From USA Today:
Plans to blanket cities across the nation with low-cost or free wireless Internet access are being delayed or abandoned because they are proving to be too costly and complicated.
Houston, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities are putting proposed Wi-Fi networks on hold.
“Wi-Fi woes everywhere you turn,” says Russell Hancock of Silicon Valley Network, a troubled Wi-Fi project for 40 towns in California’s high-tech corridor.
Wi-Fi allows laptop users to work anywhere, making some jobs portable. It also is essential to mobile devices, including iPhones, enabling such emerging technology to perform complex online tasks fast.
Chicago couldn’t reach agreement with service providers after offering free use of street lamps for radio transmitters in exchange for a network built, owned and operated by providers at no cost to the city.
“All these big city projects were doomed to failure because they were too complicated,” says Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News.
Cities are bad at doing simple jobs like picking up the garbage. Why would anyone think they could manage ISPs?
I love this observation: “St. Louis is trying to figure out how to power Wi-Fi transmitters on 1,700 street lights when they’re not illuminated without spending millions of dollars.” I know! Solar power! Wishful thinking plus wishful thinking equals fait accompli.
Take heart, though. Wishful thinking is how we can know for sure that monopoly technology rammed down our throats by thumb-sucking dilberts will be even better than what we might have chosen for ourselves…
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