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Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)?

Posted by Cliff on from the beyond-their-effective-lifetime dept.

eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"

10 of 650 comments (clear)

  1. FP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Frok Pok

  2. NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Dear CmdrTaco

    Are you a flaming homosexual or just the regular kind?

    TIA

    1. Re:NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Moderation 0
      50% Offtopic
      50% Interesting

      When that is meta-moderated, it is going to hurt your chances of being moderator again. In the future simply rate it as "underrated" and you will not have to worry about meta-moderation.

    2. Re:NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
      So what happens when I moderate all negative moderations as "unfair"?

      I never get to moderate ever?

      Bicch-ass moderators should be elevating the good posts, not wasting their finite points trying to push an infinite number of turds below the surface!

  3. Re:TANSTAAFL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    mod parent up!

  4. RIAA by tarawa · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I think the RIAA would attack it because it could be used to transfer copyrighted material easily and freely.

  5. OMG - Sad news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I just saw it on Google(R) News, Gregory Peck has died. Peck, one of the truely Great actors, died today at 87.

    Gregory Peck, unlike Steven King, will be missed.

  6. it is like.... by u19925 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    having a potluck everyday!!!

  7. Flaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Yours in sodomy,

    Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda

  8. Re:I'd say it's inevitable by Lord+Kano · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    Oh, and a big fuck you to the multitude of rabid capitalists who think thereâ(TM)s something inherently wrong with not wanting to pay for stuff. You can take your American Dream, consumer culture, built-in obsolescence, slave to the machine, bleached pop culture ideas and go fucking rot. Itâ(TM)s idiots with a attitudes like yours that make it possible for someone to sell boxes of fucking diapers to clean your floor with when a fucking mop will do. You are the modern day serf... go back to your damned cubicle and shut up.

    Why do you think we don't have global wireless energy right now? Because JP Morgan knew that there was no place to put a meter.

    I'm sorry that you don't like it, and I'm sorry that it has so permeated every facet of life, but money makes the world go round.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano