I cannot forgive the lack of thorough reporting on a recent story I came across on abc13.com. The story is entitled “Houston is one step closer to a Wi-Fi deal”. It covers the news that broke last year where Houston Mayor Bill White came up with a plan to cover most of Houston in a wireless network. However, you would never have known any of this had I not told you. This summation was nowhere in the story. I had to research the article archives of abc13.com to find three previously written stories to finally get this much information on the subject.
This story gives little to no history on the decision for Houston to go wireless. Furthermore, its intro sentence includes the words “free wireless internet access for most of the city.” Now, is the story alluding that the wireless is free of cost to the city of Houston government or to the end user who is sitting in the park using the service? Then this leads me to ask the question how is something this large (Houston is the 4th largest city in the country) going to happen freely for anyone? Additionally, the article later says the “project will cost the city about $2.5 million over five years.” So, what happened to free and again who or what does the word city encompass?
Then there are the droning questions in my head of how. I am sure most of you like me have a wireless network you use consistently if not daily. I don’t know about yours but mine does have spotty access at times and it is usually no more than a few 100 feet from my laptop. Okay, now close your eyes and grow those few 100 feet several hundred square miles and throw in buildings, trees, weather, etc. What is the likelihood this service will be reliable? What is the contingency plan if there are problems and we do pay for this service?
Lastly, how is the city benefiting from this? I have to imagine that there were economic reasons for this. What are they? Where are the numbers on cities where this is already in place and how has it affected them? Well, I would like to tell you but the answers were just not there!
So, eventually were ANY of these questions answered for me by this article? Sadly, I must say no. I find it hard to believe that the author of this story found it a complete reporting. I want to know about the future of our city especially something this exciting that will represent us as forward thinking and open even more opportunities to our city and its economy. When did news only need to be familiar to those writing it? If news required as much work as I had to do to get to the real story, who would ever have time to read it?
