RSSPhilly Wi-Fi Nears Construction
By Ed Oswald | Published May 4, 2006, 10:41 AM
EarthLink is close to receiving final approval from Philadelphia's City Council to mount its equipment from light poles, company representatives said on Wednesday. Some council members expressed concern over parts of the deal, delaying construction.
The joint committee for education and technology wanted EarthLink to ensure it would comply with city ordinances that require contractors to ensure diversity in their workforces. Additionally, council wanted more oversight of Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit group that is overseeing the project.
While the contract had been approved by Mayor John Street in October, permission to mount equipment on city property still had to be given by City Council. The governing body used this leverage to ensure that its concerns were heard before giving approval to begin construction.
The full Council will now vote on the bill on May 11, and a city spokesperson said that most bills that make it out of committee do end up passing. While there is some concern on portions of the bill, it is unlikely to affect the final decision.
Construction of the citywide Wi-Fi network would begin a few weeks after approval, EarthLink has said. Service for the entire city is then expected to begin sometime in 2007, and cost about $20 USD per month to users.
Low-income users would be charged $9.95 USD per month, and special programs have been set up to equip these individuals with computer equipment.
Internet use in low income households has show to improve reading skills in a recent study (and standized test scores).
Score: 0
|In certain areas of Philly you can already connect to SSID's with the name "Wifi Philly"...
whether its in free testing stages, i dont know.
Score: 0
|What special progams? $100.00 laptops from MIT? OH, my tax dollars at work. Let's buy the uneducated mom of 75 kids who is on welfare paying $10.00 a month rent in low income housing, (selling drugs for income and driving a BRAND NEW SUV), a brand new Laptop so she can get online and play games, download illegal music, and look at porn, instead of getting a ****ING JOB. Let's provide more reasons for these poor people not to work and to continue living on Government cheese... GOD our system needs to be reformed.
Oh, and first post.
Score: 0
|One of the tradeoffs for you persnally is that the low subsidized price puts price pressure on competitors to offer you faster and cheaper service levels with extra bundled features.
And on a grander scale: some basic staples of daily life such as housing, education, utilities like electricity, wired & wireless telephone, broadband access, etc., need to be at the reach of each & every individual as much as possible, no matter what it takes, so that a people collectively can prosper-- the more have-nots a country has, the worse off it is. What do the poorer & more unstable countries of the world have in common? They all rank at the bottom of the basic stats: illiteracy, wired & wireless penetration, running water, etc.
The prosperous and stable countries of the world are the ones who've achieved the highest penetration; and they run the gamut of political idealogies from left to right-- making a strong case for keeping politics out of decision-making here.
In other words-- a country, like a sports team, cannot hope to prosper with a significant amount of inferior players, no matter how good/well off the stars/better ones are.
The same was said about telephones(why give them an incentive to stay at home gabbing the hours away? let 'em get up off their lazy duff & physically visit-- the exercise'll do them good too), water(let 'em go to the well-- the exercise'll do them good), electricity(let 'em use candles or kerosena lamps, it's much cheaper!), education(let 'em get what they can afford with extra jobs, that's what I do-- now my taxes will go to educate some lazy a** who may wind up taking my job because they passed with better grades than I-- simply because they were able to study w/o having to work at the same time.)
Yes, there are parasites & mediocres of all flavors everywhere, but since we're civilized & can't kill them, we bite the bullet and pay initially-- which usually/hopefully is a lot less than paying to fix the worse messes they can get into later on.
Score: 0
|Unless you specifically know someone that fits your ridiculous stereotype please shut the hell up!
I volunteer to deliver and set-up donated PCs to low income households as part of a private program so none of your paltry tax dollars are used.
Most of the kids that receive these machines are borderline anyway meaning their families usually make the successful transition out of public housing.
Just because someone needs a little bit of assistance doesn't mean that they're completely useless to society or the world.
Think before you throw first-time poster!
Score: 0
|