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Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves

Posted by timothy on from the dr-evil-at-play dept.

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."

2 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who was there first? by Jetson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why does Starbucks get priority? The other network is there FREE as a PUBLIC SERVICE

    Free vs. commercial shouldn't even enter into it. The real issue here is that companies are flooding a portion of the radio spectrum that has been set aside for general use and then clamouring for regulation after the fact in order to prop up their business model and turn "users" into "customers".

  2. Re:802.11b supports overlapping networks by BlueUnderwear · · Score: 5, Interesting
    For more efficient transmission, you can even program your access points to use different frequencies.

    Yes, but the point of the story is that Starbucks (deliberately ?) chose to use the same frequency as the free guys.

    And yes, the networks do manage to coexist, but with significant performance drops due to them sharing the same frequency.

    --
    Say no to software patents.