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Free Wi-fi Prompts BellSouth to Withdraw Donation
turbosaab writes "Shortly after learning of the New Orleans plan for free city-wide wireless internet, Bellsouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate a damaged building to be used for police headquarters. According to the Washington Post, 'Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert.'"
One word: Monopoly.
I don't know how it is down South now with telcoms, but when I lived in Tennessee, BellSouth was the only option we had in terms of phone service.
Unfortunately, there are probably plenty of people who have BellSouth who can't switch away from it because they have no local alternatives. I don't have a landline (well, I do...but I don't know the number to it), but most non-college students need one. And VoIP isn't an option if you don't have highspeed access, even if you can call "normal" phones with it. And you do have highspeed, and its from Bell South, you can't really switch away from them unless you also have cable. A lot of you guys seem to be lucky enough to have broadband internet and multiple phone providers in your area. In some parts of the country, particularly "backwater" parts of the South, you don't have those kind of options.
(I lived 10 of my almost 19 years in such a place, so "backwater" isn't an insult).
BellSouth also loves to heap questionable charges on your bill. They charge $80 to transfer your number if you move, even though it takes all of five minutes and is done without the operator getting out of her chair.
When I moved from Atlanta, I canceled my BellSouth service. Three years later I got calls from debt collectors demanding payment for several months of service after I canceled it. I basically told them to fuck off, and never heard from them again. If they try to garnish my wages, I swear to God, I'll fly a jet into the BellSouth tower...
This would be a prime time for Sony or M$ to step in and help their image.. Though, for the most part, both have positive images.. Maybe it would be better for the cable internet provider there, Cox/Comcast/Whoever..
They could just step in, buy the building, and give it to the city, with much praise coming from families and businesses who, as they move back, are going to be resubscribing to internet providers.
Of course, the whole thing would need some press coverage..
That said, at work when we switched from Bellsouth to another CLEC here, Bellsouth sent us a bill for $30,000 for "Unfulfilled Contract". That was all it showed, a line item for "Unfulfilled Contract" Cost $30,000. They could not produce a copy of the contract that we supposedly had not fulfilled. Needless to say, it did not get paid.
Reneging on their offer to house the NOPD just screams of a whiney corporation not getting their way. Jackasses!
"You'll get a big building and we'll get a nice monopoly without free competition, ok?" I think it's called a bribe / corruption. That's how things work in US.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
BellSouth does have a fiber to the home program. It's mostly secret, but they're moving everyone over to a BBG backend which they think will help them support the number of customers that their fiber plan is going to generate. (It won't, their BroadBand Gateway system is so awful it's redonkulous, and if you know a major BLS technician, he'll admit to you it's so, and likely to be so for years).
Lots of customers are already on fiber to the curb, especially in Florida. It's speed capped at the NOC in software for competition reasons, and it costs the same as DSL currently, but they want everyone on fiber to the home in a few years.
Most of this is stuff you only know if you put 2 and 2 together, but it's obviously their plan.
There
Ain't
No
Such
Thing
As
A
Free
Lunch.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I live in Louisiana, though I am not originally from here. The comments about the corruption in this State are not fair. The Feds want to deny us reasonable help, on the basis of such slander. Slashdot should be able to do better. Bellsouth are not exactly the most ethical company, especially when their monopolies are challenged. I refuse to do business with them, since before the Hurricanes. They seem to be acting badly again, so boycott them. However, please do not slander Louisiana. Remember, most of the 'hurricane relief' around here has been done by regular people helping others. The Feds have been useless. In a town a bit North of where I live a shelter had 3000 people in it at one point, with no government aid whatsoever. It was entirely supported by donations by locals. In the town of Lafayette, where I live, Bellsouth is fighting the local, city owned, utility system, because it wants to lay fiber to every home. The utility will do a better and cheaper job than Bellsouth, so Bellsouth are upset. So, feel free to be mean about Bellsouth, but do not slader Louisiana, unless you know what you are talking about. We are down, but do not deserve to be kicked. Kick Bellsouth and the moron in the Whitehouse and his useless cronies instead.
On some phone networks, you can pick up a landline and dial "211" to have a voice system read back your phone number to you. I don't know if that still works, but it's worth a shot.
This isn't true. You can set yourself to be No Pic (10x1) for Long Distance. 10x1 means your calls are routed by which ever carriers equipment pics it up first, and isn't preset so they don't even guarantee you can make an LD call. The ILEC/CLEC can charge a one time Fee to change your pic, but they cannot charge you for having it set to 10x1 nor can they charge any surcharges like the National Access Fee.
What they are probably charging you for is a Toll Restriction, which is usually extremely high, that costs about 2 - 10 dollars per month. It is an optional service and you can have it removed from your bill, unless you are receiving a handful of government benefits that require a toll restriction, in which-case, you be reimbursed for it anyway.
In the South, it's often cheaper to just switch to 100% cellphone. Bellsouth's 'cheap' plans are on the order of $40/mo with all the taxes and surcharges and crap you have no choice but to take. (Coming from California, I was absolutely astonished at the cost of a phone here.. it was more like $12/mo for the cheapest options there.)
You can often get a cellphone plan for $30/mo, and $50/mo will give you a pile of minutes and free long distance.... and the phone works practically anywhere.
Essentially, they're pricing themselves right out of business, as far as I can see.
Ray Nagin worked for cox communications
And... just guess who got that wifi contract?
This is how the world works, folks. It may not be right...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
That's possibly the coldest, worst thing that I've ever heard a company to do.
/ 2004/05/0005.cfm
In 2004 Pfizer withdrew funding from a New Zealand based cancer research centre over a dispute with Pharmac, the government (well, crown) entity that purchases pharmaceuticals for hospitals and health programmes. http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/about/news/articles
The people who run America's large corporations are by and large not nice people. (Yeah, that means you Mr. Niblack, and your fucking lawyers.)
They don't want you to have Free-WiFi because once you have it, you won't want to pay for it.
These companies see WiFi as another service they can charge you for, and all of those free hotspots spoils them a future revenue source.
They're scared of the future, because the communication services are getting cheaper and cheaper. You don't have to spend that much bandwidth just to do voice communication, with all those bandwidth potential being laid over the planet it will be so cheap to do voice that some company might decide they can afford to give it away, for free, just for the sake of publicity. And once one company had done it, every other will have to do the same.
Imagine a "free" cellphone network, where you just have to pay for the phone device. If whe switch over to VoIP this can be a reality... And of course if you're using a 100% digital network you just could offer free internet as well, only with a limited bandwidth.
And I picture this for countries that have a private telecommunications network, on countries where the teles are owned by the governament this can happen even sooner.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
First of all, Cox, the cable provider here in New Orleans would have won the contract regardless as Nagin was a VP for Cox Communications before he was the Mayor of New Orleans. Also, whether they use 802.11b or 802.11g doesn't matter, as the access is going to be 512kbits down while the city is in a state of emergency, and when it returns to a normal state the access is going to drop to 128kbits for legal reasons. The hardware was donated to the city and is most likely 11g anyway, so why not use it?
This sort of network is crucial to the rebuilding effort because it blankets the entire city with access via a mesh network. The access points are going to be mounted on street lights, so besides providing the actual internet access to a few major crucial nodes, all the access points really need is electricity.
I don't think BellSouth has to worry too much because all they are going to lose is the dialup and low end market. 128kbits is only going to let you browse the web and check your email. Businesses can't rely on such connections for their offices, and aren't intended to. This is mainly so people working in the field can pull up things from the internet quickly with a laptop, or so workers can submit data collected in the field to their main office without having to go there physically. BellSouth will still have the business market.
Also this wifi system is only for Orleans parish, and BellSouth will still have the business of surrounding St. Bernard, Plaquemines, and especially Jefferson parishes; they will have the Northshore, too. Jefferson is larger than Orleans and at this point is more important to businesses such as BellSouth because Jefferson didn't have the major flooding that Orleans did.
Scorta futuere amo!
... at least $500,000 for Katrina relief, and is matching employee contributions up to $1 million. I have not great love for the company, but all this demonizing gets old after awhile.
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http://www.us.playstation.com/PressReleases.aspx?
> I don't know, I think I'd prefer to get my internet access from a company that has a vested interest in providing a service for money, as opposed to a governmental body whose only motivation for uptime and happy users is ... what? I don't know.
1. My local power utility is owned by the municipality and costs 21% less per kWh, has a better infrastructure, and is more reliable than the privitized utilities surrounding it.
2. There are very few people who are happy with the service that the Bells provide despite the fact that they have a vested interest in providing a service for money.
> Government control of internet access? the terrible possibilities resound in my head: censorship, digital rights, privacy, and reprisal.
Who do you think invented the Internet?
> If government controls the internet access, what happens to people who are delinquent on their property taxes?
The same thing that happens to customers of any other municipal utility who are delinquent- nothing. Ideally, ISP service would be run as an independent governing board, much like a utility.
> Have outstanding parking tickets? Have a late library book?
Or you could pay your parking tickets and return your library books. Did you know that if you stop paying, BellSouth will stop providing internet access?
Regardless, if it's run as a utility, it's independent of the library and parking enforcement.
> Whatever mistakes I may make, I don't think my line into the world should be on the chopping block, as a means of coercion.
Is this a problem? Muni utilities don't cut power, water, phone service, etc. Did you know that the government can garnish your wages? That's greater coercion than Internet access.
> I'd prefer to confine my internet access to an organization whose job it is to provide it, not one whose job it might become to withold it, or use it against me.
Let me know when you find this organization. I'm a free-market kind of guy, but I recognize that there are times when unregulated enterprise does not provide optimal solutions.
Maybe I'm just completely "out of the loop" so to speak, but I really can't understand how all these cities can A) justify and B) afford to offer all this free wireless internet access.
In my city at least (we have had free 802.11g WiFi over large swaths of the city for two years now, and they are constantly expanding it), it is easy to justify.
As well, the city leases out the high speed fibre ring to companies, since they can do it cheaper than the local ISPs in many situations. Last I heard, the city was very well into the black on the whole project, it is far from a money-losing thing.
Being devil's advocate here ... how is it allowable for a city government to basically destroy the market for local Internet access? I mean, aren't the people who say it's illegal government competition basically correct? It does take away any motive to pay for Internet access, right?
Wrong. No company is going to depend on public WiFi for it's internet backbone. For one, performance is suceptible to the weather, and also the number of people on the local node. As well, it is inherently not as secure as a landline (since the access is free and public, there is no WEP involved). Also, anyone who is security conscious would not use it even for their day-to-day use.
But it is great for surfing the web, or doing company business over a VPN. Personally, I love it. And since it actually *makes* the city money, thus lowering my tax burden, I love it even more.
I did not have a cell phone until this semester, and that's only because I'm with the university's special technology pilot program (they eventually want to give them to all students so they can get a cut of that, as well) and they gave me the rather nice cell phone/PDA combo to use, and they're even paying for my service... =D
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
If you look at where the building is in relation to where the hardest hit area is, you will see it's right in the middle of it (New Orleans East). I had hear BS was donating this building to the city to use as a com center and EVERYONE complained about it's location and safety. There is no power out there yet, much less phone service, and they wanted to put the 911 call center there. It's not such a bad thing they took it back, 911 has been in the Hyatt since the storm and the dispatchers have been complaining about mold etc in there, so this forces them to move the call center to a more central location (City Park ave), a newer building.
If you ask me, they should look at moving the call center to the only place that didn't flood; the west bank. Algiers has been back up and running for almost 2 months now, AND there is a building that is not being used by the defunct school board still in perfect shape, close to a CO. I think the politions in NO need to learn to say "thanks but no thanks" to offers that look great on the surface but smell like mold and flood water when you get down to it.
On another note, I tried to connect to the city WiFi network the otherday, couldn't get an IP to save my life, and the network on the cruise ships? forget WiFi in the cabins, I have to go upstairs and pretty much sit right next to the AP. I'm glad I can catch EV-DO in our cabin.
http://www.fred-ezone.ca/ Works quite well from what I am told from a few workmates who are out there.