Slashdot Mirror
Free Internet Access for Hamburgers
Get Behind the Mule writes: "The senate of the German city-state of Hamburg, which has a population of about 1.7 million, has announced that all of its citizens will receive free Internet access, an e-mail address ("first.last@hamburg.de") and a WWW home page. Citizens will pay no direct provider costs, only telephone costs. The services are expected to be available as of the middle of this year. Those of you who don't sprechen das Deutsch will have to try your luck with Babelfish."
As if "first.last@hamburg.de" is even remotely unique enough for an entire city. It needs to be more like first.middle.last.pet@hamburg.de to be for individuals. It makes much more sense to have it based on address; unit.streetno.street@hamburg.de
Ok, all obvious jokes aside, it seems that "cold-spamming" (the equivalent of "cold-calling" numbers out of a phone book) will be pretty easy when your address is assigned according to a named rule like first.last@hamburg.de.
I mean, yeah, for all the chaos resulting in the domain/accountname grab, it does make it harder for spammers to plain guess your address. (Though I do get a lot of crap to admin@, webmaster@, postmaster@.mydomain etc.)
Food for thought (Doh!),
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
And I don't really thinks this is as cool as it sounds on first glance. In Germany, local calls are rather expensive, during the day it is 12 Pfg (6 cents) per 90 seconds, in the nights and on weekends, it's 12 Pfg for 4 Minutes. Since local calls are still mostly a monopoly of German Telecom, this will not change anytime soon. Most providers only charge 2-3 Pfg per minute in addition to phone fees, so this is only helping somewhat.
Last but not least, with all "free" or cheap offers, this will probably be swamped by people and thus have problems for many years.
I still think they should start selling cable modems instead.
For those of you too lazy to cut and paste, here's the Babelfish translation:
Strategic partnership for "hamburg.de"
After long and hard, but fair negotiations over the future of the Internet homepage " hamburg.de " an important switch position for the further development was carried out: The free one and Hanseatic city Hamburg a strategic partnership with enterprises wants to be received, which are embodied in the surrounding countryside in Hamburg and. Today the partners signed sucked. Memorandum OF Understanding (declaration/agreement), into which it to the termination of a contract in the next weeks commit themselves. Now can be begun with the transfer of " hamburg.de " on a new platform, which is to be locked in the spring 2000.
The operator company, which wants to extend the past national supply by means of the commercial contents and services, the then LINE Schleswig-Holstein GmbH ( partners are Sparkassen-und giroverband Schleswig-Holstein, savings banks of the country Schleswig-Holstein, the Schleswig Schleswig-Holsteini Landesbank, the Hamburgi Landesbank and the Provinzialversicherung) becomes, the Hamburgi Landesbank, which Harburg belong to Hamburg savings bank and the district savings bank. In order to be able to along-decide in important questions, the free one and Hanseatic city Hamburg will likewise become Gesellschafterin.
The Public private Partnership arranged now it is so created that all took part a use of it have. The financing first on 10 years created of the development of " hamburg.de " is ensured in its entirety by the enterprises. Hamburg brings the names of the already now successful portal " hamburg.de " into the operator company. Thus it receives the exclusive right to structure under the name " hamburg.de ", a commercial platform open for the economy in Hamburg and to marked out. Further the city will make contents available of the public administration of the society exclusively.
A gate to the Internet for completely Hamburg
With a global Internet acces for all citizens and citizens Hamburg sets country widely yardsticks:
Each Hamburgerin and each Hamburg one will receive a free Internet acces; thus no Providerkosten, only the telephone charges develops must be paid.
A free E-Mail address will be able to receive each Hamburgerin and each Hamburg one on hamburg.de (after the sample Vorname.Nachname@hamburg.de).
Each Hamburgerin and each Hamburg one receive free homepage from up to 10 pages on " hamburg.de ".
These services will be Hamburg inside and Hamburgern starting from center to the 2000 at the disposal, since technically the transition to the new platform must be mastered before.
The new " hamburg.de " is on data base base after sucked. Situations in life to be structured. Since in the future both national and private services are offered, can do the users of " hamburg.de " by input of glossary words (e.g. " marriage ", " removal ", " spare time ") the necessary services of the administration, which suitable commercial and other supplies in the package test. Also a regional containment is possible.
The city saves cash and gets innovation
With the transfer of " hamburg.de " to the operator company needs to pay the city no more Providerkosten. Their coworkers receive free training courses at an editorship system supplied likewise free of charge by the operator company.
The city and the enterprises involved want to supply ever 2.5 millions DM for innovative software developments within the area interactive administration and the products afterwards together together marked out.
Three columns
Apart from the service supply a " citizen column " is to give the administration and the commercial supply structured as the third column. In it are to receive particulars, social groups, organizations and institutions, which cooperate or participate in the honorary structure of non-commercial on-line supplies for Hamburg or that Hamburg surrounding countrysides, the possibility of holding their supplies ready within " hamburg.de ". The operator company will support these supplies in the context of its possibilities financially and technically.
In order to make the advancement of " hamburg.de " a common thing for completely Hamburg, an adviser from representatives and representatives is to be created by organizations and enterprises, which are interested in the development of the Internets in Hamburg. The adviser advises the operator company with the target, which service-orients supply under " hamburg.de ", citizen near, to develop effectively and pluralistisch.
An open platform with advantages for all
For the enterprises united in the operator consortium the president of the savings bank and giroverbandes explained Schleswig-Holstein, Olaf Cord Dielewicz:
" we would like to make available also " hamburg.de " our customers an additional attractive service. This applies in particular to small and medium-size enterprises - we want to smooth the way for them in Internet. We understand ' hamburg.de ' however as open platform and are anxious to use the versatile and creative Potenziale that Hamburg Multimedia enterprises for the structure and the organization of ' hamburg.de '. "
Senator of finance Dr. Ingrid Nuemann Seidewinkel underlined that with the today's direction decision a request was transferred the senate basic coalition partner - they had arranged the structure of a city information system in the coalition contract:
" by all Hamburg inside and and free homepage to receive, going to Hamburg one free Internet acces, a free E-Mail address into Hamburg a crucial step to the democratization of the Internets. And if ' hamburg.de ' is used of as much as possible Hamburg citizens and citizens as well as of enterprises as regional communication and information medium, it becomes also the interesting Standtortfaktor. A successful " hamburg.de " can give important economic impulses and promote the image to our city world-wide. The partners, which we selected ourselves, guarantee for the fact that the common target with long breath is pursued. "
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I read that title wrong and was really looking forward to free hamburgers for everyone with Internet access.
A little planning goes a long way...
It looks like hamburg.de is a pre-existing portal (I think run by the city - the translation is really bad) and the city has partnered with a private company to actually run it. As part of the deal, the city is going to be putting a lot of its administative functions on the site. Also, it looks like they're trying to get local businesses to move into e-commerce through this thing.
Right. The provider "S-Online Schleswig-Holstein GmbH", which has apparently been newly founded for this purpose (the portal had been run by the state up until now, I think), will be owned and financed by a group of banks and an insurance company. The city will also be part owner in order to be able to influence its decision-making, but is not involved in the financing, except that the city and the private partners will put up a total of DM 2.5 million to pay for development of software to be used in city administration. City employees will also receive free training from the provider for the use of its authoring system.
In addition to providing government services, the platform will also provide commercial content and services. There's something in there about a search engine for the portal for items like "weddings", "free time", etc.
Some of the other posters are quite right that this is going create a difficult situation for private providers, and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to fight it. The two biggest players for private internet access in Germany are AOL and T-Online, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, and there is a host of smaller providers (I think the smaller ones are better, personally). At least AOL has already raised objections to Chancellor Schröder's initiative, raised in his speech opening the CeBit, to have internet access in all of the German schools within the next couple of years. They'll probably like this idea even less.
The hamburg.de service may very well be swamped and hence too slow and unreliable, which would give the private providers an opening for competition on the basis of better quality. After all, since the Deutsche Telekom's monopoly was broken a few years ago, most German customers have not gone to the very cheapest telecom providers -- they've been willing to pay a little more for better service. Nevertheless, it's not easy to get someone to pay for a service that they can get elsewhere for nothing.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
It seems to me that no-one really knows what their decision really means. The article says that every Hamburg citizen will be entitled to get a free homepage of up to 10 pages -- given that the number of pages a website has is completely irrelevant compared to its size in bytes, I'm pretty sure none of the participants actually knew what everyone was talking about.
I think it's a great idea, but I don't think we will see this in the near future.
Nevertheless, it's a great idea, and I hope they will get some help from someone who can handle this and finally get it done.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
After whacking the good fish upside the head, I think I've made some more sense of this.
It looks like hamburg.de is a pre-existing portal (I think run by the city - the translation is really bad) and the city has partnered with a private company to actually run it. As part of the deal, the city is going to be putting a lot of its administative functions on the site. Also, it looks like they're trying to get local businesses to move into e-commerce through this thing.
Some more poking around got me to this, which indicates that an EU commission called Telecities is responsible in part for this. Created in 1993, its goal has been to help Europe become part of the "Information Society" - and it boasts a pretty impressive set of member cities. Interestingly, its sister projects are Car Free Cities and something called POLIS, which looks to be creating new regional transportion systems.
Parts of the US already offer this through the library system...particularly Kitsap County in Washington. This was originally instituted as text-based dialup access over 5-6 years ago...pretty progressive. The idea was that the internet was becoming a major information source, and the library is responsible for providing people with information. Pretty sharp reasoning if you ask me!
;)
That said, this represents still another progression. While a library is often (not always) a government controlled agency, having a city take such a progressive stance is interesting. The question becomes...is it the city's place?
Now my first reaction to this was pleasure. "Gee...that's really cool. That a city government would be so encouraging of technology." But further reflection begs the question of necessity. For instance, do you think that the internet access will be of the same quality as a commercial provider? Maybe initially...but think of AT&T when it was government run.
While this doesn't sound like a monopoly, per se, it will be much harder for a small ISP to stay in business. Maybe even a large ISP (though big business has a way of bullying government and vice versa). The net effect to the citizens of Hamburg may be sub-par service.
A simple thought experiment makes the danger very clear. This is very similar to the "what if everyone littered" argument...but bear with me. What would happen if every city in every "wealthy" nation began providing internet access to its citizens? The short term effects would be very positive! This sort of connectivity is bound to change life as much as the car or the telephone. The problem comes in the long term. While cities would probably try to continue providing high-quality service, demand for high-tech faster connections would drop dramatically. Small companies with innovative ideas that would have survived in a competitive market will probably go out of business.
Status quo will become the normitive in communication (as opposed to today's computer market where the status quo is actually change!).
I expect to hear a lot of cheering about this on slashdot...and this may be good in the short run (or maybe in the long run if the government quickly pawns this off competitive companies once life is saturated with internet use...a good thing IMHO). But its worth evaluating the potential dangers and not embracing such action based on immediate emotional reactions.
I remain skeptical concerning government involvement...even when I agree with the direction being pushed
History has shown that the most positive trends tend to be towards privatization of technology! Remember that the citizens of Hamburg will be paying for this...in the long run. This isn't just free connections. And it seems likely that the city "ISP" won't run at as low cost/per connection as a struggling private company. Just a guess
-nullity-
I am nothing.