No Comfort In Big Telcos
Grayson Hurst Daughters | http://spaceygreview.blogspot.com | Bio
Associating with BellSouth lately is like taking tea with Mussolini; how easy we slip into contrived civilities for the sake of preserving the status quo, all the while ignoring the PR-related chaos and cacophony being wrought “out there” by our seemingly beatific host.
BellSouth has always been a pillar of the Atlanta community; we depend on (and pay out the nose for) their fine products and services daily. The company has provided us, and family and friends, with decent jobs and incomes.
BellSouth’s loyal team players and long-term executives have sat beside us in church and on the sidelines at soccer games. Its corporate generosity has infused numerous charities, countless fun events and assorted non-profits with loads of cash to go forth and do-good with.
With a fine legacy of corporate community stewardship, it’s a shame that if BellSouth merges with AT&T, as is expected, the company will leave town with a respectable reputation tarnished by some bizarrely distasteful efforts in the wild and wacky realm of municipal broadband access.
Presently, BellSouth is working obsessively and politically to keep the “access” part of broadband as far away from the still-suffering citizens of New Orleans as they possibly can.
The City of New Orleans is currently operating a cobbled together municipal Wi-Fi system of free broadband access to provide its citizens, government, businesses and services with a critical communications lifeline, as much of the city still has yet to regain even basic phone service.
When the governor eventually lifts the current state of emergency in New Orleans, BellSouth has let the city know they must, at that time, return to obeying state law as currently written and discontinue their distribution of free broadband access.
The law in Louisiana, one BellSouth lobbied successfully for two years ago, states that a municipal network can run at a high speed of 512 kbps only during a state of emergency.
Quick to point out how utterly dependent the recovery of the city of New Orleans has become on broadband (vs. icky dial-up), Greg Meffert the City of New Orleans’ first Chief Technology Officer, has vowed to go to jail rather than allow the municipal Wi-Fi to be shut down.
Meffert told Georgia Political Digest Monday April 9th in an email, “When the government lifts the emergency order, the network we put up will officially be in direct conflict with state law. We will keep it up as it is a lifeline to many, which puts us into somewhat unprecedented legal country, but this city's recovery is too important. I'm not sure what we or I will pay in consequences, but we will not take the network down.”
While Meffert could welcome the attention and any photo-op being tossed in the pokey will allow him (and Mayor Nagin’s office as re-election time approaches), such a spectacle may never come to pass.
BellSouth declares in an e-mailed statement that “contrary to what has been reported, BellSouth is not trying to shut down the City of New Orleans’ wi-fi system,” although they sure are trying hard to curtail it from operating at broadband speeds.
At the same time, Atlanta’s own Earthlink has stepped-in, not only save the city from its grandstanding-self, but also to secure the people’s access to broadband by building out a privately-owned and operated Wi-Fi system for use by the citizens of the city of New Orleans.
Wi-fi is something Earthlink does very well, and certainly to their PR-related advantage. Indeed, just last week Earthlink was awarded a contract to Wi-Fi the city of San Francisco.
Says Donald Berryman, President of Earthlink’s Municipal Network division, “ Wi-Fi is the next dial-up; it’s twenty times faster and about the same price. And it’s important to our future. Going after New Orleans is not only the right thing to do, it certainly supports our strategic goals of getting more and more of our customers to broadband.”
So Earthlink gets the gold star when it comes to providing a suffering city with continued broadband access. (How free the broadband access will continue to be is anyone’s guess and another issue altogether.)
What’s baffling and suspect is BellSouth’s need to play the blow-hard role in the case of servicing a still-suffering New Orleans. The company might have gone the good guy route by not fighting the municipality’s role in continuing free broadband service until no longer needed, rather than just during a declared state of emergency. BellSouth blew it by taking the quick, low road to immediately protect their legislative power and turf.
They will now suffer the consequences in the court of public opinion, because the public will receive a loud and clear signal that if BellSouth isn’t going to be there for them in a time of continued need, then Earthlink certainly will.
And no matter what we do (or don’t) know about what exactly the big telcos are up to in the halls of our state capitols, if all hell ever breaks loose here, who would you rather have as your ISP, free or otherwise?
Then go one step further and imagine what the combined powers of an AT&T and a BellSouth might not do for you then as well.