Municipal wi-fi deal in trouble?
The Chronicle is reporting that Earthlink has postponed, for the second time, a meeting with San Francisco officials about the municipal wi-fi deployment that Earthlink and Google are supposed to be planning. I wonder how the Atlanta and Anaheim deployments are going.
Better look at that Meraki system more closely. (The week after my interview with them here, Dan Goodin published another story in The Register.)
What amazes me is how uncommon it is to find free Wi-Fi at most places. Almost every coffee house or cafe is charging for Wi-Fi these days and it seems really weird. Doesn’t it bring in more customers to have free access? Wouldn’t that be worth the $50 a month or so it’d cost to have a free access point set up rather than trying to milk more cash out of customers on behalf of some worthless company?
I mean, I understand why Starbucks charges, they’re assholes. But why do so many small, independent shops around the city charge?
because they are assholes too