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Wireless Networking Government Hardware Politics

When Pigs Wifi 173

Posted by Zonk from the sounds-dirty-but-isn't dept.
ratell writes "The New York Times has an editorial entitled When Pigs Wi-fi. It describes a 600 square mile free wi-fi network in Hermiston Oregon, and it argues that wi-fi should be a utility." From the article: "Mr. Puzey, who says wireless broadband is central to the port's operations, argues persuasively that broadband is just the next step in expanding the national infrastructure, comparable to the transcontinental railroad, the national highway system and rural electrification. Indeed, we need to envision broadband Internet access as just another utility, like electricity or water. Often the best way to provide that will be to blanket a region with Wi-Fi coverage to create wireless computer networks, rather than running D.S.L., cable or fiber-optic lines to every home."
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When Pigs Wifi

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  • WiMax (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SpudB0y ( 617458 ) * on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:16PM (#13264443)
    Why should there be mass public investment in WiFi technology that will be replaced within a few years?

    • Re:WiMax (Score:4, Insightful)

      by civman2 ( 773494 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:18PM (#13264458) Homepage
      Unless I am mistaken, I believe that WiMax draws a lot more power than WiFi does. This makes it quite usable in the place of a cable modem, but quite hard to use on a PDA or Laptop, because of battery life concerns.

      I think WiMax is more of a distribution method for sparse areas than a way for you to connect your laptop directly to the Internet. So you'll have WiMax -> WiFi -> Laptop.

      • Re:WiMax (Score:2, Funny)

        by k31bang ( 672440 ) *
        What if you Laptop is using a fuel cell?

        • Re:WiMax (Score:2, Funny)

          by k31bang ( 672440 ) *
          Honestly I have no idea why someone marked that as a troll. I suppose if I had said somthing along the lines of "I'll probobly be modded down for this", I would of been modded better. Slashdot sure is a funny place.

    • Re:WiMax (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:28PM (#13264515) Homepage Journal
      Well theres not much infrastructure involved in wifi. If its upgraded the client end and the access point end will have to be changed. But this is the same for wired networks too.

      I still prefer wired networks because I am not pleased with the proliferation of electromagnetic radiation. We are going headstrong in a forward direction with our heads buried in the sand. I do not believe we spend much time investigating the effects of this stuff.

      Perhaps I'm a nut. But I like the freedom of choice to be a nut. Such as not liking to fly and choosing not to. But things like cell phone signals, pager signals, FM/AM radio signals, TV signals, consumer frequency signals, etc. I have no choice in letting permeate my body.

      • Re:WiMax (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:44PM (#13264589)
        But things like cell phone signals, pager signals, FM/AM radio signals, TV signals, consumer frequency signals, etc. I have no choice in letting permeate my body.

        Nor neutrinos...450 billion per cm2 of your body every second. Didya hear they have mass? And energy? Better get out the tinfoil and fashion a hat.

        • Re:WiMax (Score:2, Informative)

          by Catbeller ( 118204 )
          The odds of a single neutrino impacting a single atom of your body is astronomically remote.

          This issue, EM saturation, hasn't been addressed, and because of utility and profit, never will be.

          But Heinlein was ahead of us all. "Waldo".
          • In a talk I went to last summer about neutrinos, the statistic was given that, on average, approximately 8 (or maybe it was 13) neutrinos would interact with your body over the course of your lifetime.

            Of course, the standard deviation on that number is crazy high... if N is the number of neutrinos passing through your body over the course of your lifetime, then the variance (square of the std dev) is going to be (using a binomial distribution, which seems the correct choice) N (8/N) (1 - 8/N), or 8(N-8)/
      • Eh, you're FAR more endangered by the sun's radiation than any of that, and you don't have any choice about being exposed to the sun, either. But, I certainly will support your freedom to be a nut. =) Who knows, maybe all that stuff IS worse for us than we know.
        • and you don't have any choice about being exposed to the sun, either.
          He could stay in his parent's basement 24 hours a day reading Slashdot and playing World of Warcraft.
      • One important thing to remember with electromagnetic radiation is that two good examples are visible light and radiated heat. This stuff isn't exactly uncommon in nature...

        The scariest thing about "electromagnetic radiation" is that the second word is the same one we use in english to describe "that stuff that kills people when you drop an atomic bomb". We use the same word in "pricing gun" and "machine gun" too.

        • At high enough power levels, visible light can be quite damaging. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun is right next to visible light in the spectrum and can be ionizing and cause serious health problems with enough exposure. Most naturally occuring radio and lower band signals are extremely low power compared with what we're now broadcasting.

          In theory, the lower frequencies used by radio signals should be harmless non-ionizing radition, but I'd still feel better if more research and study was done before w

          • At high enough power levels, visible light can be quite damaging.

            Right. High power levels are like a cutting lazer, or what you're exposed to when you stand 8 light minutes from a G type star with minimal shielding.

            The power levels involved in radio communication are rather lower than that, unless you're hanging out on the antenna at a radio station... square of the distance and all. A radio transmission needs to be high enough power that the reciever can clearly detect it - for visible light that cou

        • " One important thing to remember with electromagnetic radiation is that two good examples are visible light and radiated heat. This stuff isn't exactly uncommon in nature..."

          Thats a good point. How much research has been put into the effects of ultraviolet light? How much has been put into wifi/cellphones/satellite/tv/radio/etc. signals. Lets not stop the progress, but the FCC should ensure some level of health awareness. We don't know, and we never will if we don't check.
      • I still prefer wired networks because I am not pleased with the proliferation of electromagnetic radiation. We are going headstrong in a forward direction with our heads buried in the sand. I do not believe we spend much time investigating the effects of this stuff.

        I'm with you. I would much rather have wired bBand than wifi, but... where I live the ILEC is taking a rather head in the sand attitude towards bringing DSL out here (like, "theres way more cows than people, so we don't see value in putting a D

      • I have no choice in letting permeate my body.

        Sure you do. Enclose your entire property in a Faraday Cage [wikipedia.org], and then never leave it. You've still got perfect freedom of choice to be a nut. For that matter, you could also cover your entire body in tinfoil, although copperfoil or silverfoil would make a better conductor, and therefore a better Faraday Cage.
      • Going digital will massively reduce the amount of EM 'in the air'.

        We could broadcast something like 50Mbps using one channel of TV (12 Mhz of bandwidth using quad etc etc -- I'm probably wrong here, been a few years). Anyway, there are 12Mhz at an absolute minimum of 1 bit per cycle.

        More to the point, analog has zippo for error correction, so it has to be broadcast at a much higher power. Digital radio from XFM hits your antenna with a dB rating of something like -90dB (better at low latitudes, worse at hi
        • oops! I said 12Mhz per channel; it is actually only six. Mis-read something.

          Cheers,
        • " Going digital will massively reduce the amount of EM 'in the air'."

          Cell phones are new, Satellite TV is new, Wifi is new, etc. Theres no reduction there. I dont have a problem with the signal being digital as opposed to analog.
      • "But things like cell phone signals, pager signals, FM/AM radio signals, TV signals, consumer frequency signals, etc. I have no choice in letting permeate my body."

        Well, you could always go for shielding.

        But you'd better not step out in the sun. It bombards us with a wide range of EM.

    • Re:WiMax (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:56PM (#13264643) Homepage Journal
      Why should there be redundant private investment in WiFi tech that will be replaced in a few years? We consumers will have to pay for that, too. And multiply: we'll collectively pay for every competing failure, as well as the breakage from failed systems that take down dependent businesses and other consumers.

      The mass public investment in power, water, rail, postal and sanitation tech has featured regular upgrades and replacements. And it's become so reliable and cheap that we generally don't even notice it. Not to mention the ongoing mass public investment in private WiFi tech, through tax breaks (and therefore "free" government services the rest of us pay for), government R&D handouts to profitable corporations, fat military contracts, etc.

      WiFi uses a single carrier, the "air", which can contain only a certain limited amount of data, with the current "epoch's" tech (not just the current year's "generation") in the useable bands. The rollout of WiFi has predictable, large benefits, along predictable tech improvements. And though WiFi has been cheap and easy for years, private investment hasn't provided the coverage, reliability and availability we expect from basic infrastructure. That's a formula for a "natural monopoly", where at least a government-controlled corporation, regulated by the people, is the most efficient administrator for maximum benefit.

      Maybe the nature of this utility as an interactive network offers some improvement over the management of past government services. Its essential features offer the possibility of feedback from its consumers, accountable more directly into its management decisions. Maybe the government's network corporation should issue non-tradeable shares to every potential consumer, attached to voting rights using the network. This utility is extremely powerful in protecting and delivering people's rights to associate, communicate and otherwise do things "the American way". We shouldn't lock ourselves into the propaganda we needed to rally for previous generations' fights with now-dead enemies, cheating ourselves the chance to exploit their successes.

      FWIW, the real "replacement" that is coming for WiFi will arrive with cheap, low-power microchip phased array transmitter/receiver antennas. Within 15-20 years, spectrum uniqueness will no longer be required to ensure connections between only the correct communicating counterparties. Like the private package couriers which built on the continuing vast competence of the US Postal Service, premium WiFi services will be able to fill the gaps left by the WiFi utility. Maybe they'll eventually even surpass the public utilities in overall use, and the government can exit the business. But private investment isn't getting us there. It's barely getting us through the wired phase we're now mature in. It certainly isn't getting us to the 802.11x deployment inherent in the tech and market demand. Like most national tech deployments, this one clearly needs government intervention, at least to "prime the pump", demonstrate to everyone that it can be done, and how much it has to offer real people who get a chance to use it, to rely on it. Even if that costs a lot, the benefit to our economy, to our international competitiveness, to our comfort and functions as a vast, complex, interconnected society, are well worth it. The dollar returns will dwarf the investment, once the system gets going. And the dividends to living in such a connected country will speak for themselves.
      • The mass public investment in power, water, rail, postal and sanitation tech has featured regular upgrades and replacements. And it's become so reliable and cheap that we generally don't even notice it.

        You only don't notice the cost it if you live in your parent's basement. Once you become a homeowner and start paying taxes you notice it very much.
        • I have been paying taxes from my own income for over 15 years. In several states, and in the US and Canada. Including taxes on sales of a big IT corporation at the last dance of the 1990s Bubble, in both the US and Canada. Then there's the taxes we paid as corporations in those states/countries while operating, for which I was personally liable as an officer/director of the corporation. And the taxes on the large private equity trades in which I've managed my money since I cashed out of the Bubble.

          I know al

    • Re:WiMax (Score:5, Insightful)

      by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @02:17PM (#13264730) Homepage
      First, because of the joys of backwards compatability, the equipment installed early will probably be useful for fifteen years, not just three.

      Second, because now is the time to start developing the apps that "total connectivity" will enable. When WiMax is ready, the demand for anytime, anywhere Internet will already be primed.

      Most of the apps that spark my imagination involve some level of GPS awareness. Imagine you're wandering downtown, looking for a bite to eat. Now, if you were smart and bored and anal, you would have researched your restauranting decisions prior to leaving the house. But now you're out of the house and unconnected.

      Life would be different if you could easily query some sort of service and ask, "Where can I get a good turkey club for under $5.00?" The service might come back with several suggestions within a four block radius, along with links to menus, restaurant reviews, maps, etc.

      Or say you subscribe to a dating/social service which would inform you when you were within a block of someone else who subscribed to the service, and suggest the two of you meet. When you both agree, it tells you both where the other person is. For additional safety, you could choose to automatically tell someone where you've decided to go, who you're meeting, and how long you expect to be.

      Self-guided walking tours suddenly become very easy. Finding the nearest store that has the book you just remembered you wanted becomes very easy. Finding the cheapest gas within a mile becomes very easy. In order to get into this mindset, while you're out some evening, just start imagining what it would be very cool to know right this instant. "How long would it take me to ride the bus back to my apartment?" "Is that girl over there single?" "I wonder where that one band is playing tonight."

      This is just the logical next step in the way we get and use information. Being able to access customized information anytime, anywhere, will be a Very Big Thing. I don't know precisely how it will change the way we do everything, but I'm pretty convinced that the examples I gave are just the simplest, most obvious applications. The less obvious ones will require experimentation, and that experimentation should be moving forward as quickly as possible, using whatever connectivity technology we can get our hands on.
      • Most of the apps that spark my imagination involve some level of GPS awareness.

        Your in a shop and want to locate an item.
        Your in a shop and what to know what deals their are.
        Your in a restaurant and want to watch you food being cooked, and get the attention of the waiter.
        Your in a pub and want to put some music on....

        I think there are far more apliations that don't involve GPS than do.
      • You can do a lot of these apps with a cell-phone (or at least you can if you're with me in Japan). They're, how can I put this gently, not exactly the sort of application that makes me exalt at being alive on the leading wave in a technical revolution. Yay, I can get directions to participating restaraunts within sight of where I am currently. But my eyes can accomplish the same thing, and the restaraunts who haven't payed the listing fee are still visible! Fancy that! I can even download a menu by vis
    • one wonders whether there should be investment in the replacement technology, since that will also be replaced in a few years
  • Because I should would rather have a wireless connection in my home subject to interference as opposed to a FIOS line....

    • Okay... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 )
      Can one get a FiOS line out in the middle of rural America? NO?

      Then that's not an answer, now is it. Please adopt a little less parochial view on things you might even understand what they're on about. You see, FiOS isn't offered everywhere (Hell, it's only in a dozen or so of Verizon's markets...) but you could have ubiquitous access with WiFi/WiMax if they'd just roll it out; and you could STILL have your FiOS.

      Just because you don't have the same priorities shouldn't mean I should accept yours as more

  • Wifi (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:17PM (#13264452) Journal
    It only becomes "vital to the public", when so much of the public has it they can no longer make much money off it.

    When everyone has wifi or at least broadband it'll get pushed over to "it's vital", then they'll start slapping it in taxs and the country/state/government will start leeching the money off it instead of companies (Although they're pretty much the same these days).

  • A fine idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by HUADPE ( 903765 )
    This would be a fine idea if there were not millions of people indoctrinated into "health" fads who are afraid of any sort of radio transmission. I am refering to the sort of people who buy this. http://waveshield.com/ [waveshield.com]

  • NY Times editorials... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:20PM (#13264475)
    Morons telling other morons their moronic ideas. And Slashdot grabs hold of the "story"!!!

  • A few questions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bgfay ( 5362 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:21PM (#13264477) Homepage
    If wi-fi really does become a universal utility then:

    -don't most cell phone carriers become irrelevant as calls can be carried on wi-fi phones of some sort?

    -can the provider (the US Govt) modify and control content routed through these systems?

    -what happens to all those companies now offering pay-for wi-fi services? Do they simply throw up their hands and let it happen?

    Don't get me wrong. I would love this. I'm on 56K dial-up because it costs me very little money and I would rather pay for things like food and clothing for my children.
    • No, you'd hate this. 50% of your income is going to other people's children/clothing/housing.

      Do you honestly believe that your government can do it cheaper as a monopoly than competing private companies?

      Or do you want me to pay more taxes so you can save $9.95 per month?

      • There are three separate factors here:
        1) who could do it cheaper?
        2) who would chose to do it cheaper?
        3) what would the cost be 10 years after the monopoly was in position?

        The answers aren't all the same. My personal choice is to have it be done privately, but to forbid any one company, organization, corporation, or franchise from owning or leasing in more than one SMSA*. Also limit the transmission power (but don't forbid directional antennas), and make licensing cheap and fairly straightforward. Target
      • Do you honestly believe that your government can do it cheaper as a monopoly than competing private companies?

        There are countless example where this is true. But that's usually because the private company seeks to cut costs to increase profit. But, a private company isn't interested unless there is profit. There are countless examples where governtment programs are already so lean that a private company can't complete.

    • A few answers... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      -don't most cell phone carriers become irrelevant as calls can be carried on wi-fi phones of some sort?
      A. Not at all. First, wifi will have a hard time establishing the coverage area that cellular technology already covers. Wifi has a typical node to Access Point range of 200 meters, on a good day with no obstructions. Cellular on the other hand offers a handheld to cell tower range of nearly 20 miles. As you can see, it would take hundreds or even thousands of WiFi access points to replace a single cellula
    • Anyone, not just the government, who controls the network and the hardware can "modify and control content routed" through them, if they want to do that.

      The post office can read your mail if it chooses; the phone company can listen in, if it chooses; your neighbors can peek in your windows, if they choose; the guy who delivers your pizza can sprinkle poison on it, if he chooses.

    • Get off the Dial-Up. If I were your child, I would rather have a fast Internet connection than have expensive food. I would rather be fed doughnuts and soda-pop than expensive foods. Tastes better, and there is cash left for broadband and buying server hardware.
    • don't most cell phone carriers become irrelevant as calls can be carried on wi-fi phones of some sort?

      Ever used WiFi in an outdoor environment? A bit of interference or contention and you can forget decent VoIP due to packet loss and latency spikes.

      can the provider (the US Govt) modify and control content routed through these systems?

      They would certainly have the technical capability to do so, whether they would is a political and not a technical question. Use end to end crypto if you are worried.

      what happe
    • Given that you are using 56K modem over a national telephone network that was originally based on analog circuits, and had evolved to a digital switched circuit network thirty years ago, why aren't you wondering how it is that you are still using a 56K modem when the bulk of the national communications infrastructure is digital? Shouldn't even a tiny bit of progress over the past 30 years have resulted in your landline being a fully digital connection by now, removing the need for a 56K dial-up modem?

      Seems
      • Japan moved from one-telephone-per-block to people having more-or-less ubiquitous service recently - within the last 10 years or so. This should be a clue. Canada had wide spread telephone service, but there again wasn't that much of it.

        Replacing the copper going to every neighborhood is happening in the US, but there are some obstacles in the way. One of them is DSL.

        I live a in a fiber-supplied neighborhood. There is an underground vault that has a fiber link (ATM, I believe) and copper to every house

    • "-what happens to all those companies now offering pay-for wi-fi services? Do they simply throw up their hands and let it happen?"

      Did you notice that the FCC just made DSL an information service rather than common-carrier service? Now your phone company will not have to let any other ISPs use their phone line to your house to deliver the internet to you. Earthlink and hundreds of other ISPs simply threw up their hands and let it happen, and I don't see how they are possibly going to stay in business.

      Now

  • 3 cheers! (Score:2, Informative)

    by kbrannen ( 581293 )
    That's a very refreshing view to see, especially as I've watched all the turf battling over DSL, Cable, and municipal WiFi. WiFi can be a very good thing. Of course I should probably point out that WiFi type access is the only way those of us "out in the boonies" will get DSL. I have 802.11b now off of the local water tower, while Verizon will probably never have it here.

    I say that Mr. Puzey should be put in charge of the FCC.

  • Police (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cliff.Braun ( 825786 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:23PM (#13264483) Homepage
    I saw this headline and thought I was gonna be reading an article about wifi in police cars in order to communicate or something, oh well.
    • umm, if you read the article it does mention that the WiFi is used by the Police. They let regular citizens use the leftover bandwidth for free.
    • I thought it was an experiment on using pigs as WAPs. I don't know anything about Oregon since I had never been there. I thought it would be a state with a lots of pigs roaming around on farms or something. ;)
      • No, hermiston has almost no pigs, just cattle, horses, lots and lots of watermelons (the best) and this really, really freaking huge chemical weapons depot sitting about 200 yards off the interstate. This place has mounds and mounds going on for miles. Each mound is a bunker holding nasty stuff going back to world war 1. They just built an Incenerator at the depot, to try to get rid of the weapons. (there are so many it will take something like 20-30 years to burn them all up!) They also had to do a fe

  • Surprise! oh, no wait... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NoTheory ( 580275 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:25PM (#13264497)
    I'd have to say that the comment that NYC should be ashamed that it hasn't beaten Morrow and Umatilla counties in oregon to the WiFi punch is ridiculous. NYC has a much higher population density and thus more users and problems like inconvenient buildings. As a result a wifi deployment would presumably be more expensive and more inconvenient.

    Besides this sort of dichotomy has shown up all over the world. Areas that have just recently opened up to modern technology, Afghanistan, rural China, have totally skipped the wired world, because of the sorts of infrastructure you have to have in place in order to make them work. Going wireless makes sense for rural areas, and it shouldn't be a surprise that they are different from the old players in technological infrastructure.

  • Packet sniffers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by convex_mirror ( 905839 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:28PM (#13264514)
    I'm all for this happening - and it has to happen if the U.S. wants to stay competitive with the rest of the world. However, I foresee a large upswing in the popularity of packet sniffers and more opportunities for fraud. Cities that want to set these networks up are going to have to do some serious thinking about security.
  • Disclaimer: I couldn't RTF from my PDA.

    I hate the idea of "utilities." nJohn Stossel showed that public unionized utilities were more costly, less efficient, and offered zero choice. Sell them to private competing companies and those issues turn around.

    Any regulation on networks is bad. "Freeing information" only means "information provided by the free market." More information providers competing for your DOLLARS means better products/services/speeds.

    Keep the public interest/need out of it.
    • Any regulation on networks is bad. "Freeing information" only means "information provided by the free market." More information providers competing for your DOLLARS means better products/services/speeds.

      Exactly. They should the same with roads. What we need is to privatise all roads and highways so that transportation providers will have a level playing field without goverment competition and can compete based on the quality their products and services. Who needs speed limits, police patrols, motor vehic
  • this is perfect.

    we can now fight terrorism better than ever.

    whenever you try to go to a p2p site or the anarchist cookbook, a local officer will be immidiately dispatched to your house. Let us tie police records and social security numbers to mac addresses.

    yet another way to erode our privacy.
    • whenever you try to go to a p2p site or the anarchist cookbook, a local officer will be immidiately dispatched to your house. Let us tie police records and social security numbers to mac addresses.

      Get out the cat-5 and the rolls of fiber, we're making our own internet.

  • I have enough trouble getting a good signal in my own house from my own router. If they were to sell the wifi access as a utility, how would they go about ensuring that all areas of the house are covered by good signal?

    Perhaps they could rent a repeater to each house, but by that point I would expect severely limited speeds.

  • Why just Wifi? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by tripslash ( 683760 )
    Why not just say that basic Internet service should be considered a public utility? I would much rather have regular low-cost (less than $10/mo) dail-up, or even slow DSL, than expensive broadband service.

    Its generally accepted that a dwelling have "public" electrical service, but there's no mandate that everyone must have 250 amp service to the house.

    If we really want most people to use the Internet as they do power, water, and even highway systems, then shouldn't we start by making the most basic service

  • Never going to happen (Score:5, Informative)

    by FriedTurkey ( 761642 ) * on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:33PM (#13264546)
    The broadband providers are already putting a stop to it. They have the money to grease the politicians and they already did it in Philadelphia: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1735342,00.as p [eweek.com]

  • liberals who want the government to force us don't share our internet conection because mmm...god...yeah... says that it should be a utility

    • Re:liberals (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FriedTurkey ( 761642 ) * on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:44PM (#13264591)
      liberals who want the government to force us don't share our internet conection because mmm...god...yeah... says that it should be a utility

      After reading your post, maybe we should put more money into the education system instead of wi-fi.

      Seems like this child was left behind.

  • Great Article! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:38PM (#13264566)
    You know, I was just thinking, I haven't seen enough articles about municipal wi-fi on slashdot. This is incredible.
  • Have people learned nothing from the matrix? The only thing worth a damn when you really need it is a LAND LINE.

    That part at least was non-fiction. I can always tell when I'm talking to someone on a cellphone because I can't. They get cut off, distorted, delayed, or just can't make the call at all.

    Phones have joined the world of email - now you have to leave voicemail which may not work, send email because you never know if that works, then just drag your butt to their office to ask if they got one of the a
  • I still think making computers a utility and not a luxury should come first. What good is broadband if you can't access a computer?

    • Re:I still think... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Council ( 514577 )
      I still think making computers a utility and not a luxury should come first. What good is broadband if you can't access a computer?

      Awful idea. The cars/roads analogy is entirely appropriate here.
  • I don't see a compelling reason why this should be a utility - i.e. "free" if you really, really can't afford it. Water, heat and electricity are mostly government-controlled (not run, but controlled) because those are necessary for survival, and those in low-income housing have laws protecting a tiny amount trickling in for survival (i.e. it's illegal to completely shut off the gas during a -20' cold streak, etc). Radio and tv are seen as public necessities because of public service announcements (hurricanes, enemy attacks, etc). But... that means that PBS should be available to everyone, and an AM station available to everyone (for emergencies). It says nothing about NBC and the Top40 radio station being free (they just happened to be free because of an advertising-financed business model).

    The public as a whole does not need access to barnyardporn.com (insert overrated +5 funny reply to that here) and everything on the 'net. I s'pose i'd support some sort of "basic wi-fi" system where everyone is entitled at least to the government webpages, local hospital directions, local sex offender listings, etc. But do I think that Slashdot is a Right and not a privledge? Absolutely not...

    • The public as a whole does not need access to barnyardporn.com (insert overrated +5 funny reply to that here)

      You mean a comment like some poor family from a rural area could raise the precious funds they need to eat, if only they had municipal wifi to post photos of them taking care of the neighbor's sheeps' personal needs?
    • >Water, heat and electricity are mostly government-controlled (not run, but controlled) because those are necessary for survival

      Notice how our perspectives change over time about what's "necessary".

      120 years ago nobody would have dreamed of calling residential electricity "necessary". Municipal running water is more recent than you might think.

      We're fast getting to the point that everybody who votes should have access to factcheck.org and vote-smart.org.
      • True, such things as regular bathing aren't really necessities for the purpose of biologically surviving. But try getting a job anywhere without bathing for a month.

        Since these things are much more common now, it's become very nearly necessary to have them, unless you're both willing and able to go out into the woods and survive on your own.

  • cute theory, but no (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @01:50PM (#13264613) Homepage
    The problem with trying to turn technologies like these into utilities is that:

    (1) They are still young an evolving. Wi-fi is getting faster, working from greater distances, and getting better security with successive iterations. Commercial broadband providers are testing second-gen broadband technologies which are far faster than the first.

    (2) A public utility is stagnant. To provide something like water or electricity ubiquitously they are often monopolies, heavily regulated, and on extremely small profit margins. Bureaucracy adds to this stagnation.

    Combine these, and you see that turning something into a utility is the death of innovation.

  • "broadband Internet access as just another utility, like electricity or water. "

    This would be a bad idea.

    There is currently very rapid technological development in internet access, with multiple competing technologies, both mobile and stationary. (I'm on 24/mbit DSL right now, was on 512kbit not that long ago...)

    For the government to plow huge sums into one one-size-fits all system of broadband provision would smother technological innovation in the field. If the goal is to increase broadband access, just g
  • I love it that it is called wireless. I mean, when people say wireless, don't they mean radio? Most people I know don't call cars "horseless carrages". Wouldn't optical fiber be wireless as well? There is no wire in it. Just a curious observation.
  • We pay for the interstate and local highways with taxes.

    We pay for our water and electricity based on how much we use.

    I don't think enough people are interested in paying for wireless networking in either manner to make it nationwide.

  • Don't count on it becoming a municipal utility (Score:4, Informative)

    by SeventyBang ( 858415 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @02:38PM (#13264800)


    There's a story from Dvorak [pcmag.com] in the current issue of PC Magazine where the state of Pennsylvania enacted (and the Gov signed into law) House Bill 30:

    <copypaste>
    Philadelphia wanted to create a municipal Wi-Fi network in the form of a universal MAN (metropolitan area network). This would be like a utility, costing the public next to nothing while providing universal access. You'd be able to log on from anywhere. It would provide municipal news and broadband access to the Net for anyone with a computer and an 802.11 connection.

    The telecom lobby got wind of this and had its stooges in the state legislature draft House Bill 30, which actually banned such municipal activity. The rationale for such a ban? You tell me.

    This was softened slightly after some protests to a semi-ban, with Comcast and Verizon getting an opportunity (with potential subsidies) to build a MAN themselves within 14 months of any proposed municipal implementation. This means for anyone to implement a MAN with either Wi-Fi or WiMAX, they have essentially to go through Comcast and Verizon, who can stall the project as they see fit. There are ways around this, but the bill was written to make these corporations de facto gatekeepers on behalf of the state.
    </copypaste>

    And you know Comcast and|or Verizon aren't going to make such a MAN ...costing the public next to nothing....

    (in addition to WiFi and|or WiMax, when will this happen to VOIP? If not in large scale, regionally? The corporations may not be able to swing big votes at the Federal level, but they sure can at the state level (as seen above) There is no way corporation$ are going to take these things sitting down while they watch their bread & butter service$ compete against low-cost competitor$. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to take off their rose-colored glasses).


  • Like all other good bits of infrastructure, government money must be used to build it, otherwise it will never get done. Once built, the government will privatize it, and the new private corporations will charge the people who paid for it in the first place (the taxpayers) through the nose to use it.
    • I'm not sure if you were trying to be sarcastic or not, or why this deserves a "+1, insightful", no offense intended.


      Like all other good bits of infrastructure, government money must be used to build it, otherwise it will never get done.

      There's a ton of infrastructure that wasn't built by the government, like the cell network, or the internet (yes, I know about ARPANET; the point is that virtually nothing we use today was built by the government), or even our food distribution systems - farmers, t

  • Um, this isn't an editorial; it's an op-ed piece by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
  • You're wearing out the slashdot crowd's ability to cry foul in face of this constant harassment, over broadband and FCC DSL rulings. After all, they are all human beings, with a psychology, and any psyche can be broken. So now you have to resort to putting the cry foul slogans back into their mouths, because they've worn out coming up with it themselves? That's like injecting a horse with a mental agitator, after it's calm and lets you sit on its back. I guess, unlike with a horse, on slashdot the agitation
  • Why is it every politican and marketing guy out there thinks wireless is the answer to everything? Don't they realize that it is in an unliscensed band for a reason? Are they eventually going to outlaw microwave ovens and cordless phones if there is interference? Doesn't it make much more sense for a municipality to run FIBER OPTIC CABLE to everyone, since they control the right of way to the homes serviced? If done right, it could be potentially as inexpensive to operate as a massive bunch of WIFI nodes, a
  • ....transcontinental railroad....
    If I'm not mistaken, the trans-con was built with a "competition" [wikipedia.org] somewhat like the X-Prize.

    Perhaps you mean more like Amtrak? Now there's an example of a successful public utility!
  • We are tearing out all our 2.4 equipment cause we can't get a decent signal 500 ft from the tower using a 500mw amp and a 14dbi direction antenna.. there is so much noise and crap on the airwaves (thanks Linksys) that 2.4 wifi is useless as a replacement for DSL/cable. We are moving everything to the 5.3/5.8 spectrum.

    I find it hard to believe, that they are covering 600miles of area with good signal, and well enough that you can travel 70miles/hr and still have it stream data.

    -b

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