Well, it looks like Earthlink has really decided to run away from the municipal WiFi business. They have backed out of providing WiFi in San Francisco.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s high-profile effort to blanket San Francisco with a free wireless Internet network died Wednesday when provider EarthLink backed out of a proposed contract with the city.

The contract, which was three years in the making, had run into snags with the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately it was undone when Atlanta-based EarthLink announced Tuesday that it no longer believed providing citywide Wi-Fi was economically viable for the company.

It’s worth noting that the terms of the S.F. contract were far less favorable to Earthlink than Houston’s. The company would have had to front the cost of the network, provide a great deal of free service, and been stuck in the contract for up to 16 years. Unsurprisingly, after all their job cuts, Earthlink chose to walk away from this deal, and leave it on the table as the Board of Supervisors quibbled over the terms.

The Mayor and Board members in San Francisco quibbled over who and what caused the end of the deal, but there’s no doubt that the terms were far less favorable in S.F. than in Houston — and were getting worse.

In January, the city agreed to a deal in which EarthLink would have paid the city $2 million for the right to build, install and run a free Wi-Fi network and to partner with Google to provide Internet service. People could have paid $20 per month for a faster connection.

But the proposed contract stalled at the Board of Supervisors, whose approval was needed for the transaction to go forward.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin proposed changes to the contract that would have increased the minimum connection speed of the free service, require additional privacy protections and reduce the duration of the contract from 16 to eight years.

Only in California would anyone think a deal like that could make sense… or cents on the dollar.

Some may argue that Earthlink paid the Houston penalty in order to protect their ability to continue with the planned buildout here, and that they might still complete a network in Houston. I disagree. Here in Houston, we had a signed contract that was approved by the Council. That hadn’t happened in S. F. because the Board of Supervisors had held things up. Earthlink had no choice but to pay a penalty for non-performance. Based on technical changes in the frequencies available and other expected developments, the deal was looking worse for both Earthlink and the City, which is why no tears are being shed at City Hall.

Furthermore, this was a part I hadn’t realized previously:

The city started negotiating the Wi-Fi agreement when EarthLink was under the leadership of Chief Executive Garry Betty. Betty, who died earlier this year after a battle with cancer, saw municipal Wi-Fi as a way to free EarthLink from the cost of using other companies’ networks.

Rolla Huff, who became the company’s CEO in June, said in recent months that the company was re-evaluating its approach to providing Wi-Fi in cities because the practice was not providing an acceptable rate of return.

Ailing company, ailing boss, followed by a change in leadership — and the new captain can see the iceberg in the water. Folks, citywide WiFi is as dead in Houston as it is in San Francisco. I smelled a rat earlier this week when Rick Roberts of VBT tried to convince folks reading Matt’s City Hall blog that the Centerpoint contract really had been signed:

The fact is, EarthLink Municipal Networks (EMN) just signed with the city in May. Then they had to negotiate a contract with CenterPoint for access to all the light poles to supplement the street lights and city properties, and that was signed in July. I was told Houston is ramping up and should start having tests downtown next month. That’s the first of six phases here in the Houston Muni Wi-Fi build out…

I am informed of this because I am the president of VBT which will be a retail provider of the access. At VBT, we have been working on this with the city initially, then EMN since April 2006. The wheels are finally starting to spin…

… and then weaseled when I challenged him.

That the CenterPoint contract was done was related to me by a higher level EMN employee in Atlanta. One that is right in the mix of contracts and such under the CEO there.

“Weaseled” might seem too strong a term, but the fact that he wasn’t willing to name that higher level employee suggested someone was dealing fertilizer. It looks like the wheels were spinning, alright…. in reverse. Don’t blame Rick too much; his bread is buttered there… but I hope he’s got some more butter elsewhere, because this plan is toast.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Well, I can’t find it to save my life, but my co-workers tell me that there was a news report on one of the local stations about the HPD officers being up in arms over how badly the SAP payroll implementation has FUBARed their overtime. Something like $300k is owed to officers now, because the system keeps making errors.

I’ve got news for you, officers: You’re not alone. Whether it’s paid time, or “comp time off” employees in Public Works, and probably the rest of the city, are also being screwed by the problems. Ever since the SAP payroll system was implemented in March, the problems have been getting worse, not better. Some employees have reported getting paychecks with $0’s, and I don’t mean extra ones, either. ”

A year ago, there was a lot of talk about how the whole city’s operation would be converted to SAP. Now, not so much. (As in “none.”) Once again, the city shows that it just can’t seem to get its act together when it comes to high technology. (Don’t forget, the wi-fi plan is also in trouble.)

I think I should remind everyone before the next part of my rant, that I am not a fan of SAP. Oracle does not seem to have these problems, but it was rejected.

Continue reading →

I started this post as a comment over at Steven Den Beste’s anime site, but it quickly got too long. Rather than abuse his tolerance, I brought it over here to Houblog.

I looked carefully at the security camera’s pictures of the collapse again, this time enlarging the picture.

Concentrate on the bottom of the section of the span visible just to the right of the fence edge (lower arrow). That one area deforms, and a shadow appears, which may be a gap that has opened in the “floor” of the arch. The top deck also appears to be “flat” at tha point, which would support the idea that the bottom of the arch has split at that point. Other than the shadow which definitely appears after the drop starts, I can’t tell for certain if the deformation of the bridge around the two arrows starts before, after, or at the same time as the drop. Of major importance in the film is that, other than the one spot, everything else drops “as is.” It’s all one unit, and it held together until it hit the riverbed. Then a few seconds later, you can see the far approach ramps fall.

Also note pictures 2, 3, and 44 and 47 in this slideshow. The bridge piers are visibly tilted. These appear to be the piers on the far end from the security camera, where we see the ramp falling. Did the ramp shove the pier or did the pier shift and drop the ramp?

As ridiculous as it is for me (a non-technical layman) to speculate, I’m going to do it anyway.

Several theories ran through my head as I looked at this. Originally, I thought a failure in the supports running from the arch to the deck had cascaded across, but that obviously wasn’t the case. For the whole thing to drop as a unit, either the near-side (to the camera) pier gave way, or the bridge’s “feet” somehow shifted off of the pier. Since the near end dropped first, thats where the the final catastrophic failure was, but not necessarily the initial failure that triggered the collapse.

My second theory was that the bottom of the arch gave way near the far pier. Before it could split all the way to the top and “break” that end of the bridge, the span “settled” slightly, pulling the bridge’s “feet” off of the near pier. With one end supported and the other falling, the arch completely separated along the line of the initial break, creating the visible gap.

Problem is, I’m not sure that one holds water either. If an arch breaks, it’s not going to pull inwards, if anything, its feet will shift outwards. (Granted, that could have the same effect–removing the feet from the pier.) But then it occurred to me that something was missing from all the pictures taken after the collapse.

Where is the near-side pier? That’s what took me so long posting this — I kept looking for it, and I can’t find it in the wreckage. No pier, no bridge. But again if it crumbled, is it a a cause or an effect?

Ok, time to shut up and wait on the experts. But forgive me if I can wait for someone to claim that the pier was dynamited by Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/whitey-oppressing-da-man.