Second chance for Wireless Philadelphia
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
The city of Philadelphia is buying the assets of Wireless Philadelphia for $2-million. The network will be converted for government use only.
Wireless Philadelphia was the brainchild of former Mayor John Street. It was supposed to turn the city into a giant hotspot and provide low-cost Internet access to the poor. It never caught on. Its builder Earthlink gave up on the system and turned it over to another company to run, but that company went bankrupt.
Philadelphia's Chief Information Officer Alan Frank says the city is buying the system for pennies on the dollar. He says the network would be vital in the event of a disaster.
Frank:
One of the first things that happens in an emergency is that the cell phone network goes, and so this provides us with another way of communicating. In addition we are upgrading our radio network this year. Now think about if the radio system goes down; think about the ability to communicate through wireless devices.
The network needs expanding to be citywide. Frank says the system will help the city expand its video camera surveillance network and bring the Internet access to all city facilities.
For two weeks my internet was down as I was switching from one ISP to another. During those two weeks about a year ago, I was able to go outside, on my porch, at night, and access my e-mail and instant messenger via Wireless Philadelphia. And I did lose signal pretty frequently. I think that was about the peak of the wireless Philadelphia endeavor.
As one of the little people in Philadelphia that would have benefited from it, this stinks!
Pennsylvania runs TV ads across the country inviting new businesses to locate here. Yet setting up a new business is a nightmare. Господин Привычко is exactly right: it's a shocking lie to say it "didn't catch on". It's still showing as an available network, but it doesn't work.
Then again when it did work, it didn't really work, as it would continusely look for a signal.
"Never caught on" ? – IT NEVER WORKED.
If it had worked and had any customer service or support, it would have been very popular.
Street claimed that a high speed internet system could be put in place citywide for $10 million. This was idiocy but I doubt the existing system is worth $200k let alone $2M.
How true you are!
If the right people were put in place to run it maybe it would be operational, but politics played a large part here, as preassure from Comcast and Verizon sufficated this project from the start.