Did anyone really think that the city with Street at command could possibly make this deal happen??? Simply another embarassment to the city for not being able to achieve a set out goal on time and accordingly. This would of been a somewhat national accomplishment and given the city positive recognition. Earthlink is just about out of money if not already and the top heads of the company are no longer present. Real shocker. Philly made this deal with these people who now gone. And in turn the newer EL heads are somewhat "unaware and incapable" to get it done. And where did the monies go that were fronted to get things off the ground. In all there pockets including Street who never shout up about making "Philly the WiFi trend setting city that all others will follow suit" Have not heard him say anything on the deal as of late - "Remember drink your water" Perhaps if EL stopped sending out so many flyers (one a week to the house) to subscribe to the new service and did not have ads on Septa buses - some money could of been spent differently.

So what company is going to take the project over : Comcastic - as if they need a hold on more IT communications and raping everyone for their services. Nutter will have to clean it up along with all the other issues to be work on.

So one provide us all with some insight on this issue and perhaps I'm missing something...

At lease Comcast could get the job done. I don't know why I trusted Earthlink(they will be bankrupted in three years). Just another company that should of went the way of AOL....But I can't blame Philly, after all, it looked like Earthlink was all for a new way to connect to the internet, and they had working deals with several other cities(including a tie in with Google in San Fran)..

But guess what they found out? That the cost of keeping the systems up and running wasn't worth the money they would make in sales.



So people got fired(resign) and now we got executives who are pretty much just trying to plug the holes in a already sinking ship.

Oh well, just put this next to the Disney Hole...But at lease we won't have to look at this one forever.... Here's to Sprint's WiMax XOHM system or whatever Google does with the 700Mhz spectrum coming in 2009!

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"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."--Rev. Arnold Conrad

Or run it to all the poorest neighborhoods first then act surprised by the low use.

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We already have a perfectly-good G3 network, that we didn't pay to put up (well, we are paying for it w/ the obscene cell phone charges).

The next version of the iPhone will use G3 instead of EDGE (source; AT&T CEO prematurely blabbed about it on a conference call).

Whether or not ATT will offer an unlimited data plan like they are doing NOW with the iPhone (over the slower 56K-ish EDGE network) remains to be seen.


There is a hack for the iPhone to contort the thing so you can use your iPhone as a HTTP proxy [so you can surf from your laptop or desktop using your iPhone].

But for $70 a month, you can buy a G3 card from VZN and surf at "decent" speed on G3 from anything... laptop, desktop, etc. That's if you need wireless almost-DSL speed.

EDGE does pretty good. I can watch YouTube over EDGE (the iPhone detects if you are on EDGE and asks YouTube for a stripped-down low-rez vid). Phillyblog works OK over the EDGE network, too and I tested the sucker in the Colorado mountains. I was able to send and receive email from way out in podunkville.

Why Earthlink can't get a decent 80211b/g network working in the city is beyond me. They must not be using nodes that are set for the legal-limit transmitting power.



If you want a really good Wireless hub, you can buy one at ThinkGeek.com that transmits at double the power that a cheap Linksys uses, right up to the FCC's allowable limit. From atop 30 story building, you should be able to send and receive a 80211b signal from a minimum radius of 10 blocks away before degradation gets too high. So when the same critter is installed on a light pole...

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WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk