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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 According to the Washington Post, 'Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert.'"
They may as well just strangle puppies in front of orphans. I'll never use thier services.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
Should we be surprised? It sure seems like a lot of big companies are having irrational knee-jerk reactions to a lot of things lately... I can see why they wouldn't be happy, but to "angrily" rescind a charitable offer to a pretty beaten up city that needs anything it can get? Sounds like a bad PR event for BellSouth.
The article states that the Internet service is in response to hurricane Katrina, in an attempt to help speed recovery efforts. I can understand why BellSouth would be upset about this, being a taxpayer funded competition, but taking back your offer of a building to help rebuild the local law enforcement of a destroyed city. . . thats just a dick thing to do, shame on you BellSouth.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Spite for the sake of profit -- what do you expect from a business culture that rewards borderline sociopaths?
No, they are being jackasses because they are deadly afraid of municipalities implementing their own city-wide wireless internet. Other municipalities have tried to do this, and it scares the phone and cable companies silly, because if this is implemented nobody will need to pay them for internet access. Worse, with VOIP nobody may need to pay for phone service either. Municipal wireless internet equals an entire municipal market lost to the telecomm companies. They do not want this effort in New Orleans to succeed.
There are plenty of reasons for them to be upset, but to express it that way is completely wrong.
I have mixed feelings about city-wide wifi projects. But, I definitely think wifi should be available everywhere for free. Mostly because I can't see any other way it's workable.
Right now, in order to get wifi in the various places I go, I'd have to have about 4 or 5 $30/mo accounts with various providers. That's completely ridiciulous and wrong. I can't use two providers at once. I shouldn't have to pay both of them.
But I can't see of a better way to work things unless you just hand it out for free.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That's just crappy. Really.
Why do other countries have 25 mbit connections with cable for $20 a month and in the US we can't give a 512 kbit line for free while the city is a complete mess. And they can't provide more than 128 kbit after the city gets back to normal.
Not that anyone could use the wifi very much without power anyway, but thats another story.
RIAA + Sony = Rootkit of all Evil
I'm not one to side with a "greedy" corperation, but this seems like a knee-jerk typical "stir the pot" title to me.
Half way down the article, an actual source (Jeff Battcher) from Bell South is quoted as saying that they are suprised that the city officials would claim this, as they are still working out the terms of the building, and that the offer is still on the table.
On the other hand, the article claims that "city officials", no specific source, claims that Bell South is withdrawing the offer. Seems kind of fishy to me. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Let me get this straight: A company donates a damaged building that may cost millions to repair to be the headquarters of the most corrupt police department in the US, and then renigs when told that the city has plans to gut their DSL monopoly with free Wi-Fi?
Is that the story?
Seem to me that everyone wins.
The city isn't stuck pay to rehab a wrecked building, the cops, lacking a HQ, wouldn't be as efficient at coluding to be corrupt, a monopoly gets shafted, then outs themselves as greedy bastards, and the citizens get free WiFi!
What's the downside here?
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
The thing about New Orleans is that they're basically starting from scratch in large parts of the city. They have to lay out new power and communications lines through large areas, and the incremental cost of an additional few strands of glass is nothing. They have to rebuild all of the traffic lights, street lights, etc. The real incremental cost of adding the infrastructure for the city-wide wifi is insignificant, and the other work needs to be done.
It has the benefit of getting people (and businesses) to come back. People that live there pay taxes. People that don't live there don't, at least not to the city. The city needs the tax base. I'm betting that someone pulled some numbers out of their arse, threw it in a spreadsheet, and showed a net fiscal gain for the city to install free wireless. Hell, they might even be right.
The key here is that it's nowhere near as expensive to install something like this for New Orleans as it would be for an undamaged city, perversely enough... just because of how much rebuilding will need to be done anyway. Best to rebuild it right.
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Of course, everyone is all for rebuilding New Orleans. How could anyone, aside from a cold-blooded sociopath, be against it? But if you discovered that the government's idea of "rebuilding" is to turn a major part of your business into a government-owned monopoly -- and not only that, but they expected you to help them with this plan -- well, I think you'd be a bit miffed, too. I know that New Orleans' stated motive for "free" (TANSTAAFL) municipal WiFi is to stimulate business, but showing a penchant for nationalizing industries isn't exactly a great way to say, "Hey, Mr. CEO, bring your business to New Orleans!"
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Another thought is that as soon as it really takes hold in a major US city and it works, city planners the nation over will take note.
And it'll happen again. And again, and again, and again until we don't need cellphone companies, cable companies, or telephone companies. So far it hasn't worked on a massive scale - mostly because it was too much cost for too few to benefit. Its the biggest threat to these companies that there is.
Still, such a violent self-preserving always disturbs me. It's why I work at a small company myself. Too many people all working together mean that there's going to be power at the top. And if power doesn't corrupt, it certainly attacts the corrupted like a moth to flame.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
After all, what's the point of a charitable act without a solid profit motive?
This is ridiculous. What do they feel threatened by? Sure, citywide wi-fi might cause the loss of some customers, but it could have gained them many more. Does BellSouth have any idea what happened when coffee shops with free wi-fi started popping up in my neighborhood? I ordered DSL! After I had a taste of broadband, I realized I wasn't going to sit in a coffee shop all day long but and I no longer wanted to be limited by dialup in my own home any more so I decided to pay for it. Because it is unlikely a free wi-fi network's quality of service will match the quality of service of my own line running into my home. BellSouth could have used the citywide free wi-fi as a "gateway drug" to selling their own broadband service, but it looks like they just blew the opportunity. Boneheads.
Whether this story is 100% accurate or not, it raises an important point for anybody in business. Do Not Burn Bridges. The guy you just called an asshole on the phone might be in a position to do you an important favor six months from now. Or not. Everybody has feelings, and some people have long memories and will delight in punishing or rewarding you for some little thing from the past.
If the New Orleans city planners are thinking of setting up free WiFi, they certainly aren't going to change their minds and go begging Bell South to please let them use that building. If anything it will just make the city officials less inclined to listen to the offers [cough-bribes-cough] Bell South is probably right now trying to think up to convince them to rethink the thing.
The city is making a good decision by offering wifi service, but they also need to recognize that it'll make them some enemies.
I don't doubt that your friend experienced delays, but I don't believe those delays were at all malicious. I'm not sure if you've ever worked at a company as large as BellSouth, but orchestrated neglegence like that can't just happen without around 10,000 employees knowing about it. Then, as soon as somebody gets pissed off and quits, or better yet - is fired - guess who they go talk to? The media.
BellSouth is a poor excuse for a corporation, but trust me.. they couldn't pull that off (and keep it a secret) even if they wanted to.
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.
Government control of internet access? the terrible possibilities resound in my head: censorship, digital rights, privacy, and reprisal. If government controls the internet access, what happens to people who are delinquent on their property taxes? Have outstanding parking tickets? Have a late library book? 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. 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.
It's damned near free to build wifi once you actually rebuild the infrastructure you're talking about. More to the point, the city needs to get a tax base working again. Something like this will get people and businesses to move back to the city while having a very small marginal cost (when you lay new glass for phone service, and fix the electrical grid, the cost of adding a couple of strands of glass and a power drop to a new box on the light pole is extremely small, and it's all the infrastructure cost that's needed for wifi). IIRC, the networking hardware (routers, APs, etc.) are being donated, so the overall marginal cost of adding wifi to the city now, while rebuilding is very small. Adding it after rebuilding would be much more expensive.
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Doesnt the city of New Orleans have bigger issues right now. Seems to me that they should be worrying about rebuiding their city, instead of offering free wi-fi in the first place.
A lot of copper is corroded. All the telephone building demark points were under water. Communications is essential to rebuilding. This is very true where the building is uninhabitable. Wireless is the way to go. This is part of dealing with the rebuilding. How long do you think it would take to replace every copper junction box, flooded trunk cable to the junction boxes in the city and all the demark points on the buildings. This is a quick way to get VOIP phones and Internet to the construction trailers.
The truth shall set you free!
Uhh, they're not proven guilty.. which makes them innocent. That's how it works, remember?
Oh, and you obviously don't realize how many layers of management fall between the "staff" and "upper management". Not to mention the fact that the "staff" in this case would be union workers, and if they feel that work is being held back, they file a grievance against BellSouth.
Trust me, it's not as easy as you think it is. Unless you've worked with a baby-bell first-hand, you couldn't possibly understand how grossly inefficient they are (which is actually funny - they're so good at it, you mistake it for malice).
So yes. Orchestrated negligence is used as a business tactic all the time. Anyone on the inside who manages to figure it out is sternly instructed to get back to work, maybe even cited for insubordination.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
There are many, many cases of services that are answerable to and funded by a state and that are not subject to this kind of selective provision. Examples in the UK include the BBC and the NHS.
The way it works is that these services are managed not directly by politicians themselves, but by civil servants who are ultimately accountable to politicians, who are then ultimately accountable to the electorate. Because there is a public commitment that these services will be universally provided, and that no one can be excluded from them, there would be a public outcry if that were to happen, and that is why it doesn't happen. Governments work very well when the people do their job of holding governments accountable. It is mainly when people in government realise they will not be held accountable (for example, by an electorate which sees it as their 'patriotic duty' to support government policy whatever it may be) that government fails.
I imagine with wifi it would be quite easy to make a commitment not to exclude anyone. All you really have to do is allow anyone to access the network anonymously. If you're worried about government backtracking on this, well then it can be written into law which makes it harder for politicians to change, the same way the BBC charter is written into law.
Another typical slashdot article. Not many facts, someone is crying at some big corporation. More flamebait.
Why don't you wait until BellSouth says this is true, instead of "We've been working for over two months on this building . . . we are a little surprised by these comments."
All it takes is a SLANT given by the POSTER on slashdot, and the mindless flaming begins.
I could have posted this article as "City worried about WiFi as many residents are still without power."
Then you could have flamed New Orleans politcal leaders.
Doesn't the slashdot community tired of flaming random corporations?
They'd just have to be a little more careful about how they did it than a local government would be. They'd have to make sure that the really dense areas only got a taste of it, not enough to not need to subscribe. Keep some of the people happy, so that the the ones that are complaining and motivated can't get a big enough group together to affect change. If a city feels entirely neglected in some way, it's much easier for them to take action than if just some of the people are "suffering".
There's also the whole, the first hit is free mentality. After I got some broadband use at a friend's house, you can be damn sure I would not shut up to my parents about how much we needed a faster connection. There are plenty of people who don't understand that having broadband doesn't just make your email go faster, it can really change how you're able to use the internet in more fundamental ways.
Abstracting things another way, Google gives away a hell of a lot of services for free, yet they're finding ways to make money. Their share price is still vastly overvalued, but they are making money, they're just being a little bit more imaginative with their business plans.
In New Orleans's case, the city can afford this whole thing because a lot of the equipment has been donated. Legally, I think they're justifying it easily because the city is still under a state of emergency or something. Ethically, I see no real problem with New Orleans or any other municipality doing this, because I believe that there can be a real benefit from it, both economically, and in a quality-of-life sense. Similar to roads and fire hydrants and stuff.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I think Bell south is in the right here. Think about this. As in the Everybody loves Raymond episode, you give money to your brother because he has hit hard times. He then promptly books a vacation to Vegas. I'd be pissed. That money was for bills to help him along until he could stand on his own.
Same situation here. Bell south gives a building because New Orleans needs help. New Orleans then announces a free wifi network for the whole city. This is not a need, will take a lot of money, and will be taking directly from Bell south's business.
Sucky.
how is it allowable for a city government to basically destroy the market for local Internet access?
There exists no law or convention that forbids a government from entering a previously private market. Indeed, there exists a long history of the government taking control of markets that are deemed to be signifigant infrastructure points. That's why roads and schools are government owned and operated. That's why telecoms and power companies are so stringently leashed. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the government to start waking up to the fact that we rely HEAVILY on the Internet as an infrastructure. You can expect increasingly strong government involvement in the control and deployment of the Internet going forward. Really, I can't argue the logic. If the Internet goes black, we are all screwed at this point, just as if the power or telephone system goes black. Business relies on the Internet far too much to ignore it.
It does take away any motive to pay for Internet access, right?
It does, yes. But there will be a market for premium internet service. I mean, if the local municipal maintains a 512k up/down pipe to each home or a WiMax blanket over the city, there will still be people who are willing to pay for more bandwidth. In fact, most businesses would still HAVE to pay for higher bandwidth. A company with even a moderately consistent bandwidth usage would want and need a thicker pipe. Some home users would want it as well. For the rest, yes, they could get by just fine on the 512k they are handed for free. That will shrink the market, or more specifically, it will tier the market. I don't see that as a bad thing. There are many people now who can't afford their own food, and therefore obviously have no Internet access, yet those same families suffer generationally because without the advantage of the Internet, they are finding it increasingly difficult to academically compete with those who are online...which makes the next generation more likely to be in the same economically disadvantaged position. This helps alleviate that inequity.
how can they afford the infrastructure necessary to provide wi-fi in the first place?
Taxes. Yeah, poorer municipalities won't be able to do it for a while, but richer ones will enter quicker becuase they have a stronger tax base. Those early adopters, just as with any market, will drive the price down by economies of scale. This will allow the poorer localities to enter the market sooner. And yes, the answer no politician will give you is that it's your taxes that will pay for it. Deal. Our taxes pay for all sorts of stuff, and as the economy rises overall (this is what it does in the U.S.) we will be able to do more with less. At first, the burden will be noticable, but over time it will not. The costs will decline, the infrastructure will be in place, the system will be simplified. This is the way of progress. No big deal. Municipal Internet will seem like a pain to us the first few years as kinks are worked out and costs slowly lower, but inside a decade it will be considered blunderingly obvious that we should have done it sooner. Think of what can be done with a TRULY ubiquitous network that everyone in the U.S. can access at will from anywhere. The uses are mindblowingly numerous. This is one of those things that can be a sea change if we let it.
What is the main purpose of a city going through all the trouble and expense of offering free wi-fi? What is the benefit to the city as a whole?
There is no one reason. There are so many that the real question is why would the citizenry fight it? For a tourist town, the early adopters can tout it as a way to boost touring revenue. "Come lounge on our sandy shores and SMS your friends back home from the comfort of your beach chair" More tourists means more tax revenue means less tax bruden on the locals means WiMax pays for itself and then some early on. For a business town it means touting a way t
-Tom
I've been looking around, good ol' Google, and digg.com and all that. So far, the only source I find for this story is that one Washington Post article. I think the Post is a valid news source, but it would be nice to have more sources to back this story up because I think it's important.
Anyone out there got more sources?
Furry cows moo and decompress.
In a disaster area, you're either part of the solution or part of the problem. There are no bystanders. Bellsouth basically decided that they are not going to be part of the solution. There are plenty of other companies in the US that ARE willing to be part of not only the short-term solution but also the very long term solution, so good riddance. Lets hope they get out and stay out, and that the govt remembers what they did when it comes time to review contract bids in the future.