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New Orleans Tech Chief Vows WiFi Net Here to Stay
breckinshire writes "After Hurricane Katrina last year, New Orleans set up a city-wide wireless network to encourage businesses to return and assist in recovery. The New Orleans technology chief recently said that he intends to make the network permanent, in spite of state law and the disapproval of telecoms."
FTFLA:
A growing number of cities and towns want to develop their own public Wi-Fi networks. But they face stiff opposition from telecom and cable providers.
You will find that there are several state laws on the books as well as US House and Senate bills pending that would prohibit or limit a city's ability to provide WiFi services. To make things fun, there is a competing bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to make it illegal to make a law that would prohibit cities from offering services (!!=1).
Our political system amazes me...if we could only harness all that wasted energy.
"Unless your paying for the bandwidth, the users shouldn't bitch when the access becomes saturated because the telcos arn't getting their cut of profit for the fiber THEY layed."
You hear this argument all over the place. I think it is time to debunk it. The telcos may have (and I emphasize MAY) laid them to begin with but in this case it is federal dollars paying for replacement of ALL the infrastructure (including the telco lines). The program responsible for it in FEMA is called Infrastructure (commonly called "Public Assistance"). In a normal disaster the federal split is 75% federal and 25% state. In a catastrophic disaster that drops to 90% fed 10% state. In the case of Katrina even that has been waived with the federal paying 100%.
PA pays for doing public buildings, public services such as power & communications, roads, water and waste water treatment, and debris removal. There are whole categories that they cover. It isn't the telcos laying anything in New Orleans AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE so please stop spreading this little white lie.
B.
DISCLAIMER: I was previously employed by FEMA but now work for my State doing the same thing.
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