Verizon Rolls Back WiFi Pay Phone Plans
This is becoming the season of the quiet WiFi rollback. We’ve been saying for a while that many of the promises companies were making on just how many hotspots they were going to roll out simply didn’t make sense, and now more and more are quietly admitting that was true. The latest is Verizon, who is admitting that their initial plan to put up 1,000 WiFi hotspots at old pay phones may have been a little too ambitious. They do a nice spin job, though, saying that the decision to cut the number to 500 was after evaluating where people were likely to use it, and ditching other locations. Much more interesting, however, is that the article points out that the company is suddenly interested in what their buddies on the other half of the building are doing under the Verizon Wireless name with their EV-DO offering. It’s like a lightbulb has gone off and Verizon is suddenly realizing that maybe they have some folks there who know a thing or two about wireless technologies…
