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Free Wi-Fi Threatened?
jasonmicron writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting that if certain state officials have their way, cities in the state of Texas will no longer be able to offer free WiFi to their citizens. This could set a dangerous precedent if passed, as broadband providers could start lobbying officials in the other 49 states to ban free WiFi as well. According to the article, Pennsylvania has already fallen victim to such a law but it excluded Philedelphia due to the city's 'existing efforts.'"
I think we should be asking ourselves whether public wifi is a good idea, if competition is available (not always the case, but is true in big cities like Philadelphia). I mean, how reliable would such a service be? How fast? Secure? And the funding has to come from somewhere....
Note how many of the first comments in this thread are all Anonymous Cowards and are all anti-municipal WIFI. The Telcos have millions to spend on PR to kill muni wifi. Looks like some of those millions is going to the Internet.
Muni WiFi ALL THE WAY!!
As soon as my metro area goes muni wifi, I am gonna cut off my DSL AND my landline. Buh-Bye Big Telco....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Good question! On that note, why do we have well-maintained roads and highways, and streetlamps, and hospitals, and schools, and firemen and policemen? Why don't we just privatize EVERYTHING, dammit!!
How about free services offered by free citizens at their own expense?
It's not. But if the residents of a city want to share the cost of wireless internet access, why should state legislatures and the telecom industry be allowed to stop them? But even if the law gets passed, there's nothing to stop people from creating non-profit organizations to do the same thing. It would just be a bit more work to get the required funding.
what benefits exist if the government provides wifi networks instead of corporations?
Probably lower costs for the consumers. But, that's only if it stays at the city level. My gut feeling is that doing something like that at the state or federal level would only waste lots of time and money.
who is going to pay for this?
The tax payers, obviously. Or, in the case of a non-profit organization, anyone who wants to help cover the costs. Keep in mind that if money was short, a non-profit org might have to limit access to contributors only, or cap bandwidth for non-contributors.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
It seems that there are three obvious sides here-
1) WiFi/Net access is a luxury. It is not a basic utility and should not be considered one. The availability of massive quantities of information to the public might be in the general interest, but they can go to a library.
2) Net access is becoming a utility. It is as necessary to the everyday life of the average american as running water and electricity. Remember, we started out without them. At what point does Net Access work that way? We're not quite at that debate yet. We probably won't be there for a while, although maybe it'll be considered if and when somebody establishes a monopoly.
3) Incentive. Are communities providing free wifi to encourage businesses to move in/stay local? This seems the best reason to do it. Although it might be better addressed by providing a tax incentive to businesses to provide indoor coverage than by a government-controlled system that's going to be inefficiently managed. [As a side-note, are these systems going to remain as open as they are after the first few major hacks from such points? What about liability for the Wireless Access provider? Does he have any responsibility to be sure his hardware isn't being used for malicious purposes, or is it like a payphone in the back of your business?]
Mmmm... just a few uninformed thoughts.
The real answer is that there are solid reasons that exist for municipal wifi. Say you have a city like Philadelphia blanketed with wifi, or wimax, or whatever they decide to use (wifi for now). Cops are always online, ambulances are able to be online while traveling, trucking and delivery are better able to work with real-time inventory.
Then there's the issue of the digital divide. Forget the individuals, let's talk about the communities that aren't cost-effective for the ISPs to run broadband into. If the government doesn't get involved, what are they going to do?
I live in Long Beach, CA. The downtown is covered with free wifi. It's great, but most certainly hurts the cable and telephone companies. Everyone I know who lives around there picks up the wireless from downtown at home. Don't think that these anti-municipal wifi bills weren't preceded by heavy lobbying from Verizon (in Texas) and the cable companies.
There are places in the US where broadband is not available. *A collective gasp sucks the air out of the room* That's right, those places exist. For example, I live in the big empty spot in Virginia west of Richmond, east of Lynchburg, and Northwest of South Hill. There's no service here. The only hope of service is if the local public school system can get permission to put up a wireless network. (Which they're trying to do) The big corporations do not think it's profitable to wire the area, which is probably true. Heck, there's STILL no cable here; if you want TV, enjoy satellite or an antenna. It's so bad, Verizon won't even update the phone lines enough for me to dial in to any service provider at a speed higher than 26.4k. You read that right. And that, my friends, is why government should be allowed to provide internet. - Trip
1/ Quality of service. Government involvement doesn't stamp out competition. It could spur private enterprises to provide better, faster, stabler, less conjested service. It could potentially mean *more* competition.
2/ This is a public good. Many hard-core libertarians would disagree with money spent on public goods, and that's really just a matter of philosophy. But given the precedents of public parks (why build public parks when you could have Green Grass Enterprises provide parks and charge the little kids money each time they want to go down a slide?), public libraries (why have libraries when you can be overcharged by Borders?), a military (why have government build and own the nukes that protected us from the USSR and not NukeUSA Inc.?), etc., what is wrong with public Internet? Oh, right, Internet is more lucrative than the park business. Anyway, enough sarcasm. The point is, the precedent is set. Sometimes the line between special interests and genuine public goods can be blurry, but in this case, I'd definitely call it a public good, and by precedent, it should be fine!
3/ A rising tide raises all ships. Sometimes, social engineering is a good thing. Seeing as how much a paradigm the Internet is, getting people access to it can help change the nature of society. By the way, most economists (even conservative ones) consider education and information to be public goods.
And /. has already gone down that long road arguing the pros/cons of sharing bandwidth with your neighbors, I know all the arguments, I've done all the precautions, we're not going there for this discussion.
Yes, because we all know that private companies are always the greatest for competence and customer service. In fact, the last three ISP's I've dealt with...
Wait...had morons who wouldn't know a processor from a hard smack across the forehead. And when I've worked on government accounts to service datacenter UPS's, the admins there are generally smarter and better then the equivalent corporate ones.
As to "forcing" you to buy something? Parent indicated a CITIZEN REFERENDUM OR INITIATIVE putting the taxes for this service to a popular vote. If people don't want it, it'll fail overwhelmingly and no one will be "forced" into anything. And if it passes, and the government service sucks as badly as you think it will, private companies will come along and offer better service and make tons of money. Of course, if the government service is as good as promised, problem solved.
You so-called "lovers of the free market" are the ones who tell us that it's OUR problem to figure out how to get health insurance when it's prohibitively expensive, and OUR problem to get a job. Well great, fine. Then it's the CORPORATION'S problem to figure out how to break into a government's market area, and if they can't, well, there's the free market, and some have an advantage where some don't!
Stereotypes and joking aside, not all government employees are idiots, and CERTAINLY not all corporate employees have two braincells to clack together.
And before you start in-I'm a private sector employee myself.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.