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 According to the Washington Post, 'Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert.'"

Comments

So what am I missing?

[Pichu0102]

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.

Now we know just how much Bellsouth cares

[Omnifarious]

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.

Why is this surprising?

[Stickerboy]

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.

quid pro quo

[Petrox]

Maybe the NOLA Police should also withdraw their civil protection of Bell South HQ in the city.

Bell$outh

[rodgster]

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.

They are probably really afraid

[CupBeEmpty]

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.

Re:Jumping to conclusions?

[Flashbck]

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.

Re:BellSouth has been known to suck.

[woolio]

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...

Foolish on Bell South's part

[WindBourne]

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.

Why is free wi-fi acceptable?

[RedBear]

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.

Re:Why is free wi-fi acceptable?

[Todd Knarr]

Well, three points:

1. The city can use wi-fi access for their own purposes, eg. law-enforcement and public-safety datalinks. It's not as if wide areas of wi-fi coverage are useless to the government.
2. The public itself is looking for Internet access. It's not as if there's not a public demand for the service.
3. Companies like BellSouth are not providing the service. In most of the areas where public wi-fi's being considered or actually deployed, the telcos that oppose it have also steadfastly declined to provide Internet service themselves because it's not profitable for them to do so.

To me #3 is the clincher. Saying the government shouldn't compete with private business is one thing, but when said private business won't provide a service what justification is there for preventing the government from stepping in given both public demand and government usefulness?

Re:Wow.

[Mr_Perl]

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.