Slashdot Mirror
Free WiFi Trend Continues
Palal writes "San Francisco is about to embark on a Free (or low cost) WiFi campaign with the mayor holding the reins, of course, in hopes of offering more low-income residents easier access to the Internet. Since San Francisco, unlike Philadelphia (previously covered on Slashdot for a similar project), is only 49 square miles, will this work here and can this be accomplished in a year as promised or is this just another political plot to get the Mayor re-elected?"
So people can afford a $400 Dell cheapass PC, but can't spring for a $5 a month Internet dialup connection?
Oh wait, I forgot that its the fault of the people on the 'have' side of the 'Digital Divide' that the other people can't get online. Our village is in shambles! I need a hug.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They should get local business to participate, they could share the cost, and make it more avilable to end users. That's what they do in my city. We've had free Wifi for over a year now, and they're constantly expanding the coverage. currently it's most of the city. See the following for details: http://www.fred-ezone.ca/index.php
I LIKE TOAST!!!
This must be a joke. Last I read, the median income for an SF resident was $160,000. I guess this means SF is looking out for those who are unfortunate enough to only earn $125,000 per year?
I still don't understand how they're going to cover that much area using current technology. The signal just isn't good enough. The only way I can see this being possible is if they use WiMax or something like that.
I don't think the vast majority of the population cares enough about WiFi to vote for a particular candidate based on that. Yes, San Francisco has more techies per square mile than most American cities, but I'd wager that this isn't a political move. Promising better schools, better roads, public transportation, less crime... those are political moves. Free WiFi, feasible or not, is NOT going to win votes. Most of the computer geeks are too busy playing CS in their parent's basements to hit the polls anyway. (not a troll, but based on my actual observations!)
Do these low-income residents have PCs with wireless capabilities? Or does the SF government give them to the poor residents? Don't you think they have higher priorities than free WiFi, maybe food/shelter/clothing/etc?
C:\>
Whether or not a politician's actions are based on his desire to get re-elected, I think it is imperative that we support initiatives that are what we would like. In the long run, giving credit for a certain thing to a politician is just part of how history works.
It's not the engineers who get the credit for bringing forth new technologies, it's the managers who do. So too do the politicians get credit for the work of their underlings. The main point is that the benefits are realized, not that someone who had a leadership role gets all the credit.
So yeah, let's get San Francisco unwired up (is that the right way to say it?)! If it works there, at a reasonable cost, maybe we can get initiatives moving in other big cities. The internet is one of those utilities that ought to be available to anyone looking for it. Putting the government in charge of distribution may not be the best choice, but it is a quick fix until private enterprise can compete.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Here's what concerns me about this. Offering free wireless is going to cost money (obviously). Is this really how low-income families would like that money to be spent? Wouldn't they prefer cheaper health care? Better accomodation? Nicer schools? Nicer communities? Did someone actually poll these people and say "we've got $XXXX to spend on you guys -- what do you want?" and the low-income people say "ooh free-wireles would make our lives so much better!"
I'm not trolling -- honest! I just wonder if this isn't, as the blurb suggests, more about PR for the mayor than actually helping people.
Usually when the big telcos/ISP's say that muni-wifi is anti-competitive, I tend to laugh. Why would SF need to do this as a city? NetZero already offers free internet access. Is that access not deemed sufficient or fast enough by the city? Do less affluent people really need to watch TV over their computers? One of the nice things about living in a major metropolitan area is that you can usually walk to the library or get there easily. I can see offering free access in the library, but to the whole city?
FTFA: Free service for all is probably not in the cards, however. The mayor's statement on the TechConnect's Web site specifically calls for "affordable, wireless broadband access."
It may end up being low cost, but likely not free.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
When I saw the headline about the "Free WiFi trend", I foolishly assumed they were talking about actual free WiFi, like when a private resident or coffee shop opens up their 802.11g encryption so anybody in range is free to use it.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Now it seems we need three different definitions for "Free":
1. Free as in "speech"
2. Free as in "beer"
3. Free as in "pay for it or go to jail"
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Low income families normally get ahold of a second-hand computer for far less that $400, more on the order of $20-50. Pop in a wireless card for $20 and they have the capability to file taxes, read email, download sweet linux images, and browse pr0n with the best of us! (for under $50). That is only 2 months of the cheapest broadband you can get.
All of these people are putting up free WiFi access with different levels of service. Some only allow web and mail, others are wide open and still others only provide custom content with no access to outside resources. Individually this is all fine and dandy. But, if WiFi is slated to be the "next internet" as a lot of people like to claim that it is, we need a lot more standardization than we have. Not to mention that there are a lot of people who are working very hard to try and stamp out these initiatives because it hurts or could hurt their businesses (telcos, cell phone providers, cable and satellite operators).
It's nice to see the free hotspots popping up here and there, but other than checking mail and looking at some web content, how useful is it? Why isn't there a national or global cooperative that would define the services that hotspots should offer in order to create a truly national or global network that parallels the internet? How do we keep the telcos and their ilk from ruining this? It's not like they're going to die overnight because landlines are still going to be necessary for several reasons, with bandwidth and reliability being the most important.
Keep the free WiFi coming, but really what does it all mean? It's not like this is becoming anything particularly useful yet.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Don't kid yourself. While internet access is the lifeblood of any geek...
./ shouldn't make the mistake of thinking something is far more important than it really is.
geeks are a underwhelming minority of any general population, particularly among the uneducated (and one assumes that the uneducated largely have lower incomes than those who are educated and therefore concludes that low-income residents of a city would have an even smaller proportion of geeks than the city at large).
Far, far more people are interested in how much in taxes they pay each year. Offering free wifi would certainly have an impact on those figures.
How, then, does offering free wifi help him politically (other than for brownie points with an interest group here or there)?
I don't know who the mayor is or what his ideological positions are, and I also don't care. I just thought I'd point out that
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
I wonder what the definition of "low cost" becomes when the taxpayer subsidy is included in the cost figures.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I would tend to agree with you, but I've seen too many poor parents (my own among them) choose the unecessary (like mass quantities of drugs and alcohol) over the necessary (like clothes). Do you know what it's like to be getting a job at 10 years old just so you don't have to wear clothes from goodwill or handme downs? Have you ever eaten cereal from a sack without milk? I would hazard a guess and say "no".
Without the "haves" subsidizing my food, my housing, my education (both normal K-12 AND college), I never would have broken the cycle. I would have ended up just like them.
Is that a good thing? By some people's estimation, yes, because, while I was being provided for, there were 2 other people (my parents) who were abusing the system. They'd rather cut a kid like me off just to stop the worthless dregs of society than support those dregs and myself.
Frankly, I'm glad they aren't the ones making the rules. Without that help, I probably wouldn't have finished highschool, much less gone through college, or even think about plans for pursuing my masters.
I'll be the first to admit there are problems with welfare, subsidies, or other freebies. But without them, I'd probably be living in a run down trailer with two or three kids, a drug habit, empty 40's strewn all over the floor, a car up on blocks in my front yard and a job moving heavy things. Hooray for that.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Network infrastructure (as opposed to services like webhosting, etc.) is extremely analogous to the highway system, including the lack of economic growth and monopolism that arises when said infrastructure is privately owned (think of the last mile of copper, and the 98% unused fiber that results from the baby bell's local monopolies, for example). Much of the FCC's efforts are a (failing) effort to mitigate this fundamental problem through regulation. Competative markets only exist, and work, when the underlying infrastructure is publicly owned. If we had privately owned highways, no little startup would even be able to drive to work, much less ship a product (or even receive parts to build their product) using their competitor's highway system.
San Francisco is doing exactly the right thing. There is a place for free market capitalism, and there is a place for public works. The Highway System, and Communications Infrastructure, are two examples of the latter.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy