San Francisco Free Wi-Fi Plan Fails 117
Reader r writes with news from San Francisco that Earthlink has backed out of contract negotiations to blanket the city with free Wi-Fi, citing money problems. Seems like only yesterday that Chicago's Wi-Fi deal fell apart for much the same reason. Quoting: "The contract, which was three years in the making, had run into snags with the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately it was undone when Atlanta-based EarthLink announced Tuesday that it no longer believed providing citywide Wi-Fi was economically viable for the company... EarthLink spokesman Jerry Grasso said that EarthLink was willing to work with San Francisco but had decided that it 'was not willing to work in the business model where EarthLink fronts all the money to build, own and operate the network.'"
Re:3 years? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yesterday... (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast and ATT must be laughing now.
Minneapolis is almost done (Score:5, Informative)
More info here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/wirelessminneapol
Many squad cars and firetrucks are already using the wireless technology and a number of cameras are used for survelence in high-crime areas. Since I drive through one of these areas every day, I can tell you the cameras have already made a real difference!
There is hope that with this kind of access, that the city will become a more livable place and that some lower income people will be able to use these services to better themseleves. While I hope that this is true, I'll also take it with a grain of salt and say that I will believe it when I see it.
This service was used for several days after the bridge disaster with very good results. Talk about trial by fire!
Perhaps this opens the door for MetroFi (Score:4, Informative)
milwaukee wifi (Score:1, Informative)
It got so bad that earlier this month, Midwest Fiber Networks wants to pull out of the deal and chalk up the $20 million they've spent on this experiment as a bad learning experience. Can't blame 'em.
Philadelphia (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Google? (Score:2, Informative)
Now Meraki [meraki.com] is doing it, a company backed in by Google.
Read more about it, A Free Mesh Network for San Francisco [technologyreview.com]
For more information (Score:3, Informative)
Re:3 years? (Score:3, Informative)
Most recently, the board decided to cut Earthlink's contract in half and demand twice the bandwidth, as if they could "fix" things by jacking up numbers. These assholes do this to every project in the City, hoping to load everything up with bulletpoints that they can parade as accomplishments. What it almost always means in reality, however, is that projects never get completed or are delayed for so long that the economic benefit of their add ons is a large negative.
This also happens in housing projects, where developers come in with a plan to build new housing, and the BoS insist that increasingly high percentages of units are reserved for welfare housing called "affordable housing"--not for the poor, but a for handful of well connected people who want to live on someone else's dime. So 10-20% of a project is subsidized, jacking up housing costs and ensuring that the only people who can afford to live in the new housing are the ultra-rich. Meanwhile, all the housing construction is held up in welfare negotiations until projects are tabled or until they are held up for so long that the minor addition of more welfare units constitute an insignificant trickle of new "affordable housing." This is backed up both by those who think market pricing can be overridden by political pricing, and by those who want to keep the supply low so that the demand and prices will remain sky high.
The plot to kill SF's WiFi was the same coalition of populists who thought a community group could put together a faster system, and those who didn't want competition to their pay WiFi or internet services.
http://roughlydrafted.com/ [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:Wifi monopolies (Score:3, Informative)
No, funds could be tied to individual students as opposed to monolithic government institutions and private entities could compete to attract these students. That model seems to outperform the US model according to OECD metrics.
It seems ironic that countries such as Belgium and France rely on free enterprise and competition to improve the quality of education while the US is locked into a poorly run socialist system that outspends these countries 2:1 per pupil with such abysmal results.
Constitution not offended by fit of stupidity ... (Score:4, Informative)
No, you actually have more privacy if government operates it. Government is subject to various ammendments, but individuals or corporations are not. Also, there are various privacy acts that apply to government but not individuals or corporations.
The best one that comes to mind was Scalia's lowering of requirements on police to read rights because of the "new professionalism among police." He based a ruling on how he feels about the current state of police professionalism.
Scalia lowered nothing. He wrote the dissenting opinion. The court had upheld Miranda.
His argument was not based upon police professionalism: "The Court did not just apply the Constitution when it handed down Miranda, it expanded the Constitution, imposing an immense and antidemocratic prophylactic rule upon Congress and the states. It was an example of raw, judicial power that simply asserted a constitutional right
Note that by "governing themselves" he does not mean governing themselves well: "Preventing foolish people from incriminating themselves is the only purpose of Miranda, and that is a far cry from what the Fifth Amendment requires in terms of protecting someone from being compelled to incriminate themself. Nor is a lawyer required because the interrogators can do the same as any lawyer can -- tell the suspect they have a right to be silent. The Constitution is not offended by a criminal's commendable qualm of conscience or fortunate fit of stupidity."