Cities Shop for Free WiFi Services

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Bobby White:

Under the agreement, Sacramento residents would pay monthly subscription fees of about $20 to use MobilePro’s wireless service, local businesses would pay $90 to $250, and Sacramento’s city agencies would be able to use the service free. The agreement resembled that of many other municipal wireless deals across the country. For MobilePro, based in Bethesda, Md., a full year of service would bring in $2 million to $4 million in revenue, analysts estimate.


But earlier this month, the deal fell apart. The reason: Sacramento city officials had noticed new municipal wireless deals inked in San Francisco and Portland, Ore. The Portland rollout, sponsored by Silicon Valley startup MetroFi Inc., and the San Francisco deployment from Google Inc. and Earthlink Inc., both offered wireless service to those cities with expanded free access for some businesses and residents. Instead of relying on user subscription fees, MetroFi, Google and Earthlink planned to make money off local advertising that would be embedded in their wireless service.

If It’s Good for Philip Morris, Can It Also Be Good for Public Health?

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Joe Nocera:

“We don’t make widgets,” Steve Parrish likes to say, and that acknowledgment strikes me as a good place to start this story. Parrish, whose title is senior vice president for corporate affairs, is a highly paid executive at Altria Group, a New York-based holding company that is the 10th-most-profitable corporation in America. If the name of the company doesn’t strike you as terribly familiar, that’s because a few years ago the company changed its name. It used to be called Philip Morris, a name that still attaches to two of its holdings, Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International. (Altria also owns Kraft Foods.) So, yes, let’s stipulate right up front: Steve Parrish represents the country’s leading tobacco company, whose best-known brand, Marlboro, is so dominant it accounts for 4 out of every 10 cigarettes smoked in the United States. Last year, Philip Morris USA alone made $4.6 billion in profits. What was it that Warren Buffett once said? “You make a product for a penny, you sell it for a dollar and you sell it to addicts.” They most certainly don’t make widgets.

Kraft is parent of Madison based Oscar Meyer Foods.

Fascinating Look at Friedman’s War of Words Regarding GM & Toyota

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Ed Wallace:

It was a blast across GM’s bow that was unparalleled in its ferocity and malicious intent. For here was Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times decreeing that, for the benefit of our nation and society, General Motors should fold. Friedman argues that GM is almost solely responsible for our country’s extreme gasoline demand, which in turn is why our troops are in the Middle East fighting the War on Terrorism.

Then again, few realize that only 40% of the oil America uses today goes into producing gasoline for the 200 plus million automobiles we drive. What Friedman did not rail against was our airline industry, which accounts for 7% of our petroleum use, or the 24% used by business and industry. I’m surprised he didn’t call out New Englanders, because of their inconsiderate use of heating oil in winter, the reason our troops are in Iraq securing crude supplies.

GM’s Brian Akre has much more:

I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1).

I failed. This is my story.

For those of you who haven’t read it already, Mr. Friedman spent 800 words on the Times op/ed page to accuse GM of supporting terrorists, buying votes in Congress and being a corporate “crack dealer” that posed a serious threat to America’s future. He suggested the nation would be better off if Japan’s Toyota took over GM.