In an unbelievable display of corporate greed, BellSouth lobbyists are pressuring the city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana to shut down the city's WiFi network, established after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city and left most businesses and individuals without any means of communication.
After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city's chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city's wireless mesh network--originally deployed to link surveillance cameras--to anyone who needed it. For free.
"Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses," Mr. Meffert told Red Herring. With Internet service still down in more than half the city, he estimates more than 15,000 people use the city's 512 kbps (kilobits per second) network.
The city now has a daytime population of about a quarter-million, but about a third of the city is still without even basic phone service...
With the help of corporate sponsors, New Orleans had hoped to expand the wireless network at a cost of $12 million to $18 million.
. . .
Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree. State law prohibits cities from providing more than a relatively sluggish 128-kbps network, but New Orleans offered its faster network as an emergency relief effort.
The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again," said Mr. Meffert.
BellSouth declined to comment....
This is absolutely despicable. NOLA still looks like a bomb just went off, and BellSouth is determined to take away its main method of communication.
BTW, this is my first diary, so play nice. Please?
Update: Quoted information is from this article:
http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=16232
Update 2: This isn't the first time BellSouth has said "#@$! you" to NOLA re: this WiFi issue:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR2005120201853.html