In a fit of pique over the City of New Orleans’ new citywide Wi-Fi broadband network, BellSouth Louisiana CEO Bill Oliver has yanked an offer to turn over one of the company’s damaged New Orleans buildings to the city for use as a police headquarters, according to this story in the Washington Post.
Big Bill’s big fit is reminiscent of his somewhat veiled threat that BellSouth would yank the Cingular call center from Lafayette if city voters gave their authorization to a bond sale to build a fiber to the home network here.
It now appears Oliver is trying to deny that he withdrew the offer (just as he tried to deny threatening the Cingular call center). Unfortunately for Oliver, once again there were witnesses to his actions. Once again, everyone’s lying but Bill.
This further underscores a point that anyone dealing with BellSouth in Louisiana must understand: they are bad actors. That is, they can’t be taken at their word.
Lafayette’s known it for a while. New Orleans is learning. Can the rest of the areas damaged by this year’s hurricanes be far behind?
