“On June 12, 2008, Earthlink Wireless plans to disconnect their municipal WiFi service in the City of Philadelphia. For the sake of being timely, I am releasing my unfinished documentary about the joint program between Earthlink Municipal WiFi and the local non-profit, Philadelphia Wireless, forgoing further editing and technical corrections.”

its too bad that this initiative didnt go anywhere. the digital divide is a hard subject to grapple with. giving people wireless access is one thing but what if they dont have anything to use to connect to the wireless. was there sufficient support for users? connecting a windows machine to a wireless network can be hella annoying sometimes, well any device for that matter on that network. the OLPC was for third world countries, laptops were still pricey and the eeePC wasnt on the horizon yet when the intiative launched so was there a need for such a large rollout, not to be classist or anything but trying to be realistic. the goal of covering an entire city in wifi is a lot to bite off especially for a company that doesnt know the city all that well. how much penetration does earthlink DSL have in this area? look at verizon a major player in the area cant even get their FiOS going to a degree to compete with comcast. and to be blunt what major initiative has the city been able to pull off successfully lately anyways. single stream recycling?

movie below

Change is in the Airwaves: A Documentary about the Philadelphia Wireless Initiative from George Rausch on Vimeo.