On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, Bruce Ehlers wrote: > :)) My spelling isn't the best... but I do know that my pants are loose > and I'm probably a loser, but the sky isn't falling because of free > wifi! > > I still haven't heard anything to make me want to pay for your service. > What do you provide besides the pipe to entice me to pay for your > service? I can hitch hike or buy a car based on added value and need... > where's your value? Why should people buy your service? > > Complaining about government is easy, providing a valuable service that > people are willing to pay for, is the real challenge.
Thank you for proving exactly my point. Joe Sixpack (you) does not care about 'value added' services, he doesn't need any. He doesn't care about advanced services, or competition, or monopolies, or getting best value for his tax dollar. He only wants free stuff, to be paid by other's tax dollars. In this case, stuff is broadband. Even though there are many companies providing the service for reasonable price, he would rather have it for free. The consideration of increased taxes to support these 'free' services never enters his head. No, he'll whine and moan that big bad government is increasing taxes while at same time demanding more and more to be provided by the that same government. Going back to free wifi: a) There's no evidence that municipality can do better service than existing companies, given the same conditions (in other words, if muni gets guaranteed bond issuance, give the same guarantee to the company. If muni gets free placement of antennas on the city property, give the same right to other companies). b) There have been municipalities who, back in the 90s, tried to run municipal fiber networks. Do you want to guess what happened with those? That's right, most of the large systems lost money and had to be sold for peanuts just so munis don't have to spend insane amounts of money maintaining it. Only the tiny systems survive. See: http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/9268308.htm http://lw.pennnet.com/News/Display_News_Story.cfm?Section=WireNews&SubSection=HOME&NewsID=102774 Note that in many of those "muni fiber" utilities the construction of fiber was done as a part of muni electric buildout, to manage and monitor existing power networks, so the incremental construction costs were minimal (or so the proponents claim). That does not apply here, wifi is essentially a new business entered by the municipality, with resulting start-up costs, etc. c) Why create another monopoly? nycwireless of all mailing lists is filled with complaints about existing monopolies (cable, dsl etc) and how they are stifling competition, refuse to provide advanced services, have restricting terms of service, etc. I don't see how creation of another monopoly will be helpful. The progress is best served by opening the market to competition - if city decides to construct such system, city should concentrate on running the physical network, something that cannot be done easily by outside company, and let competing internet providers provide end-user service (such as internet bandwidth, email, customer service, etc). -alex -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
