RSSEarthLink to Cities: Pay for Wi-Fi Setup
By the Betanews Staff | Published August 31, 2007, 5:13 PM
Plans for municipal Wi-Fi in a dozen cities currently in negotiations with EarthLink may be in jeopardy as the company is imposing new demands on how the networks are to be paid for. Until this point, the ISP was willing to pay for the setup costs: now it is asking the cities to foot that bill. This includes the proposed network in San Francisco.
The move is yet another cost cutting measure for EarthLink, which is struggling to get its financial house in order. Earlier in the week, it announced it is laying off approximately half its workforce and closing four offices.
I had Eartlink both pre and post buyout by Sprint. Shortly after the merger, my overall average connection speed dropped by 22 Kbps. When my hometown began Wifi, the connection speed with a 77% signal from my house was very acceptable. Now that Earthlink "manages" it, signal strength dropped to dropped to 60% on a good day. Makes you wonder why Earthlink's in trouble financially.
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What are they thinking or lack of thinking? Just by looking at the cities they are trying to launch in, they will fail. The San franians are just gonna laugh at the fact they are trying to charge out there, while Google has their service already up out there. Not to mention the other pilot projects for free wifi in that city.
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Why would Earthlink be the logical choice for something of this magnitude??? They have struggled to compete in the broadband market. They were revolutionary when dial-up was king, but now that broadband is in, they were left in the cold. It is my suspicion that this little endeavor is what got them in the trouble they are in..
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What, there is no such thing as a free lunch?
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Earthlink is totally the wrong company for such projects--
they are more of a reseller / middleman / contractor, than a traditional national or large region isp with a large, strong manpower / equipment infrastructure in place... so cost, timeliness and leading edge technologies would expectedly suffer when compared to what an ideal candidate could accomplish:
some large national cellular / broadband / utility provider... of course, one with enough vision to realize all potential benefits, irregardless of initial cost.
Actually, there is no need to charge a city anything-- enough potential exists in increased ad/portal/phone/broadcast revenue to be made to overcome setup costs, even w/ free / inexpensive tiers... to say nothing of the value it would add when bundled with cellular/broadband/utility packages.
Taking this a step further, a truly visionary isp should be looking to, with all necessary partnerships in place, set up municipal wimax, streaming as much as it can over it-- tv/radio/voip/etc.
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If you want to play someones gotta pay. As far as setup cost go if EarthLink is going to make money from it they should pay, if not (free public Internet access) the cities should. How hard should this issue really be to decide?
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