On Mon, 2008-02-25 at 13:42 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Craig White <craig@tobyhouse.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 2008-02-25 at 11:28 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Mike Schwartz <schwartz@acm.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > [4] "[...] the municipal Wi-Fi market isn't dying. [...] But, [...]
> > > > "taxpayers have lost so far." "
> > >
> > > > --
> > > > Mike Schwartz
> > >
> > > as I've noted on this list before, Muni Wifi was pronounced dead
> > > before it was ever even born. 'Taxpayers have lost so far'? And how
> > > many complaints do we get on this list about COX service? The last
> > > thing the telcos want is a network owned by a regional municipality,
> > > and the last thing they want is a low-cost budget option for people
> > > who neither want or need a high-speed connection.
> > ----
> > Obviously the consumer was the last consideration of Tempe's Muni WiFi
> > system and that becomes evident by the failure to launch. It's not that
> > conceptually the idea doesn't work but conceptually, it was lacking from
> > the word go. The city of Tempe sought only to figure out how to make it
> > practical for an independent contractor to operate and left the issues
> > of sales to Tempe residents to that contractor.
>
> As was pointed out on the AZIPA list, the contractor that was chosen
> was not even an AZ in-state contractor (as if there were none
> available). The way the whole thing proceeded was, at the least,
> highly questionable.
>
> >
> > Lessig discussed the last mile and considered it from another point of
> > view, one that municipalities can't seem to get their head around...that
> > their own investment in the last mile of services made it a much better
> > community for everyone and Tempe didn't make an investment, they made it
> > a freebee for themselves so that they could use the wireless free
> > expecting the citizens to subsidize the costs. It could be said that the
> > city of Tempe had it backwards.
>
> Can we have some names here? Who was in charge of the project? Who
> chose the contractor? Who was ultimately responsible for the failure?
> Lets not talk in these comfortable vagaries here, behind the facade
> of 'government' lies people, and more importantly: culpability.
----
I could ask as I do have some connection to this but it really isn't
material as this was clearly an experiment all the way. There seems to
be a quick charge to the blame game and you're not really considering
that the mechanics of these types of technologies aren't all figured out
and some things represent a risk.
Ultimately, if a contractor can't make it pay its own way, they'll
probably end up selling it back to the city of Tempe because they have a
need to keep the system up and running.
Craig
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