Correct me if I’m wrong but Free Public Wifi by a river seems like a waste of money
The Elkhart City Council last night voted to spend $25,000 to install Wifi along the RiverWalk (roughly within the red box) in downtown Elkhart. INOVA, a local bank, is providing the internet connectivity.
Disclaimer: The article states that “the city will make public how far the Wi-Fi service will extend, and which businesses fall inside those boundaries, once the final plan is laid out.” So nothing’s really finalized yet.
My take on this whole thing: Uh…is this really worth $25,000? What’s the opportunity cost of that money? Why not help some downtown businesses grow? Or create incentives for new businesses? I just highly doubt that free wifi is going to spur economic anything. Businesses can’t really use it because they can’t count on it’s reliability. And will it really reach inside buildings where people may in fact use it? Maybe a student or two will use it outdoors, but how many people do you see sitting outside in the blazing sun on their laptops? You can hardly see your laptop screen outside…let alone when it’s snowing. I’m not trying to be a sour puss here, I just don’t think small scale public wifi like this can really do much. On a larger scale in a higher traffic area (like in nearby Fort Wayne), yeah, I think it can have an economic impact. But IMHO, there’s a much better use of $25k in a small town than covering 4 blocks in wifi.
