GoMoorhead Wireless Needs an Attitude Adjustment

GoMoorhead a NoGo

I have been a faithful user of Moorhead’s Municipal Wireless service since the beginning as a beta tester later as one of the first batch of Registered users. Before GoMoorhead was approved by our city leaders, I spoke in favor of the project at the Public Service Commission hearings.

I have promoted the service to others and I have supported the use of tax dollars for the infrastructure and service. I have benefited from the low cost, high speed and city-wide availability of Muni WIFI. However, I have also tolerated the many setbacks GoMoorhead has brought upon itself. The literal down-side have been outages, intermittent service, inconsistent speeds, faulty routers and bad technical decisions to name a few.

I really wanted to support the city in their effort, so I hung in there, that is, until recently. After a few days of heavy snow, closings and being stuck at home without any Internet access, I began to realize how dependent I was on a fast and available Internet connection.

I dug through my garbage can for one of those many advertisements from a commercial Internet provider and looked at their price and service and gave them a call. I received a warm welcome, fast service and before GoMoorhead had their system wide problem fixed, I had Internet service in my home again. Between heavy snowfalls, I ran my equipment back over to
the GoMoorhead office. They seemed startled that I would want to drop their service. Actually that sort of attitude is one of the reasons I am willing to abandon my civic duty and support a commercial service.

I have called in many times trying to offer advice on some of the technical issues GoMoorhead has had. After all, I know quite a bit and I thought we were in this together. I was always treated like I was inept and it was never GoMoorhead’s problem. I always thought that since this was a community and publicly funded service that perhaps the community and public could have some input. Where are the discussion groups, where are the Town Hall meetings and the community dialogue? Nowhere, the service is run like a commercial business, not a community endeavor.

I will try this other commercial service for a number of months and then check-out GoMoorhead again this summer. If they improve their technical set-up, improve their customer service approach, and be willing to take a community based approach to improving GoMoorhead, I will definitely return as a customer.

Any G0Moorhead Customers out there want to reply or converse online, feel free.

It is OK to question the government.

After all, it's a democracy afterall, Right?