Somerville may install free wireless in Davis

[ceo]

From the Somerville Journal:

[John] Connolly also wants wireless Internet service for all of Davis Square.
The Ward 6 alderman is asking City Information Technology Director James Halloran to see if wireless Internet service can be provided to all of Davis Square by installing "a few well-situated" antennae.
"Perhaps it's something we can achieve by this fall," Connolly said.
Coffee shops, including Starbucks and the Diesel Café, already offer wireless Internet service inside their businesses for a nominal charge.
Connolly said he'd like Halloran to meet with the Chamber of Commerce and the Davis Square Business Interest Group to see if the service could be extended to laptop computer users sitting in parks and benches in the square.
If the service works in Davis Square, Connolly said maybe it could be brought to other squares in the city, too.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Things like public transit and Medicare exist largely because previous, private attempts at providing those services proved unprofitable. The Boston Elevated Railway, predecessor to the T, was a private company. So were the companies that ran the boston-area commuter rail system. Government took those services over because people and businesses had come to rely on these bits of infrastructure but it was not profitable for a private company to provide the service.

As for Medicare, no private insurance company could make money solely off insuring those who are most likely to be in need of expensive medical care. Private medical insurance for working-age Americans makes money because the healthy subsidize the sick--that's how insurance works in general.

It's one thing for government to take over a needed-but-failing bit of infrastructure, like public transit. It's another thing entirely for government to compete with a currently-profitable private enterprise on a non-level playing field and thereby drive the profitable enterprise out of business.