Can You Hear Him Now?

How Ed Schwartz hooked Philly up with WiFi, and Verizon got scrooged.

by Bruce Schimmel

Late one afternoon last month, the city's official duenna of WiFi, Dianah Neff, was wrapping up a meeting of the mayor's wireless executive committee when she dropped a bomb. Apparently, there was a last-minute push for a bill in Harrisburg that threatened to end the committee's work prematurely.

According to House Bill 30: If Philly or another municipality wanted their own wireless network, they'd have to ask Verizon first.

Ed Schwartz was stunned. The ex-city-councilman-turned-civic-activist couldn't fathom how he and others on the elite committee could have missed the ambush.

To make matters worse, Neff then informed her committee that House Bill 30 was almost certain to pass.

"I went out of there like Paul Revere," says Schwartz. Racing back to 12th and Chestnut, home of his Institute for the Study of Civic Values, Schwartz began to plan a counterattack.

John Street had put his friend on the WiFi committee because Schwartz has literally written the book on Net activism and helped create the city's own public information network. Now Schwartz was about to fire up a network of his own.

"I alerted someone in the governor's office that the shit was about to hit the fan, and I was about to throw it."

As predicted, House Bill 30 passed.

Yet today, Schwartz is one very happy guy. And why not? Philly will get its wireless network, and the bill's chief corporate backer, Verizon, is now up to its knees in a slowly rising pool of nasty PR poo.

"Verizon dug a hole for themselves," beams Schwartz, who's glad to take some credit for inviting the company to step into a mess of its own making.

In the institute's crowded conference room, Schwarz tilts back his big frame, cradling his head in his hands. A double win, he's savoring the moment by retelling the tale.

First, after Schwartz warned the other Ed (i.e., Rendell), he blasted his PhillyBlocks listserv, asking subscribers to call the governor.

Then Schwartz went to work on Verizon with a blistering missive headlined, "Verizon: Stop trying to kill the wireless plan. Can you hear us now?" Schwartz listed the company's phone number, and his listserv folks apparently made a lot of phone calls.

By Monday, even with the SEPTA story taking all the headlines, the Inky had called the backlash a "virtual mob," After that, Schwartz said he got a call from a friendly contact inside of Verizon, saying that he'd "gotten their attention."

"Do you really want to be known as the Microsoft of the telecommunications industry?" Schwartz remembers asking Verizon. His advice: Rendell will sign if Verizon waives their right to challenge Philly's WiFi.

Verizon gave the city a pass, and Rendell signed the bill. But now, says Schwartz, the real story begins.

That's because Schwartz thinks Verizon's one-time gift to Philadelphia will backfire. After 2006, every other municipality in the commonweath will have to ask Verizon's permission to set up their own WiFi networks. "And," says Schwartz, "they're not going to get it."

"Verizon is setting themselves up to be at war with every community in the state," says Schwartz. "Every time Verizon tries to block another small town, they're going to hear, "Whatsamatter? We're not as good as Philadelphia?'"

Schwartz says the Philadelphia wireless initiative has given the city more good press worldwide than anything he can remember in 30 years. So the news of Verizon's local perfidy should reach around the world.

"I did a Google on Schwartz, wireless and Philadelphia," he says, beaming with pride. "And the AP story has spread to Australia."

Schwartz hopes that Verizon's widening PR mess will be a warning to all regional telephone companies. "It's a bad principle for a private corporation to have towns begging to have their own wireless system."

Still, there is the remaining pesky problem of bringing street-level broadband to the rest of Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. And what Schwartz doesn't get is how legislators from outside of Philadelphia — especially on the Main Line — voted for a bill that would kill wireless in their own towns forever.

"I know, it's astonishing that they [legislators] voted for it," he says before speculating about what the legislators might have been told in the dead of night.

Suddenly, Schwartz heaves out of the chair and invites me into his office. "Do you think I have enough paper and shit in here?" he asks of its decor.

From the computer that's taken over his desk, he pulls up an Inquirer story. "Ah," he says with obvious satisfaction, "The small towns are getting furious."