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The bill history for HB789 is interesting. Notably, it shows how quickly (and without a recorded vote so those of us who live in Texas can't even accuse our representatives of actually supporting this legislation) the bill passed.

Austin Wireless and Austin Wireless City both have coverage of what it means to Austin. The Save Muni Wireless group was put together in response to challenges like this; they include much better commentary on why HB789 is a bad idea than would be worth repeating here. If you really want to understand the issue, check some of these sites.

Even the High Tech Broadband Coalition (a group of telecom, hardware, and software companies) was against HB789.

Several local news stories:

• News8 Austin on "end of free Wi-Fi" - News8 Austin is the local Time Warner cable news channel.
• Austin Business Journal on "Free Wi-Fi Faces Challenges"

For those in Texas who want this law changed, it's probably a good time to call or write your state Senator today before this bill sails through committee and a floor non-vote.

I certainly hope that the Lege doesn't make free access provided by NGOs illegal (imagine not being able to run your own AP out of your house!)

Austin Wireless City

Austin Free Net

Austin Wireless.Net

EFF Austin

Save Muni Wireless

No, it isn't missing that much functionality, and it has additional functionality that the Airport does not have, plus it is from a good company, Asus, and will be supported well for years. Expect many, many firmware updates, and of course it costs 1/2 the price. How many slashdotters actually use itunes? I brought the 330 to a couple of the Austin wireless meetings and it was a hit.

Stuff like this is already happening, in some form, in several cities around the US. Check out Seattle Wireless, Austin Wireless, NYC Wireless, and FreeNetworks ...

Some may ask, why would I want internet access while in a movie theater?

Well you could:

• See Theater Schedules & Order Movie Tickets to coming shows.
• Messaging to Fellow Movie goers adjacent in the crowd without talking.
• Messaging to Fellow Movie goers in adjacent screens in multi-screen venues without talking.
• Surfing to related or official websites for the current movie showing.
• Surfing to the InternetMovieDataBase for related data to movie, actors and screen writers.
• Connecting to promotions related to movie sponsor.
• Driving the movie content in real-time via audience response in Digital Theaters.
• Ordering Food and drinks from the kitchen and bar without talking.
• Ordering the movie soundtrack online or video releases in advance.
• Watching an alternate streaming movie if the one on the big screen doesn't make it for you.

It would seem that they were trying to set things up exactly to do the sorts of things they prevented "smashed" from doing.

It's been a while (about a year) since I last investigated this, so I may be off-base, but I think this is still reasonably current:

Most of the cellphone companies, especially the PCS ones, claim to be able to deliver digital data connections. Almost none of them can, and if they can, the performance is painfully slow. These folks just don't understand the value of opening up their bit stream. (Dream On: Really, I just want a good IP pipe, and I'll decide myself whether to use it for web, mail, telephony, or whatever. This assumes that the phone companies are interested in building an open IP architecture, sadly, they're not...)

So far as I know, there are no wireless ISP services that offer both road coverage and non-painful speeds.

Probably the best option today from a coverage standpoint and a real data solution is one of the CDPD-based services like OmniSky or GoAmerica. You can also start at the sites of the equipment providers like Sierra Wireless or Novatel Wireless. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired, but is likely the best reasonably-priced option available now.

Alternatively, you could try to live in the 802.11b world, hoping to find access points. Some cities have better documentation of this than others - Austin has a very incomplete list at Austinwireless.Net, mostly because RoadRunner is heavy-handedly disconnecting people they find out are running 802.11b APs. This is not a great option, but actually getting better as 802.11b takes off - lot's of offices and coffee houses have this stuff now.

Of course there are the exotic options like Iridium, but it's expensive and I expect most of their bandwidth is being used by the DoD right now...

Metricom's Ricochet was a great system if you could get it, but I was never able to consider it: they never got enough of Austin covered to really make it an option. The only people I know that were really able to use Ricochet were in the Silicon Valley (San Jose) area, where the coverage is pretty good. It would be nice to see this approach (if not this company and its implementation) make a comeback - microcells are a great idea technically, but it appears to me that the cost of getting the rights for microcell sites is what killed them, compounded by the sheer volume of sites they need. I expect Metricom's cost of site acquisition was astronomical, except in places like San Jose where the city gave them carte blanche to hang boxes on any light pole.