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Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves
fobbman writes: "Portland Oregon's Pioneer Square (the heart of downtown) has had free WiFi access provided since February by Personal Telco, which is a local group of computer hobbyists. Now Starbuck's is planning on offering the same service on the same band in the same area for $29.95 a month, according to this story in the local fishwrap. Without regulation or licensing, and with WiFi growing, this could become a common problem."
Isn't there a law in the US of A that basicly (very basicly) says "If your charging for it/running it as a part of company infrustructure, then you need to change to fit in with the public free users" ??
Of course not. Those public free users are obviously Evil Terrorist Commie Content Pirates(tm), and should be kicked off in favor of the Good American Patriotic Capitalist(tm) company!
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I wonder to what degree this article is an actual documentation of a dispute. According to the article, Starbucks didn't even know there was a conflict. The Personal Telco people just don't want to be forced off "their channel". It seems like this whole "news" article is just a sly advertisment for T-Mobile and Starbucks and their new partnership.
My other first post is car post.
Someone explain why this is a problem... If both parties use modern wireless technology, can't they just co-exist? Users will be free to connect to the free access point or buy a login for the Starbucks point. And they shouldn't render each other unusable no matter how close they are.
The University, of course, would be laughed out of court by the FCC, as unregulated means unregulated. No lawyer would have to be hired, no money or significant time expended, just read the relevant sections out of the FCC regulations to the judge and go home.
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Also, a corporate sponsored setup would have the potential to have a higher speed backbone in and out of the shop, and ultimately be able to provide better service than the free guys.
Not really. T-mobile has hooked up this node (and quite a few others from what I've heard, for cost reasons) to the 'Net with a satellite connection. That means ~400Kbps downstream and horrible latency.
The PTP node on the other hand is directly connected to two almost entirely idle load-balanced T1's.
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I read the article, and I'm wondering how Personal Telco can afford to provide access to two T1's for free. Last I heard, that kind of high-quality bandwidth still doesn't come cheap.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Everyone is saying no I was there first. You know T-Mobile is not going to do anything. Personal Telco should do the friendly thing and just move to a different channel. What channel your on makes no difference in how long it takes to get a link anyway. At leastr that's been my experience.
Gorkman
because of this line (from article):
Now, they can inadvertently connect to the Starbucks paid service.
I predict that starbucks will go to the courts about how people are "stealing" their service... It's probably only a matter of time before the lawyers will be on this. If this does end up happening, imagine the precedent. That means no more free WiFi. Although, on the other hand, perhaps Personal Telco could start charging a donation of $5/year or something so they can claim the same from Starbucks customers.
If it isn't their fault, then whose fault is it?
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