The Chronicle‘s early coverage of Mayor White’s big wifi announcement today was disappointing:
Houston is aiming to turn Earthlink’s lemons into the city’s lemonade.
The company had to pay the city $5 million after defaulting on a contract to build a citywide wireless network last year. Today, Mayor Bill White announced the city will use about $3.5 million of that money to build 10 wifi network “bubbles” in low-income parts of Houston to give residents Internet access they otherwise would do without.
The long-term possibility, White said, is that the areas between the bubbles could eventually be included, providing access across the city.
No mention of the digital divide? That’s no good.
KHOU-11 had much more fanfare beginning with the headline:
Bridging the digital divide in Houston
And just to drive the point home, here’s the magic quote (in bold):
Even while he eats lunch at the Breakfast Club, Glenn Phillips is never far from his laptop.
“It’s my Day-Timer, notebook, account file, everything,” Phillips said.
But accessing free Internet service in Houston isn’t always so simple.
“In the past, I would have to pull up to an office building that I thought might have wi-fi to get online, before I had a phone card,” Phillips said.
In some parts of Houston, that will soon change.
Mayor Bill White, along with the Houston Public Libary, launched the city’s first wireless empowered community access network.
“It’s about how we bridge that digital divide,” White said.
The first one is in the Gulfton area, but the goal is to provide free high-speed Internet access to 10 other low-income neighborhoods.
If you just repeat that phrase often enough, eventually it should make good fodder for the next, bigger campaign!
The second most entertaining aspect of KHOU’s story is the fact that the Breakfast Klub offers free wifi, happily bridging the digital divide for its customers without Mayor White’s help.
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