Central Park Goes Dark

Central Park and other parks in NYC are now without WiFi. The provider lacking an extension of their contract with the NYC Parks Dept can’t go it alone –

Logging onto the Internet for free at many New York City parks has become another casualty of the financial crisis.

The vendor, WiFi Salon, which won the contract from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation in 2004 to wire 10 parks in four boroughs, including Central Park, quietly shutdown in October due to lack of financing and is in the process of removing equipment. The contract expired Sept. 30, and it wasn’t financially feasible for WiFi Salon to continue on its own.

This of course is where the Google biz model should have kicked in to bridge such issues. Had Google been serious about 700mhz this kind of model might have been able to assist here.

Linky.