According to The Third Battle of New Orleans, last Thursday started the official roll-out of EarthLink's paid WiFi service for New Orleans. You probably have seen the wireless nodes attached to lightposts around some of the more populated parts of the city and thought, hey what's that? You may have known what it was, but been unsure as to what it means. Well it means New Orleans is now part of four pilot cities across the US (Philadelphia, PA, and Milpitas and Anaheim, CA, with San Francisco and Pasadena, CA on the way) to get a new option in internet service. If you don't want to settle for DSL or Cable you can now get WiFi (or pay a lot more for cellular based service from Verizon, Sprint, Cingular and others) for $17.95 to start and $21.95 thereafter. That is 3 bucks less than the cheapest DSL from Bellsouth (and way less than the cheapest COX has to offer for internet only customers like myself). Plus Earthlink says the service could get you up to 1Mbps (again better than Bellsouth's 128Kbps cheap speed). I was an Earthlink customer per-Katrina (did you know you can't get Bellsouth DSL in Phat City?) and they treated be well after the storm with an account credit for the last month of service and no hassle cancellation due to the storm.

The only issue I have is the lack of coverage for the service. Currently it's only available in Uptown, the CBD and the French Quarter (and all over Algiers Point and the Wank). I'd like to see the service spread to City Park and the Fairgrounds in the near term and be offered as an option on my cell phone provider's bill (I'm with Sprint and Earthlink has done cross promotions with them in the past). Also, what kind of coverage is available in the Superdome? Can I buy a day pass for Saints/Hornets games to live blog them?

Other notes: People Get Ready has been on the network since early last month and says the SSID is FeatherByEarthLink. EarthLink's Earthling blog looks to be very active in community events and has even traveled to the city to meet and greet with bloggers and tour the system during it's initial setup. You can join the national waitlist for all Earthlink Wifi at their FeatherWiFi site. Thumbnail from anEarthling's Flickr set, NodeSpotting. Coverage Map available on the FeatherWiFi site as well. If you live near the access zone, but not in it, you may want to invest in a Cantenna. Unfortunately, I will not be using this service from home due to my location no where near the network.