AT&T-equipped Starbucks live in San Antonio Alan Weinkrantz believes he's spotted the first transitioned Starbucks. He saw installers putting in gear, and the login screen shows AT&T Wi-Fi prominently, with T-Mobile's HotSpot logo relegated to a square in the upper right. He may be right. In Seattle and New York at least, the Starbucks login banner shows T-Mobile prominently across the top with AT&T in a square at the upper right, as I noted with Klaus Ernst's help on 10 April 2008. The store is located a few miles from AT&T's HQ. Update: Information Week's W. David Gardner confirmed the milestone with AT&T.
Suffolk signs contract with E-Path: After yesterday's scathing New York Times article--which I wrote up and elaborated on--you might be surprised to read that Suffolk County's executive Steve Levy has signed a contract with E-Path, the Wi-Fi network builder. As of Monday, Levy was saying that no services would need to be paid for by the county. Now, it's "a price 'as close to zero as possible.'" Apparently the contract doesn't specify any actual purchase of services? While the New York Times was unable to get E-Path's head on the phone, Newsday had no such problem. E-Path's Joe Tortoretti is now saying that an anchor tenant and minimum service commitments are needed to build a network. That's rather a different tune, isn't it? E-Path, a firm that has built no such networks to date, is now going after the Long Island Railroad, too, with Levy's backing. Shouldn't this be bid out again by the county, given all the terms have changed?
Panasonic adds Wi-Fi camera: The Lumix DMC-TZ50 can upload directly to Google's Picasa photo-sharing service. It's got a 9.1-megapixel sensor, and comes with 12 months of free service at T-Mobile hotspots in the U.S. As I have noted many times before, uploading and "emailing" photos via photo-sharing services from Wi-Fi-enabled cameras typically involves a downsampled or compressed image, and that level of degradation isn't noted in the widely marketed information about the camera.
Corpus Christi to reclaim network: The city council voted 7-0 last night to take its Wi-Fi network back over from EarthLink. As noted yesterday, EarthLink avoids paying $1.59m in fees to the city, but the city gets $3m in improvements, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional equipment. The improbably amount of $50,000 in yearly operating expense was once again bandied about in this GigaOm report. Milpitas also releases EarthLink, accepts its network.
If the terms have changed, then it should be subject to a re-bid, as it would be a bait and switch by the county. We declined to bid because we saw no revenue stream from the county and no business model to support capital expenditure recovery with the RFP's coverage requirements. I would expect the network to be built before any county money gets sent to the winner, with real services being delivered to the county, across the county, not just the pilot network, which is supposed to be a tiny strip along a main road.
Even though there's AT&T roaming available, there's still no "complimentary with purchase card" new model wifi available at any of the t-mobile spots. Is that model implemented at the new AT&T spot?
[Editor's Note: Excellent question. Alan's post doesn't clarify that. Worth asking him. I also have a query into AT&T PR. -gf]
Glen -
$50K for maintenance is indeed an insane figure! The actual cost will be in the neighborhood of $300K. The $50K number is the estimated ADDITIONAL cost the City will likely incur beyond the net amount the City paid Earthlink as anchor tenant.
Michael Armstrong
CIO
City of Corpus Christi, TX