“You know the feeling” the empathic male voiceover announces, “you can’t take care of business the way others do.” You can’t, because you have what’s called “Connectile Dysfunction” or “CD” which the voiceover explains as “a condition caused by inadequate broadband coverage.” The denizens of New Orleans know this feeling all too well, that is to say they “can’t take care of business the way others do.” When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the city’s communicative infrastructure was badly damaged except for a wireless network covering the downtown business district and the French Quarter.

This wireless network, originally implemented to support surveillance cameras in the area, was quickly repurposed by emergency personnel in the wake of the hurricane and later converted by the city into a free public Wi-Fi service. BellSouth is now challenging the legality of this public cyberspace, a lifeline that the city intends to make part of its “indigenous infrastructure.” Thanks to powerful corporate interests, Louisiana state laws ban the free distribution of broadband services and while New Orleans was able to circumvent these laws because of its declared state of emergency that state of emergency has now been lifted. The denizens of New Orleans battle a bad bout of Connectile Dysfunction.“The cure” for CD, our empathic male voiceover informs us, is “Sprint Mobile Broadband” because “it works in twice the cities as Cingular’s Broadband Connect so you can be you again.” At $49.99 a month (not including the startup and hardware costs), this advertisement doesn’t appear to remedy the situation so New Orleans can be New Orleans again