Newspaper worries free wi-fi will compete for ad revenue
Don Day November 11th, 2007
A big gift from the Allen & Co. was supposed to fire up a free Wi-Fi cloud over the resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho - host to the yearly summer media conference. But it hit a brick wall: the town newspaper and cable company. The Idaho Mountain Express sounded off in a March 30 editorial:
“The company that owns this newspaper and other valley media companies sell Internet advertising. Yet, the city would use tax dollars not only to compete with Cox, Qwest, Skylan and cell phone companies, but with smaller local media companies. And, unlike those companies, the city would face no market risk. The city should not use scarce tax resources to compete with established local businesses that pay the very taxes that would be used against them.”
Cox Cable also joined the chorus of complaints. The Idaho Business Review notes that after ten months of wrangling, a solution finally was found (a private group was formed to administer the wi-fi net) - but this just illustrates how some companies would rather get in the way then adapt to the changing media landscape.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Greg | November 11th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Wouldn’t surprise me if Cox goes to the Idaho legislative and outlaws muni wi-fi in the state like Verizon did after Philly launched a free wi-fi.
2. Martha | November 12th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
The buzz around town is Cox did everything they could to stop the wifi in Ketchum but failed. Monopolies don’t like competition. I doubt they stop their efforts to stop other similar efforts.
3. Contrarian | November 12th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Don, why aren’t you arguing for free telephone service?
Aren’t those nasty wireless companies ‘in the way’ of your making free calls?
4. Don Day | November 12th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
I’m not really arguing either way. But if my community got a BIG donation to provide free telephone service, I’d be OK with that.
5. JBanholzer | December 9th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
The week after this was printed there was an all-emcompassing rebuttal by Pam Parker:
WiFi editorial misses the point:
“I was surprised to read that the Idaho Mountain Express has taken a stand against the city of Ketchum’s proposal to provide free WiFi access in the downtown core. WiFi is a way of life now in many cities and the mayor deserves more credit for his forward-thinking stance on this issue.
We are a tourist destination and it makes a lot of sense for our visitors to have easy access to the Internet. Most of us have horror stories about trying to get online while traveling. Local business catering to the visitor could benefit too by forgoing the expense and technical problems associated with maintaining individual WiFi hotspots for the public. And, for locals who work in the field, WiFi would offer the benefit of access from your vehicle - satellite Internet service is prohibitively expensive.
As far as cutting into the business of existing providers, that seems overstated since most of us do not live downtown and would thus keep our home accounts - and larger local businesses are not likely to rely on an unsecured connection over which they lack direct control. The buzzword for this sort of community service is “Intelligent infrastructure,”and I’m hoping Ketchum proceeds with the plan - it’s smart and will be good for business.”
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