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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."
And since I had to pay for their stupid stadium that I didn't want, now they can pay for my useful wireless internet access which they may or may not want.
This is how it really should be, Here a company is trying to block their competitor from building a new store using money from the local government. Ultimately it was ruled that the citizens should be able to vote for wether their tax dollers got used for it. Of course everyone there wants this new store to open.
A month or up front? If up front, what is the monthly cost? With numbers like that, it almost seems like they could make money off of offering it...
With a population of 37,500 sharing a 802.11g connection, I'd hate to think what kind of latency would occur with BitTorrent and gaming...
it sounds like a great idea. However, local governments don't have the same incentives to provide good service at low cost. I would hope that this would still allow private companies to compete.
Long term, it would be nice to have high speed wireless access everywhere and have this be a public services paid for through taxes. Similar to public restrooms, drinking fountains, parks, etc.
Public tax dollars should NEVER go to provide useful services to the people. Sounds suspiciously like communism to me. What about the poor companies? Its a slippery slope people, next thing you know the government will be picking up garbage and paving streets! Stop it now before its too late!
Starsucks
If that's all the outlay required, what say a few of us Slashdotters got together, put a business plan which calls for $1mill, goto some some VCs and tell them about the next sure thing, then take the company public and retire by November.... Or did I miss something?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I live in Milwaukee, which is approximately 16 square miles. Within that 16 square mile area, there are around 600,000 residents (talking City of Milwaukee, not the metro area). If the cost to provide wireless runs $600K/month, that comes to $1/citizen/month. Even if you guess that it would cost 10 times as much (given the way our local government works ;), that's still only $10/month. Where is that $16/m figure coming from?
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Whatever happened to the concept of Mesh Networks , that sprovide high speed higher security Internet that was seen as a bettet alternative to WiFI ?
Infact I read in SPECTRUM that it has already been implemented in Vegas.
Why does yahoo do this
A city could charge as little as $16 a month and cover expenses.
Wouldn't that depend on the size of the city and how many people would actually want to pay $16/month?
Or did they mean, $16/month total, for everyone?</not-really-a-serious-question>
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
And I want it in UK!
I've never voted on handing over public tax money to corporations. Nobody ever asked me if I want to give money to a store to open in my neighborhood. I wish they would, I'd like the oppertunity to vote.
I was reading Wallmart has over $1 billion dollars in tax dollars from all of us. That is money we pay to government that is handed over to them. Some places offer free land to large buisnesses to lure them to build factories.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
It should also be noted that free wifi has an immediate upshot of mass conversion to VOIP.
Adding to that: Wifi handhelds are around the corner -- which means that cellphone (and landline) carriers have a lot to worry about.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Well, at least as far as healthcare, they do. Take a look at socialized healthcare systems in the world - check costs vs. lifespans/infant mortality/etc. In general, they're very cheap for the QoS that they provide.
A good chunk of total healthcare costs are related to insurance and billing overhead. Simplifying the system yields huge benefits, in cases like that. Certainly, this doesn't apply to all government programs...
of what happens when the government locks out private competition and runs its own service. It costs $0.37 to send a single letter and by law, UPS and Fedex cannot send first class mail. So what that means is that you have to pay more for a service the government provides because it doesn't give you a choice. It's either the government's service or no service at all.
Where I live in Virginia, you can get free or low cost WiFi in any of the coffee shops, and eventually other places will no doubt start providing it. I don't want my local government providing socialized WiFi in my area because local governments are notorious for being inept at spending control and quality of service. I'd rather pay adelphia for my access, have a wireless router on the connection and be able to go to a coffee shop and get free when I'm out and about. Barnes & Nobles' starbucks cafe charges $4.00 for 2 hours, but it's a good quality of service.
Next thing you know, though, it won't be the government picking up trash, but government telling you that you cannot compete with it. That's the way it works. There is nothing that pissess off government bureaucrats than the idea that the citizenry can go elsewhere and completely ignore them.
Oh and add in the fact that government-run Wifi will probably be completely open to law enforcement since it's a government service, not a private service. Watch the local cops argue that since it is a government utility, they don't need a warrant to log every action you take and periodically scan through them for criminal violations. That's one thing you really don't ever have to worry about the private sector allowing.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Perhaps I haven't thought this through... But doesn't this seem odd to anyone? Let me get this straight - the local authorities want to use tax dollars to cover an entire city with their "ISP". Meanwhile, the local ISPs and (presumably already) WISPs do what, exactly? Why would I want to pay an ISP for service, when my tax dollars are already subsidising the local authorities to provide the same service? Imho, if they want to provide Internet access, they should get out of politics and go find their own funding, and set up and honest to God ISP business - compete like everybody else has to. What's next? State-wide Internet? Country-wide?
...which would allow cities to provide wireless internet access.
This makes it sound like it is currently illegal to do this. Is it illegal in Colorado to have a city set up a wireless network?
-Valiss
I personally don't want any of my tax dollars used to fund any free/cheap technological service to anybody. Cities should just stick to funding the police, fire, water, and grounds maintenance, i.e., the traditional stuff cities are supposed to fund.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Cigarette lighter adapter: Check.
Now, dammit, SOMEbody in this town has got to have that last episode of Battlestar Galactica...
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.
Our hillside association has had this WiFi thing come up a few times. Someone down in Allenspark proper has been encouraging the town to try to get some sort of WiFi arrangement going. A variety of plans have come up.
It's not flying very well with us, anyway. People from Denver who come to their cabins all the time do maybe want satellite TV and other amenities, but there's a pretty sizeable contingent of people on the hill who drive from far off -- Minnesota for us, Texas for some -- and who don't thrill at the idea of dragging the leash behind the car.
The issue as far as I can tell has never been whether the town had the right to provide the service, or contract for it with private companies. Nobody told us it was illegal; they're just using the town's size as a way of getting the negotiating leverage, or trying to. I believe at least one of the proposals intended to use public money to contract with someone, but that got voted down... Which is, you know, how democracy functions. So no problem.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The city I live in is already establishing WiFi. The ISP involved made a deal with the local utilities and the city to use the municipal vehicals and stree/power poles already setup. In return, the city gets WiFi access for the police cars and some other benefits. :)
They are only charging $15.99 a month, and it can be included right in the utilities bill.
Speeds still leave a bit to be desired, as they didn't use one of the better technologies, but they are working on it. I've had speeds up to 900kbps on occasion, but average seems more like 3-400kbps.
Oh, I can also loggin with just my wireless connection on the laptop and not need their router too, so I can go to the local coffee shops that don't have WiFi available.
Yeah, companies never cut costs (HUGE lay-offs, cuts in benifits, etc, while the Exec's raise their own pay and keep customer prices exactly the same).
Nope.., Never happens...
Of course, less than one minute on google will show you news article after news article that proves the opposite, but hey, this is Slashdot, so lets ignore all the facts, eh?
bork bork bork!
"Jeff Dunn, a spokesman for Qwest, which provides high-speed Internet service, said his company is not worried about competition. He said consumers are more concerned about service, especially when their Internet connection stops working in the middle of the night."
:)
Really? If Qwest thinks I would suffer worse service under any alternate provider they are seriously delirious. Great job guys, you certainly have my vote
before cable and DSL providers start complaining about this. I can understand if the speed isn't going to be all that great, but why would someone pay $20-50 or cable/DSL when you can get decent wi-fi for $16? Also how do they plan on securing such an infrastructure? As we just read, the Feds cracked WEP in 3 min.
What planet do you come from? Profits come from the difference between prices and costs.
Governments may have an advantage of economy of scale, but over time that will be overwhelmed by union featherbedding, corruption, giving sinecures to family members, etc.. What's missing is a profit motive to run economically and competitively.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You make a good point, but "lower costs than any business could" seems a red herring to me. It's the same red herring that all the opponents of this bill use -- the idea that the government is going to be competing with businesses and have an unfair advantage over them.
While implementations may vary, I highly doubt that the government is going to be in the business of building wi-fi equipment, routers, etc. They are going to hire other companies to do this. They are going to hire other companies to do maintenance when necessary, and they are eventually going to have to pay an ISP to connect their wi-fi service to the Internet.
What this means is that there is going to be plenty of opportunity for businesses to make money providing wi-fi service to a city.
Of course they might not make as much money as they would charging monthly service fees to individuals in the city, because the city has collective bargaining power. Boo hoo. They know that the government is not going to be competing with them per se, but rather limiting their ability to gouge customers. They're just using the "competition" argument to invoke the name of Capitalism in the same cynical way that patriotism is invoked to get us to agree with things that have nothing to do with patriotism.
Always be wary of a large corporate/government entity that says that you should not be able to pool your resources with others and thus enjoy the same benefits as they do. Always be wary of anyone whose definition of a level playing field is the status quo with them holding all the advantages.
The enemies of Democracy are
Portland, Oregon has been slowly working on a plan like this for awhile. Unfortunately, the process has proven to be just as slow as a company like Qwest.1 2/13/focus3.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2004/
At least we have the Personal Telco project:
http://www.personaltelco.net/static/index.html
"Buisnesses" (sic) never cut costs.
What planet do you come from? Profits come from the difference between prices and costs.
I think he meant businesses never cut costs to their customers. Which is true, unless they are forced to by competitive pressure. Like you said, it's income minus costs, so why would they want to reduce income? If it won't get them more sales, it's counter-productive.
The enemies of Democracy are
Can someone explain why a law had to be created to allow this?
But how many government programs have been a success? They will mess this up, you can bet the farm on it. Governments made this mess in the first place by signing exclusive deals with only one provider and providing them with a monopoly. now look at what they are doing.
this will end up a mess.
Not to mention fact that the FBI can hack a wireless net in 3 minutes, so they'd never need to get a wiretap order to watch what you do... (and neither would the RIAA/MPAA)
Yep, sounds like the sort of thing every Slashdot reader should champion!
http://www.freepress.net/communityinternet/=CO
SB 152 was a POS legislation from the get-go, and many of us Coloradoans have been actively lobbying against it. State senator Jennifer Viega threw this gem together to pay back the telcos that financed her campaign. While the revised bill passed is better than the original, it's still bad news for municipal services.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/arti cle/0,1299,DRMN_38_3545616,00.html
This is no different to me than a university buying a HUGE satelite dish and buying cable programming directly from vendors. When I was in student government, we voted on what channels we wanted to buy. I remember cnn was something like $0.02 per person, sci-fi was a dime, we even got HBO for a dollar a person. All the others, TBS and MTV and USAnetwork were all under a dime each, some under a nickle. The whole budget of 25 channels came out to under $2 per person. My home cable bill is 50 times as much. Plus, at school we had free internet. This was all done by student fee's, which was much less than what anyone could buy from a company.
The ONLY complaint I had was the damn Pepsi vending machines. It was impossible to get a Diet Coke on campus. And a can cost a dollar.
It all depends on how good the oversight is. If the local town has sharp people governing, and they cut all the crap out and just provide the basic service at the lowest cost, everyone wins. If they start thinking "since cost is so low... we'll add in $0.50 per person and use it for some unrelated expense" then we are all fucked.
After that experiance, I lived in a condominium building. I tried to get the board to pass a resolution where we would all buy cable collectively and negotiate a price with the provider. I knew other apartment buildings worked out deals where the per unit cost was less than half the bill of someone buying directly. Unfortunatly, the old geezers on the board did not want cable, they were happy with CBS, NBC, and ABC over the airways.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
We lose money on every transaction but we make up for it in volume!
r .asp?ppa=8knpp%5EZltmlupoXUnj%216%3C%22bfek%5C%21
Worst case the Texas legisature is considering a handout to Texas Utilities (TXU) (*) to allow TXU to tax all ratepayers to subsidize Broadband Over Powerlines. So the idea of a WiFi tax showing up in your mailbox isn't all that farfetched.
(*) Link: http://powermarketers.netcontentinc.net/newsreade
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Corporations do, and they will smack any competition down like a one winged fly.
This has been happening in several states already.
All I can ask is where is the citizen outrage?
It's time for a revolution.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Are we talking ISP-grade hardware here (non-NATted connection with all ports open to every user) or something simpler like a few dozen T1 lines and NAT routers on top of street-lighting posts (giving a connection which is good for surfing but bad for P2P as ports cant be forwarded)?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
According to the estimates and data above, Jersey City residents could have wifi for $0.26 a month. Over 60 cities can do it for less than $5 per month, including Philadelphia, which is aiming to convert part of the city into a wifi zone.
The following towns/areas can all do it for under $10m as a startup cost and for less than $10/m per resident. Note they are mostly concentrated in New England.
I really hope this takes off. It's a great idea, and another way to boost local economies.
Sorry if this "report" is a bit limited, I just used data available while I had some free time. Don't base your business model on this. Or, if you do, and it's succesful, I want a cut.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
When the FBI can break wireless encryption in 3 minutes, I'll do my online banking over cable.
;-)
I like my location (trafic, shopping, schools), it would take more than $300/year to get me to move.
AT least my cable is going to get cheaper
But corporations are made of people?
...
They may be the oldest known illuminati
but they are people.
Why should I be outraged?
Because you say so?
You're only one person.
A corporation is made up of many, many people.
People like you and me.
--The Dude
Are there any health issues to consider when spreading a network of wireless access points across an entire city?
For those of us in the Qwest "service" area, this statement borders on hilarious. They are, without question, one of the worst service providers in existence. I'd gladly put my internet connection in the hands of a local government before Qwest any day.
but some companies are trying to make it so. Yet, they do not wish to offer wifi to places like Rifle or say west of pueblo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I don't understand why you guys are all so bent on the government providing internet access for people? Have we all not learned that the government can rarely do anything right? Has anyone thought the whole thing through, such as the long-term cost of maintaining the infrastructure, the security implications, legal liability, children exposure to pornography, illegal activity, etc? What does it cost to hire qualified people to maintain the whole thing, perform repairs, etc? And why is the government better at doing it than a private corporation? The government controlling your internet access is not the way to go. You are just asking for trouble, from any perspective you want to name. Freedom of speech, security, online well-being of children, financial losses, increased taxes, etc. What jackass bureaucrat will dictate what websites you can and cannot go to, or what kind of traffic you can and cannot put on the network?
But it's still valid to be opposed to the government getting involved in providing a service which can be provided by the private sector because it's against the principles of capitalism. The logic is simple: If a company hasn't set up a city-wide WiFi network, it has to be presumed there's no profit in it. If there's no profit in it, why should the government provide it? I'm all in favour of people voluntarily banding together to do this on a non-profit basis, but this is other people's money being used here, and I'm sure they'd know how to spend it better themselves...
So, you're saying that the Colorado State legislature has to pass a law before the City government is allowed to do anything?
Why do you bother with a City administration then?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
What a hoot to scroll through this slashdot page and see all the whining and screeching from the conformists/police-Staters/libertarians/freemarket
cultists!
Don't worry, cultist--the analysis of this bill as posted by Zonk is wrong. Just see the post on this page by the Colorado leftist who points out that this bill instead outlaws muniWiFi.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled whining/screeching, on some OTHER post...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Supposedly, the FCC can censor and fine because they are 'moderating' the public airwaves.
What happens when the internet is a 'public' service? Will obscene/controversial/pr0n materials be subject to censorship and/or fining because they offend the public? (Like Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge, Janet's b00bie, etc?)
In which case, I (and many internet users) would opt to *pay* for unfiltered/moderated internet access. So what's the point beside giving the government another entity to spend money on and more power to control what people see, hear and read?
I used to think it was a good idea. Then the the rapid FCC started throwing it's weight around. Then congress and the FCC started talking about regulating cable and sattelite radio for decency. Now I am just paranoid of another piece of government regulation.
Remember, the Chinese are trying their damndest to regulate the internet, too!
[I can't define what is pornography.] "But I know it when I see it."-- Potter Stewart, SCOTUS Justice
So what, we should be down on our knees thanking them for allowing it? It's already allowed, unless there was prior legislation prohibiting it, in which case I'm not exactly going to pretend to be grateful. Last week at the Freedom to Connect meeting, Susan Crawford began her posted comments with the following:
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I used to work at UPS (in the accounting office). At that time, and probably still, UPS and FedEx were required to have their rates (within the US, at least) approved by the U.S. Postal Service, which kept those rates artificially high.
Not, I think, that UPS or FedEx ever object too much to that.
If the Federal government were not orchistrating this scheme, it would be an illegal trust (cartel?).
There is not nearly enough love in the world, but there is far too much trust.
that smacks of South Park ;)
Free health care ... ... ;)
I would have said dogs doing it w/ cats
But I cought my Beagle in action the other week
Is that Dayton Ohio?
The "High Tech Broadband Coalition" has published their "Policy Position on Municipal Broadband". Briefly, they support municipal efforts to ensure universal broadband access, even if the city has to provide broadband itself. Consisting of the BSA, CEA, NAM, SIA, ITI, and TLA, the position is important, if not completely surprising. But the TIA, which represents telcos who compete with these municipal efforts, is very surprising as a member of the coalition. TIA members are busy buying legislators to keep municipal competition out, while their trade org is promoting keeping city governments in. Are Mark Cuban's complaints about the RIAA misrepresenting his content corp starting to sound familiar?
--
make install -not war
Do you realize that your argument is a huge non-sequitor ?
I am bad at almost all the sports known to the human kind, and yet I manage to enjoy most of them, I don't see how complaining about tax spending is a reflection in the sporting abilities of the original poster.
I do agree with the mayor premise though, the goverment will find ways to spend our money, and most of the time we will not agree with them. But that is the price of a Republic: someone else, empowered by the "people" makes the decisions, period.
No wonder the Colorado Native is more ellusive than the NW's mysterious Sasquatch.
--- Old Time NeXThead
I was thinking about the recent conflict between municipal and commercial Internet access providers. Government-owned Internet access that blankets an area, whether it be via wireless or fiber-optic cable or something equally useful, is a great thing to have from a property-values and quality-of-life standpoint (hence the city's motivation to build it). However, it obviously competes against commercial ISP's, which (rightfully) feel undercut by the government.
How about this compromise:
Government-owned ISP's focus on doing what they do best: building out infrastructure and reaching through the unprofitable "last mile" to get all customers -- not just the most desirable large corporations or dense urban populations -- hooked up. The purpose of this infrastructure would be to transparently pass packets through, acting as a pipe between their customers and the Internet.
Commercial ISP's focus on providing content and configuring the network to deliver that content. IP address assignment (DHCP), provisioning of subnets, useful servers (email, web hosting, newsgroups), etc. would be handled by competing commercial ISP's. All the various levels and varieties of access found today would still be available: customers could choose to pay extra for a static IP, or certain premium content, or whatever else strikes their fancy. All of this content would be delivered via the municipal infrastructure! Both commercial and government play useful parts here.
Do you think this compromise would actually work in practice? I'd love to see it given a chance somewhere....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I predict this thing to become more censored that you can imagine after the first busy body mother finds her son looking at something offensive on the internet.
What happens when children are caught chatting with people innappropriately of the wrong age...
These municipal internet connections will be highly politicized as soon as they become popular and guess what... they may make it unprofitable for a company to provide the access.
So then you are left with government censored internet access with no commercial alternatives.
Please people... let's let private enterprise compete it out.
Which carriers in Pittsburgh are doing wireless? Even the dinky little ISP here that DOES do wireless, only lites up a couple of hotspots -- it's not city-wide.
Actually, there aren't lots of options, had you done your research. This is part of the problem with monopoly -- there is only one.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
This municipal wireless network thing would be interesting (perhaps as a backup to the cable modem), but I haven't been able to use my 802.11b card with my notebook ever since I upgraded to FC2 and a 2.6 kernel.
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I have a couple criteria in determining if something should be provided by the government (i.e. you should be taxed to pay for it). To be justified, it must get a "yes" for both of the following questions.
1. Is it providing something that cannot be feasibly provided by the private sector?
I live in Colorado (just outside Fort Collins) and have friends (in Windsor) who use a private wireless ISP because they are out of range for DSL and cable. My laptop in my office can see the APs for another wireless ISP (I use cable and also have the choice of DSL from several providers). There is also a local wireless COOP that can service anyone within a 12-25-mile radius (line of site) of Horsetooth Rock. I can think of 10 places in town where I can get free WIFI and several others where I can pay a couple bucks to use their connected computer (i.e. for those who can't afford computers).
2. Is it important enough that the funding of it should be enforced by law/force (should people be thrown in jail and have their assets forfeited for not funding it)?
The first question already disqualified this for me, but it fails this question as well. High-speed Internet is nice, but most people can get it anyway. Those who cannot can visit a local coffee house for a couple bucks, or use dial-up.
Given that we've gotten a "NO" for both of these questions this is not a reasonable place for the government to provide services in.
I have a couple criteria in determining if something should be provided by the government (i.e. you should be taxed to pay for it). To be justified, it must get a "yes" for both of the following questions.
1. Is it providing something that cannot be feasibly provided by the private sector?
I live in Colorado (just outside Fort Collins) and have friends (in Windsor) who use a private wireless ISP. My laptop in my office can see the APs for another wireless ISP (I use cable and also have the choice of DSL from several providers). There is also a local wireless COOP that can service anyone within a 12-25-mile radius (line of site) of Horsetooth Rock. I can think of 10 places in town where I can get free WIFI and several others where I can pay a couple bucks to use their connected computer (i.e. for those who can't afford computers).
I know people outside of Colorado Springs, on 5-acre lots (so not a density you'd think is attractive to ISPs). They have access to a wireless ISP and a Cable ISP...and there are a couple DSL providers who think they can service them despite the long phone lines.
I have a friend in **Brush** and even he has high-speed Internet.
2. Is it important enough that the funding of it should be enforced by law/force (should people be thrown in jail and have their assets forfeited for not funding it)?
The first question already disqualified this for me, but it fails this question as well. High-speed Internet is nice, but most people can get it anyway. Those who cannot can visit a local coffee house for a couple bucks, or use dial-up.
Given that we've gotten a "NO" for both of these questions this is not a reasonable place for the government to provide services in.
No, it's not. They're letting people to decide whether or not to take other people's money to subsidize this. Would it be fair to allow a company to compete that could take money from people at will? Even people who don't buy the product?
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
Why are people so against government provided WiFi. If you are given the option, then simply don't pay for it. If a group of people are willing to collect resources and offer a service that otherwise wouldn't be available, then there is nothing wrong with it. We have seen what happens when it is left to the private sector, if the government can provide internet at $16/m, then what am I paying $50/m for? On top of that, prices for broadband have becomed so comfrotably situated that it would take a radical buisness to push anyone in the private sector towards offering better services, at a lower cost. As for the people who are complaining about how poorly the government does things, the most poorly executed move by the government is to let the private sector grip us citizens by the balls. Unregulated and unrestricted buisness will just screw us over, and as part of the technology community, we are getting some of the worse of it. We are forced to pay rediculous prices, for services that can be as bad as they want, because it's a recent enough of a buisness model that no one has any idea what to expect from it, so they just accept being bent over. Also, just in case you weren't aware, there ARE people in this country that an additional $24/m can break them. To deny that the internet, as well as computers, are becoming necessary to funtioning in the real world. Cheap wireless internet access, as pointed out earlier, opens the door for all sorts of new oppurtunities, such as hand held VOIP phones, which would in turn create another service offered at a lower cost. And if you're happy paying $50/m for your cable, feel free to keep paying it. Better yet, enjoy paying $25/m for it after they start realizing that they need to stop screwing the consumer. If you're so concerned about the government doing a piss poor job, then why don't we, as people, try to govern ourselves. The fundementals of this country are built around ideas of people governing themselves, and not leaving all of the important descisions up to the figurehead. And as far as I'm concerned, the government is not a seperate entity that needs to stay away from the public sector, but is the very thing that defines the public sector. It is in place to allow people to provide people with goods and services as the people see fit. It's pretty weird how "unpatriotic" our current administration is.
Read that first link again... that's Milwaukee County, which is MUCH bigger than the City of Milwaukee. I couldn't find the actual size of Milwaukee, so I estimated, which I feel qualified to do since I've lived here almost my whole life. I think I'm actually overestimating the size, given the fact that West Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, and Shorewood cut into the city significantly.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Stevenson near where I live set up a free wifi mesh with funding from the local chamber of commerce. I can easily believe that by putting this sort of stuff in you can increase property values by more than enough to warrent the investment. Folks that don't like this-well they can buy property in a city that doesn't provide taxpayer supported wifi. This stuff is for a city infrastructure just like free drinking fountains-or free sidewalks. Probably one of the best things a city can do to spur economic development.
Do you realize that your argument is a huge non-sequitor?
I am bad at almost all the sports known to the human kind, and yet I manage to enjoy most of them, I don't see how complaining about tax spending is a reflection in the sporting abilities of the original poster.
Eh? How's it a non sequitur? It's obvious the poster doesn't enjoy pro sports (as evidenced by his curt wording). Moreover, it's obvious that he's not a small government advocate (as evidenced by his support for municipal WiFi). So it's not any stretch to assume the original poster has "got something against" pro sports.
You can hypothesize why all you like (maybe his dad beat him up when he was a kid). Me, I'd like to think it's because he's a fatty who can't run.
Oh, and FYI:
I do agree with the mayor premise though, the goverment will find ways to spend our money, and most of the time we will not agree with them. But that is the price of a Republic: someone else, empowered by the "people" makes the decisions, period.
The Stadium was a voter-approved undertaking. If you'd like an example of the wasting of tax dollars you'd be better served looking into the activities of Mayor Webb.
Personally, I think it's funny the amount of disdain geeks in Denver show for the stadium. One need not be an economics major to understand the ridiculous amount of revenue the Broncos bring to the Denver/metro area.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I stand corrected. That first link is worded very poorly. I actually think where I went wrong is that certain areas that are definitely part of the city are referred to differently, which lead me to believe they were separated in census data as well. Oh well. :)
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
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
yup
Our KC Wi-Fi project was killed because of treacherous cable and phone companies. They don't give a damn about the poor or the casual user. They want broadband and internet access to be only funneled through them. They also know that regular/pots and cable tv is dying. What they are doing by buying up politicians is TRUELY criminal. More so than someone robbing a 7-11. Thats right. White collar legal crime is happening right now .
This one is really easy folks.
Have the government offer a FREE or almost free wireless service, but don't make it overwhelmingly fast.
If business wants to compete, they will offer a better (faster) version for more money.
Easy.
Thank you for clarifying the last part of my post. I overlooked the detail about the Stadium being a voter-approved initiative.
However my point still stands, the conclusion:
- Person A is bad at sports
Does not follow the premise:
- Person A complains about its tax dollars being spent in a Sports stadium.
Does not matter how much you want to dress your argument, it is still a non-sequitur (and you know it).
Personally, I understand that you wanted to spice up your response to the original poster and in the process an ad-hominem was added. No big deal, each person has a different style in the way they respond to others.
The example you just gave was a non sequitur. However, my post was not. Do you see why?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Government doing it? Well, you can expect it to be ready in 10 years...
I really do prefer to trust an organization like Ile Sans Fil here in Montreal to get free urban wifi internet access in the city!
These guys are really doing something cool.
Montreal - Best city to live in!
[...] Does anybody here really believe that the lower taxes in the US and UK have nothing to do with that fact that we're more wealthy?
It is a well known fact that when you take into account those people under poverty threshold that are not registered in the jobless rate, there are more poor in the UK than in Germany or France.
I'm also in Fort Collins, and here's the scoop on wireless:
- At least 3 major wireless ISPs already exist (Digis, Colorado Wireless Exchange Coop, Skybeam.net)
- Many business have free Wi-Fi. Mugs (2 locations), Moxie, Wired Bean, Bean Cycle, Alleycat, Bear Rock, Silver Grill, and many more.
- The wireless spectrum is *way* over-crowded. There are over 7,000 APs in town, most on channel 6. In some locations, my built-in wireless can pick up as many as fifteen different access points.
- Cingular already offers EDGE here, and Verizon/Sprint will probably offer EVDO in the near future.
And wired:
- Comcast provides cable internet to the public. It's fast (4.0/384), has good latency, and is pretty reliable. It's a bit pricey, but overall not a bad value.
- Qwest provides some decent competition with DSL. 1.5/1.0 for $28 a month (+ $6 for their basic ISP) isn't too shabby.
So, right now, there's quite a bit of competition.
Government-sponsored WiFi isn't attractive, at least in Fort Collins, for several reasons:
1: It adds to spectrum pollution. Try running an AP when the public network has already sucked up 1 and 11 and everyone else is stuck on 6.
2: It's not necessry. We already have a major university with over 500 publically accessible computers, plus two libraries and countless free hotspots. There are already three WISPs operating in town. Wired broadband is available, and there is competition.
3: It forces out WISPs. Digis and Skybeam aren't "evil corporations", nor is CWX. They spent a lot of money on network buildout. Regardless of whether Digis and Skybeam could compete on features or price, there simply isn't enough spectrum for them to continue operating. CWX is in better shape (they don't use 802.11), but how can they compete against "free" wireless?
Look, there are some services that the government should provide - particularly when those services are life-critical (ambulance, fire, police) or can't be provided by private companies (roads). Internet, however, doesn't fall into that category. Particularly not when there is already a healthy market.
There's a reason that the IRS doesn't make tax software: whatever they could create would suck compared to TurboTax or TaxCut. Why should the government spend tax money to do what is already being done - and done well - by the private sector?
The logic is simple: If a company hasn't set up a city-wide WiFi network, it has to be presumed there's no profit in it.
Presuming something can't be profitable because no one has done it before may be simple logic, but it is also falacious. If that logic held, one would wonder how anyone would start anything at all. Fortunately, it doesn't hold. That aside...
If there's no profit in it, why should the government provide it?
Umm... because the people, who the government allegedly serves, want it?
Why should profit matter? The people decide that they want their city to provide wifi, and the city spends tax dollars to do so. Where does profit enter into it? I would certainly hope the city is not making a profit off the services it provides!
Now, if we assume hypothetically that a given city would not be a profitable market for a commercial venture, that sounds like exactly the case where there should be no objection at all to the city providing it.
I'm all in favour of people voluntarily banding together to do this on a non-profit basis, but this is other people's money being used here, and I'm sure they'd know how to spend it better themselves...
So, would the constituents of a local municipality voting to have their town provide wifi at cost count as voluntarily banding together?
The enemies of Democracy are
"The Florence-based Innocenti Research Centre of UNICEF, which carried out the study, says children are in poverty when they live in households with an income per head that is 50 percent or less of the national average for their country. "
So if we suddenly doubled the income of every American guess how many would still live in poverty. You guessed it, the exact same amount. Poverty is relative, it has nothing to do with a standard of living.
"UNICEF regional director in Geneva, Philip O'Brien, says that definition is relative. "The child living in poverty in the U.S. is clearly not as badly off as the child in Mexico," he said in a statement Tuesday (Mar. 1).
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
He seems to think, and I agree, that your post was a non-sequitur, because there is no particular correlation between pro-sports fandom and athletic ability. In my experience, quite the opposite. The athletic people I know aren't particularly likely to watch football, because they are outside instead; whereas the football fans are more likely to be out-of-shape couch potatoes.
In any case, in discussing whether voters should be allowed to decide to spend money on a wifi network, it does seem relevant to note that an overwhelming majority apparently think it is fine for them to decide to spend it on a football stadium.
You miss one important thing: it's not the federal government we're talking about. It's the local government: people directly elected by the citizens. If a local community, through its representatives, expresses the desire to have tax-subsidised WiFi (in addition to roads and other public services), then they have the right to get it. Isn't that exactly the 'power closer to the people' sort of thing most of you have been campaigning for?
Wow,
I fled Ohio (Cleveland area), about two years ago. I'm shocked that something of that magnitude is happening under the belly of the grey elephant. Although Dayton is far enough south to avoid Lake effect snow / sleet / rain / elephants.
Cheers
Criterion 2 means government shouldn't do anything without unanimous consent, because a law that isn't enforced isn't a law, it's a suggestion. So when you ask, "is it important enough...?" apparently you would have to be asking everybody to agree on that, which isn't gonna happen anytime soon on this planet. Civilization is about cooperation and interdependence, not about a bunch of loners in survival shacks.
Is there anything you are allowed to take in? Sounds like a happening place. Not!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
some cultist-sheeple wrote:
"Somehow in your drug-addled excuse for a brain, you can equate the greatest mechanism for freedom and advancement for all individuals with a generic, mindless, deity-worshipping collective."
First, the greatest mechanism for advancement of mankind is simply the written accumulation and aggregation of scientific knowledge, the growth rate of which is exponential, the same as the growth rate of educated people, people who are educated via the taxable dime, NOT through corporate largesse, you simpleton. Or rather, you ignoramus. The advancements we have made have been made through the steady accumulation of knowledge. However, the freemarket vultures have sold this advancement as having been a byproduct of "free" trade and economic liberalism. This is a falsehood and a canard. Learn. Read. Just as I did. I think you will switch to my side. If I can do it, you can do it, too...
Second, anytime you hear the word "freedom," put your hand on your wallet. The word "freedom" is a propaganda touchstone.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Necessity. To me, the government should provide services that are necessary to civilization. Fire departments and utilities like water and electricity are government controlled because they're services that need to be available even when it's not profitable to do so. Ditto with the postal service. As I've said before to people talking about the benefits of privitization, the biggest problem with having private industry handle vital concerns is that the main purpose of private business is to make money. In comparison, the primary purpose of the government is to provide the service even if they have to provide it at a loss. We've seen this repeatedly with privitized services. It made more money for Enron to have rolling blackouts because they could sell their electricity at higher prices, and export it to other states. The cable companies do their level best to only allow one company in any given area so that they can force people to accept their rates because they're the only game in town. In areas where the service is not vital, such as Wi-Fi, the government has the advantage over any private industries in that they can throw as much money into it as they need to. And, essentially, you're forcing a monopoly, as everyone must pay for the services, even if they use an alternate prviate service. Admittedly, many services have carved a niche opposite public services. Private schools are still paid for by families who want the best education for their child. People still use Fed-Ex and UPS to send packages (Although personally, I think the US Postal Service is more private industry than any thing else these days. Heck, the post office in my hometown has actually been privitized since I was a wee bairn two decades ago.) due to greater convenience, more services, occasionally cheaper prices.
Anyhow, back to the subject at hand, to me the WiFi access is not vital. The private companies, while expensive, are probably still costing us less than the government would be charging us in taxes to keep things running. (I work in government, and efficiency is not really the watchword a good bit of the time. As aforementionned, the goal is to make sure the service is always available, not to do it cheaply or efficiently.) As it is, such a technology is probably only going to help out a certain income range who can afford to get the laptop and wireless card, and to pay for the electricity to keep it charged.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.