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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 According to the Washington Post, 'Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert.'"
Are they being jackasses and withdrawing their offer because they're not being used for the wifi or because they think if they city can afford wifi they can afford to buy the building from them? Either way, this is a seriously stupid PR move.
Which is basically, nada. It was all about what they could get out of it (good PR in this case). And as soon as it looked like New Orleans was going to do something that would make it harder for them to profit, poof goes the offer.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's not like Louisiana has a sterling reputation for honesty and integrity in political dealings. I bet BellSouth was offering the building for "free" in the first place for some sort of inside deal in service or reconstruction.
Then the city government starts talking about taking away the local broadband market, and you betcha that building suddenly has "issues needing to be worked through". Wink wink.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Maybe the NOLA Police should also withdraw their civil protection of Bell South HQ in the city.
sig my booty, check my website
they can afford a city-wide wi-fi but they can't afford a new building for police hq?
I've been a customer of Bell$outh, $BC and a few others.
It is my opinion that Bell$outh is actually worse than $BC, which is hard to believe.
I try my darnest to Not do business with either one of them (home & work). I actually prefer to pay more from a different provider just to incite competition and avoid those clowns.
There is No innovation from these Bozos. Missed the boat on VOIP. I mean look at Verizon they're working on fiber to the curb. Any how long are we going to have to pay a surchare for touch tone service? What a joke and rip-off.
I hate their support (1st level outsource). Here's a little secret when calling either one of these guys, if you select that it is a new install for DSLs (even though it is not) you always get US based personnel. T's, Frames, etc are not outsourced in my experience. But last time I had a Frame problem, it took hours to find anyone who even knew what Frame Relay was at $BC (actually I never did find anyone at $BC, pathetic).
Hate to say it, but I long for the day when both of these companies are out of business.
Who will guard the guards?
That the government can offer a better service for free... with the kind of service I have gotten out of US telco's I can see why they can't sell their product. No one complains that we don't have private roads. Maybe internet service needs to be free. It is certainly becoming necessary to normal cultural development. So what happens is the government provides basic access and if you want faster then you pay. That will certainly put pressure on the market to fix the current state of insanity that is US internet services.
I'm from New Orleans and Bill Oliver used to be my neighbor. I knew this man for a few years and I do not believe that he would do such a thing. This is probably a case where the "city officials" are bending the truth a bit. Hell, I remember when I was in high school, I accudentally hit Mr. Oliver's car when I was in a rush to get to school. I knocked on his door to tell him about it and he just laughed it off and made some joke about how he had a dent there that he wanted to fix anyway. This supposed angry rescission of the offer is probably a case of Mr. Oliver telling the "city officials" that the building is not ready to be occupied yet and is being spun into something completely different to help int he acceptance of city-wide free WiFi.
I for one hope that the WiFi stays. I'll still pay for my Cox Communications cable modem for the faster speeds at home, but it would be nice to bring my laptop to the park and be able to get an internet connection there.
I'm sure there are many companies that never donated that amount of their company property in the first place. Does that make them any less cold than BellSouth?
BTW, if you RTFA (I know, its /., almost no one gets past the sensationalist headlines), they did not say they would not donate the building, merely that they would have to "continue to work through issues regarding the building" after the city decided to create a monopoly (that gets its income from forced taxation) to compete with BellSouth's services. Thats a bit different from strangling puppies in front of orphans.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
When I was a BellSouth customer, I did not have any need of long-distance services...
Because I did not select a carrier, they actually charged me a FEE for NOT using a carrier!!!!
Charged if you do, charged if you don't...
Even the basic tax rules of the IRS are a bit more sensible...
BellSouth does have some bad practices. Whether by choice or by negligence, they lost my business for as long as I have a choice. I made two calls to Guatemala in March, and found they had charged $3.00 per minute for those calls, totalling $108. I disputed the charge in April, because they never informed me that the rate had gone up from 35 cents. They did offer the $4/month "international plan" which had that 35 cent rate.
The next six bills came with the amount listed as in dispute, interest still accruing. Then I got a disconnect call (no paper notice) saying I was past due and they would cut off service unless I "made arrangements" right then. I repeated the dispute and they said they'd get back to me. I decided to give Vonage a try because they refused to delay the disconnect. In the next 3 months, BellSouth never got back to me, still charged interest on the $108 plus the $65/month for their "value plan" with the same features I'm getting with Vonage for $15. Vonage proved to be flawless, so I cancelled BellSouth. I have since gotten about 15 calls from BellSouth offering to switch me back. I get such joy out of telling the telemarketer why I switched and that even a $100 check won't get me to give up the $15/mo rate I get. They recognize the name and say, "yes, they're one of our biggest competitors."
It took them almost 3 months to release the number to Vonage. They wasted time when it was to my advantage, but when they want money, they're right on it. I spent an additional $400 on "we'll get back to you."
I can't claim malicious intent, but I know from 17 years of business experience -- corporate management sets priorities, and they don't usually set customers as number one. When a company gets to be a virtual monopoly, they stop trying hard to keep their customers. I've seen it first hand -- coworkers will say, "The customer won't want to go through the trouble of switching, so let them wait." Sometimes the 3 months to switch is better than a year of being blown off.
What the industry can do is make it easy enough to switch and then BellSouth will once again be motivated to keep its customers in a gentler grip. I think that's happening more now with VoIP competition.
They are being incredibly stupid. First, these will need a backbone to support them. They could easily have won the contract. In addition, as part of that, they could then insist on 11B, rather than 11G. That means that each site gets at most 5.5 megs (just let one or two leechs on that) . Then limit how much bandwidth leaves the city for the free hook ups. With the city covered by "free wifi", it would have taken out any real compitition from WIFI providers.
At first, this network would be used for intercity comm. As time went on, more ppl would head out to the net. In addition, as ppl came back and brought their own radios, there would be interference. So if end users want any real speed, they would have to pay for it. At first, it may be a higher speed access to the Internet (priority/total bandwidth), but it may also mean a DSL line. Finally, they could have instisted that Ray do a few ads for them saying that BS helped NO get back on their feet. Now, Ray will be talking, but it will be about somebody else and negative towards BS.
Man, these monopolies know how to shoot themselves in the foot.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I hear that BellSouth asked Uncle Sam for $6B to rewire New Orleans! With Wimax/WiFi, the cost was so cheap (a few million dollars), companies were able to donate the needed equipment. I think I understand why BellSouth is pissed.
If you recall, a Republican from Texas is trying to make it illegal for cities to bypass the phone companies and offer free Wi-Fi. BellSouth has the GOP in it's pocket.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
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. Being devil's advocate here, and ignoring the fact that BellSouth may be a corporation that everyone loves to hate, 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?
And how can they afford the infrastructure necessary to provide wi-fi in the first place? Honest questions here, this particular aspect of Internet history has been bewildering me for many months now. I guess I just haven't read enough about it. Anyone with a better handle on this phenomenon care to comment?
I guess the last question would be, why are they doing it? Why aren't these places just relying on the open market to provide Internet access? (Let's ignore New Orleans for the moment.) Is it just to attract businesses and people to the area? 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? I just don't get it.
Any insights would be appreciated.
Amen to living in the Dirty South Home of the BellShit heads. I know this is off topic a bit, but I gotta tell everyone about this. Let me give you the setup of my house before all this started. I am what is called ITP here in Atlanta. That means your inside the perimeter and can basicly toss a rock in any direction to hit a bellshit building. I have 1 line DSL for my personal use and 1 line for business. So I was running two DSL lines to the house. Now I decided to drop the personal DSL to get Dedicated DSL Line that does not need Dial Tone to run from Covad in my house because they offered a really nice deal, alot cheaper than the BellShits. I was like why the hell not; I know that I am close to not just one but two CO's and can get DSL. So I order the line and covad is sending me updates on the progress and told me the line tested at 10,600 feet. Covad set up a tech to come out to the house to run the lines in the house because Bellshits don't go in the house and what not. So the Covad tech gets there and tests the loop, all of a sudden the line is testing at 22,900 feet. I just start screaming at this point. I'm like how the FUCK did almost 2 miles get added on to this damn Loop? He was baffled and I knew what the hell was going on the Bellshits were playing god damn games. Well the Covad guy said that I could reorder the line again and see what happens. Well a little light went off and I thought lets just see when I order BellShits DSL on this new line they claimed was 22,900 feet. Sure enough the BellShits said they could have me on DSL on that line in the same damn day and the loop was around 10000 feet!!! I was like really? it's 10k huh on the line you told covad that was 22,900 feet? They didn't answer me. So I called Covad back and called for a setup again, the same thing happend over again! I did this two more times just to see what the Bellshits would do and just like clockwork they magiclly made the distance grow! So that is cold hard facts, covad has it documented and I do as well. What good will it do? Not a god damn thing because we live in the Dirty South! Hopefully one day some company will have the balls to go WiMax or something in Atlanta and 6+ million people in Atlanta can all at once tell the BellShits where shove it...
I've got one worse for you. Happened right before I started working for this company.
I work for a Fortune 500 company that has its major operations center in the south. At one point, we were using BellSouth to carry most of our calls. After a major acquisition, we announced that we were switching to MCI trunks (directly, instead of through BellSouth).
First, they tried to wheedle us on price, but we didn't budge, it was not the price, but the level of service we recieved from them that was why we were switching.
One morning a few weeks later, our ops center stopped recieving calls, and couldn't make outgoing ones. After a brief investigation (looking out the fricking window), there is a backhoe across the street digging.
It was Bellsouth, and they were running some telephone lines, and had "accidentally" broke our connection. One of our telephony guys called our rep at BellSouth and asked how long it would be untli it was back up. He was told that "repairing a broken line was not part of the transition services, and BellSouth would not be repairing the line."
In Spencer IA where I moved a few years ago we have a municipal communications system.
< $60/month now buys:
Basic cable
2 regular phone lines
5 Mbit Broadband w/static IP (and choice from 4 bw providers)
I am of the opinion that other small towns should do the same, we had a big bond sale, laid the fiber, and forced the ruling (Mediacom) price gouger's rates down to something reasonable so they didn't get pushed out entirely.
So we aren't lining the pockets of Mediacom execs any longer, now we're treating ourselves.
I don't know how well this would work in a more corrupt (larger) governmental organization, but with proper oversight it's likely to be better than what you guys currently suffer under.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
Alright, after reading through a lot of the comments on here, the vast majority of which are angry at BellSouth, I'm going to fall on my sword here and come out in favor of them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that what they did is the nice thing to do, and I have absolutely no experience with their services - I live in Boston. But when you're donating something to somebody (or in this case, some city), you don't expect them to turn around and stab you in the back. And that's exactly what New Orleans has done. Internet access is a huge revenue stream for telecommunications companies, obviously, and New Orleans has just circumvented that, for many people.
Does New Orleans need all the help it can get, right now? Yes, of course
Is this a nasty thing for BellSouth to do? Yes
But is it undestandable? To me, absolutely.
-Daniel
Now, to answer your question, no matter what, American companies care about themselves first and only. The only reason you see an American company "doing good" is in response to bleeding heart shareholders or politicians. In this scenario, the company is only doing their good deeds in order to get people off their back so they can return to squeezing their employees and customers out of every cent. In the specific case of the NO WiFi, the phone companies are not going to cooperate with any effort that removes such a large chunk of potential customers.
The communications companies are terrified of the new developments in free municipal internet. All they see is red lines on a chart, they don't see how good this could be for NO. Free internet, coupled with cheap computers and a new school district centered around internet learning would (hopefully) transform NO from a near-slum into a center for high tech learning. Even if it didn't perform to that degree, it would still help the previously underprivileged gain a foothold which they can use to make a better life for themselves, because no one here will help them.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."