It looks obvious

Since after I wrote about the "Wireless Philadelphia " I was wondering how broadband companies should fight this evil idea. I wouldn’t suggest lobbying, it may work in the short term but in the long term it is much more damaging. It is because companies were busy playing in politic instead of building first class products that lead to such ideas in the first place. It is unavoidable, when the government involved, from having some genius to believe that if the government will run the business it would run better. It is never true but it’s happened again and again.

Ideas that lead to double billing will alienate your customers, wasting money on marketing campaigns , that make you look foolish will not win them back. Google didn’t need to spend money on branding campaign for its search engine – they simply built the best. When Yahoo wanted to gain market share back – they improved their product not the billboard ads .

I would suggest fighting such plan with one of the oldest methods – use your advantages. Government companies are inherently inefficient. Therefore, if you want to beat them, you should build better network , and make it cheaper. Instead of wasting billion dollars on marketing campaign build state of the art network. Have your marketing people come with smart offerings to the public such as free internet if it package with VoIP and TV service, on demand movies in volume discount when packaged with your broadband connection - be creative! If the French can and if they made it in Japan why can’t we make it here?

If it will be apparent that nobody will want to use the city WiFi, and this will happened only if the private companies will offer something better, nobody will rush to fund it.