Philly WiFi To Become The New PGW?
When news broke on Friday that Earthlink is eyeing up its options to dump its Philly WiFi program, we can’t say we were entirely surprised. Earthlink laid off hundreds of employees during the summer and announced then that it certainly wouldn’t be taking on any new municipal WiFi programs. And given the Philly WiFi program’s poor performance both in functionality as well as the marketplace, you can see where this is going: The day is nearing when Earthlink is most likely going to cut and run. Our question, then, is simple: If not Earthlink, then who? If Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit set up to work between the city and Earthlink, has any ideas, they aren’t saying; their blog hasn’t been updated since the story broke. Certainly not Comcast or Verizon, who are making a killing on WiFi already and would seem to have no interest whatsoever in giving it away, or even coming close. (Earthlink WiFi’s rates are $6.95 the first few months, then $19.95 thereafter — compare that to your bill for whatever you use. The part where you’re not getting screwed is that, well, your service probably works.) So given all of this, we ask with quite a bit of dread: Would the most likely outfit to take over WiFi in Philly be… the City of Philadelphia? Shudder to think.
AP: See Ya, Wouldn’t Wanna Be Ya
November 19th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Someone should push Prometheus Radio Project to take this over. They’re plugged into some people who’ve got some really radical ideas as to what could be done with WiFi. Something interesting could come out of that.