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Colorado May Allow Cities To Provide Wifi
miguelitof writes "According to the TheDenverChannel.com, Colorado cities may soon be able to provide wireless internet service to their citizens. The state Senate will vote today (April 5th) on Colorado Senate Bill 152, which would allow cities to provide wireless internet access. The only proviso would be that cities would have to get approval from voters to use tax dollars. The cost to provide internet access to a 16 square mile area is about $600k. A city could charge as little as $16 a month and cover expenses."
You could use 3 channels in a grid pattern and place access points so that APs using the same channel cause no interference to each other. Then, you could use some hardcore APs which provide QOS to wireless clients, so if you're running bittorrent, you get 128K download rate, whereas someone just browsing the web would get the rest of the bandwidth. It's all technical problems that can be solved.
It's illegal in most places for municipalities to provide comercial services unless those services are considered of essential public value and not suitable for comercial involvement. That's why most utility companies are run by companies who purchase a contract from the company rather than the company itself.
Amtrak is also a good example, for the same reasons you cited. Amtrak trains are notoriously late, and very outdated.
Amtrak is the result of the Federal Government stepping in to keep service from dying. Amtrak was created because the passenger rail service couldn't compete on a for-profit basis between expanding air travel and post-interstate road travel. The idea was to preserve a service for the citizens of this country and keep at least the spectre of competetion in the medium and long distance mass transit, to keep the airlines semi-honest.
Amtrak has its problems and many are self-imposed, but some of its biggest are external. Amtrak actually makes a profit, while providing decent service, in an area know as the "Northeast Corridor". This is because of two important considerations not found in other parts of the country.
First, Amtrak OWNS most of the track it uses here. Most of the railroad tracks are owned by various heavy freight companies, who charge usage fees for other trains to run on. While the fees add to Amtraks operating costs, the real problem is that of priority. For obvious reasons, the company that owns track has priority over anyone renting access. So sometimes Amtrak trains are delayed because they must wait for a long a slow freight train that is using part of the route.
This is also a major obstacle for upgrading Amtrak's rolling stock as well. Newer trains (like those in Europe or Japan) are simply too fast for the most of the current rails. Since it doesn't most of the track it uses Amtrak can't force the neccesary upgrades, and the only alternative is building new track. New track would not only be expensive to lay, it would also require additional "right-of-ways". In many places that would ultimately require use of eminent domian. So that option looks to be untenably costly, both in finicial and political senses.
Second, there is a high volume of travelers and even before 9-11 traveling by train took a comparable amount of time for less money. In fact, many Amtrak stops were also local subway stations, so it would often be easier and quicker to get to your final destination. In other words, Amtrak is competative here.
On a final note, Amtrak was not ment to be a profit making venture. It was intended to preserve an option for traveling throughout the country for people that couldn't afford to fly or drive everywhere. In summary without Amtrak, there would be no passenger rail service in most of the USA. You can argue whether or not that is worthwhile, but there is no alternative.
and I'll tell you why. THis is QWEST and the CO Telecom Assoc. getting a bill passed that PREVENTS local gov from doing what they NEED to do when QWEST WONT DO IT! Fact is it has alays been legal for CO local govs to build their own infrastructure nd offer it to the public if they wanted to. NOW, if this bill gets passed, there will be unreasonable restrictions to that activity. Some IDIOT at assocaited press failed to research before publishing, and spn it to look ike the bill ALLOWS, when it really RESTRICTS. And, for all you snivelling ninnies that want to "keep gov out of telecom" let me tell you the TRUTH: YOU live in a CITY. WE live in the STICKS, and no major telecom will build the infrastructure to serve us, because they dont care about us, because the "subscriber density" is too low. This is a typical reaction from a bunch of know nothing metro geekamo elitists that have never considered what it must be like to live in a rural area and be underserved in all areas of service that are taken for granted in cities. Anyway, if you live in COlorado, CALL YOUR LEGISLATOR and tell him/her to vote NO on SB 05-152. If you live in another state, you'll get your chance because the telecom lobby is gunning for you too, to restrict your right to do what you want, in all states. HERE is TRUTH: http://www.ruralcolorado.org/index.php?option=cont ent&task=view&id=275&Itemid=2
read it, know it, live it.
Sincerely,
Old Ranger
in Colorado