Sunday, May 28, 2006

WiFi for The Big Easy

The common good

I dont know anything about the selection process or the details of the franchise but Earthlink has won the bid for providing city-wide wireless internet hookup for New Orleans, which will no doubt help with the rebuilding. I know Workers has said this before but the internet has helped productivity beaucoup by reducing transaction costs (information costs, clearing costs, price-matching, what else?). Several US cities have city-wide free WiFi, i for one am glad New Orleans is one of them. It would seem to me that providers would be crawling all over themselves to give people as much access as possible to their systems (i mean their advertising, not that there is anything wrong with that).