«
»

City About To Pull Magic WiFi Rabbit Out Of Its Ass

Free Nabaztags for everybody! OK, not quite, but close: According to Heard In The Hall, our own sources at Wireless Philadelphia, and a press release just in from the Mayor’s Office, there’s going to be a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT announcement at noon today regarding the fate of free wifi in Philly. And judging from the excited and hushed tones that we are hearing, it looks like, for once, this is good news. Speculation tends to be that the City and Wireless Philadelphia will be rolling out some kind of ad-supported wifi model. How will this work? We’re guessing some kind of splash screen, followed by you having to fork over your spam email and when all is said and done, it may wind up working out better than Earthlink ever could have. Biz-heads, here’s what’s been revealed about the who-is of the deal thus far:

Sources said the investment group includes local businessmen Derek Pew and Mark Rupp. Pew briefly served as interim CEO of Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit organization created by Mayor Street to bring citywide wireless to Philadelphia. A lawyer and former investment banker, Pew is now the CEO of a management investment firm called Boathouse Communications.
Rupp is a former Verizon executive with 18 years experience in telecommunications management. He is also a Boathouse principal.

For some reason, knowing a Pew is involved kinda just makes us feel good. In any case, Philebrity has been all over this story for a while now, and we’ll have an update later this afternoon.
HeardInTheHall: WiFi Lives
Previously: Noontime Nuggetz Special Edition: Change Is In The Airwaves: A Documentary About The Philadelphia Wireless Initiative

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am.

  • fuckermost

    i’ve had earthlink wireless service for the past year and am one of the 6,000 residents in philadelphia to put up with their shit. you’re going to ask why and i’m here to tell you. the thing that was never mentioned regarding putting up with their shit is that if you haggled enough with them (and they were serious motherfuckers so you had to be a serious motherfucker right back at them), you would get a credit for their intermittently operational service. meaning it was free if you had the patience to wait for phone rep, and then threaten them with civic recourse. there were times that this was so frustrating that you would simply hang up after a series of curse words.

    so, basically, the 6,000 people who had free-if-you-threatened-the-phone-rep-with-a-civil-suit-sometimes-operational-wireless-service, will have simply have free-sometimes-operational-wireless-service.

    and yeah, earthlink are fucking bastards. serious fucking bastards. they withdrew money from my account without authorization. twice. they made up charges that didn’t even exist after the fact. i approved none of their shit! my bank even blocked them, automatically – without me even having to tell them – because they are a bunch of corrupt motherfuckers. and i got my money back, eventually. over the course of a year, i probably paid for three months of service. about 40 bucks.

    that’s the inside story folks.

  • hiester

    Nice headline!