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Texas Wireless Ban Has Failed
chip rosenthal writes "The effort to ban municipal networks in Texas has failed. Texas House Bill 789 originally had provisions to ban muni wireless networks. The Senate passed a significantly rewritten version, without a ban. A conference committee failed to reach agreement, so the bill died when the Texas legislature adjourned this weekend."
Last thing we need is more dumb telecom legislation.
Now if congress would get off their ass and put together a real bill that governed fiber bandwidth intelligently, we'd be in business.
Seriously, we need to pull the rug out from under the damn cable companies. They're making a mint prentending they're not in the same business as phone companies (moving info), and the laws support it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
asusming that no municipality has thier own copper or fiber to the internet - they must be using one of the telecom's, which could then limit the usage of anonymous connections in thier usage policy. Which of course would need to be enforced. Its like the cable company, I can physically wire all my neighbors off my one connection and pay $x for each additional box and hence save $$ on each install tht was no longer needed - but that is against the usage policy. same thing -0
Actually, in lots of places, the utility company owns the streetlights, and the municipality has to pay not only for the electricity, but also to lease the lights. In New England, cities and towns are gradually buying the lights back from the utility companies, but it's not that cut-and-dried.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I'm really on the fence with this one, for the record I am a geek, with wireless access in my residence, and would definetly use it if offered by a muncipality.
I understand how free wifi would potentially bring boom to a growing economic area, but should we all pay for it out of pocket?
Afterall, we aren't paying for the water / sewage / electricity / heat of growing businesses, why should we pay for their internet?
But then there is this... if we might be better off paying for it from a private compnay, ala verizon. That way we'll get it at a better price (no muni's are even close to efficient), and people that don't want it don't pay for it.
802.11b is a very poor means of delivering bandwidth to anybody. Because of interference from cordless phones, even inches away from my AP, I can't get a clean connection through many times. This type of interference I've experienced on several brands of AP's with several different wifi adapters, and they all experience the problems at the same time. Attempting to make use of 2.4Ghz for utility style bandwidth deployment is a waste of government money and time, better suited to other projects.
On the other hand, I don't believe that state governments should be telling the local governments what to do like this, as it is clear that this is a move by the commercial companies to keep a niche market where they can keep money. ON the other hand, why CAN'T they make money deploying this stuff.
What gives them the right? Lil' thing called "free market". But I don't think many Slashdotters actually want a free market in any sector.
I'm quite disturbed at the number of moronic bills that have been passed just this session.
First, they banned same sex couples from adopting children -- most sinister is allowing the state to monitor the activities of foster parents to make sure they're straight.
Second, they've banned "sexy cheerleading". Yes, that right. They took time out of their legislative session to vote on a bill banning public high schools from cheers and outfits people might consider appropriate.
You can learn a lot about your own state sometime just by watching the Daily Show.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Public wireless is like roads and street lights. Like roads, public wireless access enables economic development. When a road is paved, houses and businesses spring up around it. When an urban area has street lighting, business and civic life continues into the night.
With a couple of important differences.
1. Were it not for government involvement, it's hard to see why streetlights or roads would have been built. It's doubtful that the interstate highway system we have now would have emerged if it had been left up to corporations to come up with how to make them profitable.
2. Internet infrastructure already exists. It's possible to get at least dialup almost everywhere. In my smallish, very rural town of 12,000 people, I can get three different kinds of broadband. And I don't live in a suburb, by the way. The nearest more sizable town is 50 miles away and has a population of 100k. After that, the Dallas/Ft Worth area is about 3 hours. Even my parents, who live on a farm 15 miles from the nearest town, can get wireless.
I grudgingly disagree with the ban, but only because I think as much power as possible ought to stay local. If muni wireless came up in my town, I'd vote against it. It's an encroachment of the government into the business interests of citizens without any good reason. It effectively makes the government an instant monopoly.
Read the above post, replacing the word "government" with "corporation."
It doesn't work for every sentence, but it does demonstrates the false choices that we're presented. But it especially works for the second to last paragraph.
Folks, the government and the corporation aren't as different or separate as you think.
The savemuniwireless mailing list kept us all informed of what politicians to email at what times.
I emailed those politicians told them I was going to work for/donate to their opponents when they came up for reelection, if they voted for HB 789.
Now we need to target Phil King, of Weatherford. He is the slimy corporate whore who sponsored hb 789.
We should probably raise money to run ads informing his district constitutents about how he sold out to SBC, et al as a corporate whore.
Here is the url to the Weatherford Democrat, the newspaper for the biggest city in his district.
I say we make an example of this whore Phil King by raising money over the Net to defeat him when he runs for reelection/office again. He will serve as an example for the other corporate whores. With the internet we can focus all our whore-hating dollars on some whore like King.
This guy is just a texas state govt representative. It is not all that big an office. We do not need to raise all that much money or have all that huge an effort in order to make an example of him by kicking him out of office.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
So we have muni wireless. What happens? The govt. subcontracts the job out to someone like Verizon, who now has a monopoly on wireless in your area. And wireless is a technology that allows for competition among multiple telcom companies. Great idea, idiots. Lets create an artificial monopoly just so I don't have to pay for wireless access (oh wait I do through taxes).
Vote for Pedro
Normally I'm not in favour of municipal wireless, but I'm actually more against having a law banning it.
In most cases I think it would be a stupid waste of money, but in those cases the citizens of that town should make the decision for themselves. At least having this option could be used as a bargining chip if the telcos aren't providing adequate services.
Now I wouldn't really be against a law banning municipal wireless funded with tax dollars. That would seem a fair compromise. I think municipal wireless could be properly done and possibly be great, but if it relies on tax dollars then that is a problem.
I think if municipal wireless is considered, it has to 1) be able to sustain itself 2) not require participation 3) still allow competition. If a municipality really believes they can provide better service for a better price then they should issue municipal bonds to finance the initial up-front costs. This way it is paid for only by those who want it and believe in it. Then the municipal service should not be free, there should be a monthly charge just like any other ISP. That fee should be used to run the project and pay-off the bonds.
Now if this can be done to offer better service for a better price than telcos have nothing to bitch about. If this fails, then its those who thought it was such a good idea who lose and not everyone else.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
"brxref
Who comes up with these brilliant ideas?
My cabin doesn't have *any* kind of high-speed internet, despite being on a hill loaded with $250,000 houses (expensive for Fairbanks). Obviously the private sector has completely failed me and other folks on the DSL wait list.
If municipalities want to become involved in supplying and/or mandating local internet service, fine by me. It's one step down from water and power in importance nowadays.
This government activity more than bypasses my "libertarian" filter.
check out how your Senator and Rep voted on HB 789 and be guided accordingly when they are up for re-election.
We lucked out on this one.
Having followed this bill and made more than a few phone calls there are, in my opinion, more than a few elected representatives who should be retired by the voters at the earliest opportunity as they have displayed a complete lack of (good) judgment which is the basis upon which we entrust them to work for us in the Lege.
A "throw the bums out" election is in order.
I can tell you that several of them (especially Rep King, the author of the bill, whose primary contributors were SBC and ATT and...) is not one I would turn my back on.