Library cancels mobile hotspots

The Carl and Mary Welhausen Library is doing away with mobile hotspots for the unforeseen future.

Mobile hotspots are a portable device allowing one to connect devices to the Internet using a wireless signal and are about the size of a cellphone.

“A mobile hotspot is basically Internet on the move and you can take it anywhere you go and you can have Internet access,” Library Director Gena Jiral said. “It is like a cell phone, but without cellphone usage, just the data. Anyone could run a laptop from this or an iPad. We started implementing this about three years ago through the Tocker Foundation. That lasted a year and that was through T-Mobile at the time. They were pretty successful, so we decided to start them on our own and we contracted through AT&T to have them on our own and available to the public for checkout. At that time, they were available to check out for a week at a time and they would return them for a week and be able to check them out again if they needed it. It was convenient for those who needed temporary Internet. You could run up to ten devices on one hotspot.”

The library paid for all services and 100% of the data for them. It was $15 a month for the device, and they had nine devices. Throughout this time, there was some abuse happening to the mobile hotspots.

“The mobile hotspots were either not being turned in on time, not being returned at all, or being returned damaged,” Jiral said. “People would damage these hotspots by dropping them on the floor or breaking the screen. We got a couple back where the screens were damaged. Several were also never returned. We went from nine hotspots to three. So, at this time, we just elected to pause the service while we can evaluate our policy changes and explore new avenues to begin providing that service again.”

For about a year and a half, the library had no issues with these hotspots.

“This happened all of a sudden about six or eight months ago,” Jiral said. “I guess the word started getting out that they were available and, for whatever reason, some of the people checking them out just began abusing the service.”

The mobile hotspots got so bad the library had to file a couple of police reports.

“The police department informed that anything over $100 is considered theft,” Jiral said. “So, if you do not return your hotspots, it is theft of government property.”

Jiral said she would love to bring this service back.

“This is very beneficial to a lot of families,” Jiral said. “There were also a lot of families that borrowed them and didn’t abuse the service. We would like to bring this back; but before that, we will have to look at our policies and figure out what kind of stipulations we would need to put in there to help prevent the issues we had before. As of now, however, there are no hotspots available.”

Even though the hotspots are not available to check out anymore, the library still does provide 24/7 wi-fi at the library.