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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...
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
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.
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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!
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
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.
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.
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