New Orleans Wifi Alert: following the blog trail
- October 23rd, 2006 /
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There is some buzz building around the muni wifi project in New Orleans. Is there news here or not? Well, there may not anything breaking, but there is a certain amount of momentum building around the story.
We are excited to welcome Earthlink to New Orleans as a muni wifi provider. Over the next few months New Orleans will be transitioning from a wifi network erected by the city post-Katrina to a wifi network that Earthlink is currently deploying around New Orleans. This is great for New Orleans as it will offer two tiers of paid wifi service at below current market rates for DSL and cable. Additionally, Earthlink will continue to offer the free wifi that has been offered to everyone in the French Quarter and the CBD since Katrina. Earthlink says it will offer the free layer of wifi is temporarily while the city is rebuilding. Let’s hope that it follows through on this commitment as experts predict the rebuilding will last 5 to 10 years.
The free layer of wifi access is a critical component to the goodwill that Earthlink has received from us and many others. It would be a wonderful thing to offer free wifi (albeit equivalent to dialup speeds), subsidized by the paid services, to New Orleanians as long as the company can. This is a city with very low internet connectivity and large poor communities. I feel that the commitment to free access, as long as it lasts, is the reason that I will select Earthlink as my network connection. I am happy to subsidize internet access for people who can’t afford to get online, and I want Earthlink to know that the goodwill that I’ve extended them is based on the commitment to free access. Even though the free access has always been deemed temporary, according to Earthink, we have free access right now, and a socially responsible business model is something that a lot of people in this community can get behind. Keep it around as long as possible guys.
New Orleans Wifi Reading Primer (please add more links in the comments):
- Earthlink Press Release on Wifi Build Out
- Dave Coustan’s blog posts relating to New Orleans Wifi
- New Orleans Times Picayune’s article about unplugging the free WiFi network
- Gambit Weekly’s article about Greg Meffert’s (former New Orleans CIO) boat
- Gigaom’s coverage of New Orleans Wifi
- Dave Coustan’s clarification of the current uproar
Random Posts
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Dec 12, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Voodoo Ventures - Idea Fuel Blog : Blog Archive : Earthlink’s New Orleans Muni Wi-Fi Launch says:
[...] We’ve covered Earthlink’s Wi-Fi foray into New Orleans here before, but I have to say, I was really thrilled to see this on my door! They’re here, we have an alternative high speed connection to Cox and Bellsouth, and even more importantly, the company has followed through on it’s pledged commitment to New Orleans. [...]
Apr 15, 2007 at 10:59 pm
E grande io ha trovato il vostro luogo! Le info importanti ottenute! ))