MuniWireless Article

http://www.muniwireless.com/article/view/6653/

   "The $5 million penalty EarthLink paid to Houston for failure to begin
    building its municipal network on time bought the company nine months
    to decide what to do. Houston is not waiting. It's using the money to
    finance digital inclusion programs and build out hot spots in
    low-income neighborhoods around the city.

    The Houston Chronicle quotes Mayor Bill White, "One of the goals of
    the WiFi plan was to bridge the digital divide, and because of the
    city's good contract, we have substantial money to invest in that."

Wouldn't it be great if Portland's government had the cojones to hold 
MetroFi to their word like Houstin is holding Earthlink? You know, like 
make them pass the test they were contracted to fulfill [1], or finish 
building the network they promised to build [2]? Penalty money like this 
could be used to build a /working/ wireless network for the /right/ reasons.

I wonder how much influence the good people at Rice and TFA [3] had to 
do with this. I imagine quite a bit. Geez, it sure would've been cool if 
Portland would have had its citizens issues at heart when it contracted 
for a municipal network, and not its parking meters.

[1] http://unwirepdx-watch.org/?p=9
[2] http://unwirepdx-watch.org/?p=23
[3] http://tfa.rice.edu/

--
Caleb Phillips

-- 
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