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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.
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
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!
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 : )
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!
...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.
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.
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
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.
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
Why is it every knee jerk reactionary opinion like this gets modded up on slashdot.
... and to the second, if they wanted the FBI could watch your wired connection just *as* easy. Do you really think it is hard to get a federal wire tap against a private citizen?
Fuck moderators the first "fact/link" isn't even remotely accurate. SF wants to moderate blogs used for electioneering where people are paid. This is no different than moderation of printed campaign materials.
Why don't you try being more informed before posting? And moderators stop bumping up crap just because it looks "smart".
--- I do not moderate.
AFAIK, this has only been proposed in places where no company is offering a viable wireless solution.
And it would appear that the public voted on the issue and approved the concept. Thus, their tax dollars are being spent on what they want. The local government is spending public money on the public. I think that's one of the basic tenants of democracy.
I might be cause for worry if the government were massively deploying ISPs, thereby shutting down legitimate companies, but so far that doesn't look like it's going to happen. The government doesn't really want to get involved, and people who live in places with good and affordable commercial ISPs won't vote for gov-supported ISPs. Besides, as many posters have mentioned, the internet has become a public commodity/infrastructure, like electricity or roads, and could be partially implemented by public funds.
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.
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
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.
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
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'm a bit skeptical of government-based WiFi, because I believe the barrier to entering the WiFi market is low (far lower than trying to provide cable or DSL Internet service). The argument in favor of such an endeavor is simple, however: government should intervene in areas where the benefits of an endeavor are large, but hard to translate into profit.
For example, if there was a benefit to giving better Internet access to homeless people, it might help them find jobs, tell them which shelters had room for them, or give them reminders to take their meds. The entire community would benefit, but no company would provide the service because the homeless are generally short on cash.
In this case, there may be a benefit that accrues to the city as a whole when anyone can hook in from anywhere, but no individual benefit is enough that a private enterprise could capitalize on it. Maybe the hope is that a more tech-savvy population will attract businesses, or that the increased communication will have public safety benefits.
Regarding San Francisco, it looks like they're attempting to close a loophole in campaign finance law. They've botched it badly, and I think the free-speech issues trump the fair election issues by a wide margin, but I can see their rationale. It's far different than, "The government is censoring weblogs to keep people from saying things it doesn't like". All in all, I don't think a government network is going to be any more likely to censor its customers than a private one would be.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
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.
Um, no. If a Colorado city wants to build a wifi network, we can vote on it.
Proving once again that direct democracy can be defined as "two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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
So many people say, without any evidence. The only real direct democracies I know of are small towns in New England. I've lived in such a town. Once a year, every resident that showed up for town meeting got to vote on the town budget. That town had the most well-controlled spending of any governmental unit I've known. In less direct democracies, candidates will promise people all sorts of bread and circuses; they just don't talk about how they are going to pay for it, and the voters don't think about it. At town meeting, you're not going to get any remotely controversial spending through without everyone and their brother directly asking the voters how they think they are going to pay for it. For getting people to think about limiting government excesses, there's nothing like Roberts Rules of Order. In terms of sane budgets, I've seen no approach that comes anywhere close to having the individual voters vote on every bloody line-item. It's too bad it isn't practical on larger scales.