EarthLink Says No Future for Municipal Wi-Fi

Glenn Fleishman writes "EarthLink dropped its final bombshell on city-wide Wi-Fi, saying that it wouldn't put more money in and was talking to their current deployed cities about the future. The company had won bids in dozens of cities, and then backed out of the majority of them before building or finalizing contracts a few months ago. The remaining towns they were building out, like New Orleans, Anaheim, and Philadelphia, will ostensibly be turned off unless local officials come up with scratch or a plan of their own. EarthLink pioneered the model of free-for-fee networks, where there would be no cost or upfront commitment from cities, and EarthLink would charge for network access. Apparently, you can't make money that way."

Comments

If thats not foul play, i dont know what is

[unity100]

Check that out. a company goes into many wifi bids, wins most of them, and then suddenly decides 'city wide is not worth it'.

thats foul play at its best. proxies, they are.

Clearly I know absolutely nothing about this, but

[Gigiya]

When they make and win the bid, why aren't they legally obligated to follow through with it?

Fucked again by Public Private Partnerships.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another example of the general public being fucked over by a so-called P3: Public Private Partnership.

The idea is that instead of the municipal government setting up an organization to perform a specific project, they basically contract out the job to private firms. Supposedly this will lead to more economical and better quality service. Instead, what we've seen time and time and time again, is nothing but higher prices, and far shittier service.

Then we get cases like this, where the private interest just pulls out of the deal when it's no longer profitable for them. Of course, it doesn't matter that they've fucked over the community. A lot of the time these companies have little to no ties with the community they are servicing, so leaving the public there high and dry causes these private firms little grief.

Re:Unnecessary

[UbuntuDupe]

Time for analogy wars!

Do you just walk into random houses and use their computer or phone whenever you feel like it as well?

Yes, I do, if the computer/home has all of the the following attributes:

-There's a big sign outside that says "computer in here" (access points advertise their presence)
-There's an instruction set outside the house that says "To access the computer, rotate the knob on this door and push forward. Walk into home, then enter second room on right. Press power button, wait for authorization, and then use." (access points tell you how to use them)
-After pressing the power button, a message says "request for computer use received ... access granted" (access points must receive a request for use, and then grant permission)