Wednesday, April 20, 2011

WAPA to be In Charge of Broadband in De Islands.

No this is not an April Fools joke. It looks more like a bad headline from a Charlie Sheen press release. It is the equivalent of Charlie Sheen to be the new director of Child Welfare and Planned Parenthood for the state of California.
 WAPA, the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority, arguably the worst run public utility company on the planet is being given 70 million in federal funds and another 42.5 million in bond funds to build a new broadband system in de Islands. Anyone that thinks this will be an efficient and effective use of public funds is crazy. These guys can't keep the lights on, let alone build a fiber optic system and maintain it. I can hardly wait for the LEAC adjustment because of the new Diesel Fuel Powered switching stations for telecommunications. Not I don't think they really exist but give WAPA a few months and they can have some made. Keep in mind in this day and age we still burn Diesel at WAPA to make power and have no clear plans on how to transition away from this besides a few good will solar panels at the airport. Second with that much money floating around the odds of corruption, bribes, company cars, lunch meetings, wasted trips to god knows were for "training", and "research" etc. is just insane. As much as I think that we need this infrastructure, picking WAPA for this task just boggles the mind. The only way I would think this was a good idea would be if they were going to set the money aside and sell the whole damn waste of time and money to private utility company. That just won't happen because of all the good old boys on the payroll.
Jay

Here is a link to the Newspaper Article.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't beleive anyone thinks this is a good idea!
Some of the money is going to the St. Croix Jazz Festival..... the rest is going up in smoke.
The good olde boys at the senate have even structured this so there is no oversite.

Anonymous said...

I can't beleive anyone thinks this is a good idea!
Some of the money is going to the St. Croix Jazz Festival..... the rest is going up in smoke.
The good olde boys at the senate have even structured this so there is no oversite.

Unknown said...

Why not go with Hughes satellite? Use the standard phone line as an "uplink" and enjoy broadband back.

Deb and Jay said...

Fortunately the bill passed but the section about WAPA was removed. Whew! Close call. Here's the story:
http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2011/04/20/heavily-amended-broadband-bill-finally-clears-full-senate

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