Guest Commentary: Philadelphia Network Flop Points to Failure of Corporate Franchise Model
MuniWireless, May 16, 2008
By Sascha Meinrath
The mainstream press continue to demonstrate a remarkable ignorance by tagging the failure of the Wireless Philadelphia Project as a failure of “municipal wireless” – the reality is, the Philadelphia model is a corporate franchise granted to EarthLink — much of the problem stems from the fact that the municipality has no control or ownership over the network and EarthLink has demonstrated no accountability to the local community.
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