Unwire Jerusalem has been unplugged
Well, an era in downtown connectivity has ended. Unwire Jerusalem, a non-for-profit organization who brought free wifi to downtown Jerusalem has pulled the plug on the project.
Jacob Ner-David, one of the founders, gives the skinny on why they are shutting down.
My synopsis:
Corporate Israel sucks.
The Jerusalem Municipality sucks harder.
Nir Barkat rules and when he is elected mayor (God willing) every first grader will get a blackberry.
These days there are more cafes and restaurants that have wifi than do not have wifi.
In all seriousness, Unwire Jerusalem was an ambitious project and really ahead of its time and the founders should be commended for providing this wonderful service to both Jerusalemites and tourists for many years. As someone who has an office on Ben Yehuda street I witness dozens of people every single day sitting on the pedestrian walkway with their laptops open, doing work, checking their email, etc. It always gave me a feeling that while Jerusalem is a extremely poor and decrepit city these days, there are things where we are actually ahead of the rest of the country (and in this case, most of the world!)
However, the next time my connection goes out in my Ben Yehuda street office, I will have to actually get up and go to a cafe and not rely on Unwire Jerusalem. Maybe that isn’t so bad.
UPDATE: I just realized we are going to have to update our wifi maps yet again for Jerusalemite. Sigh.
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Nir Barkat is speaking at the Jerusalem Business Networking Forum tonight. It should be interesting. I’ll ask him about the blackberries….
Please do. And perhaps you should also bring up something about the potential for automatic sidewalks. Thanks.