"KØHB" wrote in message ink.net...
"Brian Kelly" wrote in message
om...
"KØHB" wrote in message
k.net...

http://start.earthlink.net/newsartic...84QTN983_story

Gotta love it. John Street the mayor is well known as a bit of a kook,
he's maybe a tad shady and he's a technology junkie but he's actually
been doing a pretty good job overall. My bet is that this maneuver
will fly.

Under this plan, will the city become an ISP, or just a PoP for
broadband access?

Dunno, it was announced just a day or two ago by the local news media
which didn't get into any of those kinds of details. Looks like the
Earthlink article is the most definitive so far. They're just at the
front end of working it through so I expect it'll be awhile until even
the basic plan is formulated and released. Philly is a big burg,
there's a lot of bureaucratic "inertia" involved in these processes,
it won't happen overnight.

The ruling class is a combination of conservative Democrats and
moderate Republicans both of which are comfortable with the
privatization of municipal services. Would not surprise me if the city
made the investments in the infrastructure and retained it's ownership
then jobbed out the ISP end of it.

The wild card I see is the huge concentration of academic institutions
around here which could jump on it and become the ISPs on a non-profit
basis. Which would be very "Philly".

73, de Hans, K0HB

w3rv