Serving the served

A couple weeks ago I noted that AnchorFree Wireless had hooked up two more areas in San Francisco, the Castro and Fillmore between Sacramento and Bush. I also noted that Esme Vos, who runs the respected Muniwireless.com website, had weighed in on the AnchorFree efforts in even harsher terms.

Well, AnchorFree PR guy Denis Hiller has taken exception to what we said, and we've started something of an email correspondence, which he has kindly given me permission to quote here. On the question of only serving wealthy neighborhoods, he said

I think there is one thing that you are missing, we do not look at how rich or poor a commercial district is. We look at a few variables the most important of which is: how many viable locations (ie restaurants and cafe) are there in a given area where consumers can use wireless Internet? It is important for citizens to realize that Mayor Newsom is looking beyond commercial districts; I think that's great! Internet access is definitely over priced and it is insane that in this day and age people are forced to pay $40 and up for residential Internet access.

I pointed out that their criteria may not include wealth of a neighborhood, but all the neighborhoods that have been included are wealthy:

You may not explicitly "look at how rich or poor a commercial district is", but your three initial deployments are all in very wealthy areas of San Francisco. I am not accusing you of any maliciousness at all, but I do think that an advertiser-supported model of internet connection will bias toward wealthier areas. And at least so far, you haven't done anything to convince me otherwise.

One area where we do agree is about the incumbent telecom companies

Regarding the big telecoms, I think mainly they are worried about losing residential customers to city residential Wi-Fi networks. Cities are not building residential Wi-Fi networks to put the telecoms out of business, clearly they are responding to a problem. Instead of ignoring the problem by trying to pass bad legislation, the telecoms should find cost effective ways to lower access from $40-$50 per month to more affordable rates. Municipalities have numerous other concerns and would not step in if the telecoms weren't robbing consumers.

Indeed.

We also discussed AnchorFree's role in the broader question of universal access, which I will try to get to soon.