Owie: City Hall CIO Confirms (Again) That Wireless Philadelphia Now At Standstill
Terry Phillis, Mayor Nutter’s chief information officer, says a sale at this point would be the best thing for everyone:“The first alternative is by far the best alternative — that they find an appropriate buyer, the city signs off. If that was to happen, it would probably be a better thing than where we’re sitting today.”
[...] Philadelphia’s Wi-Fi effort attracted worldwide attention, and Phillis says people are still watching:
“Everyone is looking to see how Philadelphia is going to finish.”
Regrets about all this? Phillis has none:
“I would not say that we shouldn’t have done this, because this cost the taxpayers no money.”
We’ve written about this before, but as the process drags out, we have to ask: Might not this be a potentially easy victory for the Nutter Administration? We bet if Mike got the whole brain trust together in a room for an entire day — just one single day — a plan could be hatched that would both save the City from a looming potential embarassment and get Internet access to poor people. Look at it this way: The nodes are already there. We have the technology, and best of all, we got it for free. How hard could it possibly be to do something with it?
Wait, maybe don’t answer that.
KYW: WiFi Deadlocked
Related: Technologicology Special Report: Like A Pussy Boyfriend, Earthlink Finally Breaks It Off With Wireless Philadelphia
March 6th, 2008 at 11:16 am
yeah, i’ve had this earthlink wireless service for almost a year and i think i’ve paid for it twice. it might be run by a rabbit with one ear sticking up, but the shit’s free most of the time because they’re such a trainwreck. so it’s pretty bad, but free ain’t all bad, if you know what i’m sayin’.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Had a laugh over this in my hotel:
“To read the headlines, you’d think the dream of free, citywide wireless was dead coast to coast. One after another, big municipal Wi-Fi projects—San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta— have hit the skids. But check out the rest of the map: Dozens of lower-profile locales are launching government-sponsored networks. Most are smaller cities and
counties, where bureaucracies are less onerous and costs are lower. (Philadelphia, the sixth-largest US city, is the biggest urban area to get a network running, with about
100 square miles of coverage.) Road trip? Here’s where to jump online.” —cyrus farivar, Wired iss. 16.03
I’m pretty sure Wired’s covered Earthlink’s death spiral relationship with Philadelphia, so who sourced them our ‘in the green’ rating?
http://www.wired.com/images/multimedia/magazine/1603/1603_atlas.pdf
March 6th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
This network can still be very valuable for a lot of (mainly municipal) uses. That’s what made wi-fi projects in other places successes. They found a good practical use for them. Home internet access on this network is far from ideal and access on the go is better served by WiMax (which ain’t here yet). WiMax connections are steady in cars going as fast as 60 mph. G-town Radio dreams of the day it’s here.