Very interesting story out of New York City: Cablevision and Time Warner Cable agreed to spend $10m to build out Wi-Fi in 32 city parks as part of the requirements for renewing cable franchises in the city. The country is divided into thousands of cable franchise zones, in which local bodies negotiate with cable firms to allow monopoly or limited competitive access to rights of way and other resources in exchange for typically a gross-revenue fee, public-access and government channels with budgets and facilities, and other add-ons.
While franchise boards are prohibited by law, regulation, and court decision from considering broadband and VoIP service as a condition of renewal--only the FCC can regulate broadband, and voice is a separate state regulatory domain--this is a neat twist. The NY negotiators figured out that they can require broadband to be offered.
The New York Daily News (a competitor to Cablevision-owned Newsday) reports that the service will be available for 30 minutes free each day to users, and then charged at a rate of 99 cents per day. Correction: My brain apparently couldn't cope with the fact that it's 30 minutes per month! In three 10-minute sessions, no less. That's fairly ridiculous.
Many New York parks have free Wi-Fi through various business districts and other sponsorship, such as Bryant Park.
WiFi Salon at one point had the contract to provide service in several parks, and had planned to use sponsorship as the driver. That deal with city parks ended in late 2008.
Don't forget about the real free Wi-Fi (as in 24/7/365 free internet) that non-profit NYCwireless (http://www.nycwireless.net) provides NYC as a public service.
We shouldn't be surprised considering how DoITT and the NYC government have been in the telco's/cableco's back pocket for years.
1. If its not 24/7 Free, its not Free Wi-Fi. Period. This is clearly not "Free Wi-Fi" but rather government sanctioned subscription Wi-Fi.
2. That DoITT released this on primary day was a clear attempt to bury this news because it knew it was doing wrong by residents of NYC.
3. The previous Park Wi-Fi program with WiFiSalon drove that company out of business. See http://bit.ly/azkJNr
4. What happened to DoITT's plan to offer a more open and sustainable park Wi-Fi program? They put out an RFI last year (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/miscs/rfiwifi.shtml), and we (NYCwireless) had quite a lot to say about it (see http://bit.ly/182vs9 and http://bit.ly/T37Zj). But at least they were trying to ask the right questions…
Ultimately, this seems like a "behind closed doors" negotiating effort on the part of NYC and DoITT, and they've proven yet again that they don't care about NYC residents, only big business.
the ny daily news article said "30 mins per month", and not "per day", is free. if the paper is correct then the free service is nearly useless.
What the franchise agreement says is that for people that don't subscribe to either provider, you can purchase a daily Wi-Fi plan for $0.99 per day. This price is also guaranteed for 3 years ostensibly. So for slightly under $30/month, you can get 3Meg down/ 1.5 Meg up internet access outside your house without subscribing to a data plan.
Of course, there might be some fine print in there limiting the number of sessions you can buy a month or other "wiggle room" clauses...
If it turns out to be a big enough footprint to be built out wide enough and reliably enough, that will probably cause many a customer to reconsider whether to fork over $40 or more a month for a cellular data plan from the competition. Of course if you are a TWC or CV customer then you get this footprint at no extra charge. Additionally, if you're a customer you can also register your device's address, so that the experience becomes much more streamlined and cellular like, only with higher speeds and lower latency. That particular feature is pretty nifty.