one group, but they chose not to submit a proposal."

The one proposal that did come in was "pretty much what we expected," he said. "I'm not dissatisfied with the proposal. I'm glad we received a response."

Even if the council decides to accept the proposal, Edwards said, moving a service from a government operation into the private sector can get complicated.

"There's a lot of areas in there that will have to be worked out." Edwards said. "I don't fully understand at this point what council wants to do. So we'll just have to wait and see what direction they go in and we'll tackle it at that point."