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New Orleans to Deploy Free Wi-Fi City Wide
Lawrence_Bird writes "The Washington Post is reporting that New Orleans will deploy a city wide wi-fi network with free public access. Much of the equipment has been donated, but New Orleans will own and operate the network. Interestingly, they are only able to do this while a state of emergency remains in place as technically their planned 512Kbps service violates state law prohibiting municipalities from offering access at speeds in excess of 144Kbps, a restriction the city plans on fighting even though they will eventually outsource the whole operation."
While porn will certainally be an issue, nobody makes software to block smoking or negative comments on public officials. Well, maybe the Chinese, but I doubt they'll share.
As far as porn goes, hopefully the communities will offer blocking software to download and leave it at that. My responce to "taxpayers shouldn't be paying for downloading porn" is "I'm a taxpayer, so unless I'm commiting a crime, STFU. I don't pay taxes so some redneck can play Fantasy Nascar online either, but I'm not going to complain about it".
The reason why we pay upwards of $50/mo. for broadband internet is precisely because it is offered by private companies. I don't necessarily need all the bandwidth I'm getting for myself. It would be much more efficient to pool that $50 connection and share it with 49 other people in the neighborhood. But then that's less profit for the local cable monopoly. Sadly, the U.S. is going to lag behind the rest of the world in broadband adoption because we don't take it as a serious matter of building a public communications infrastructure. IMHO, the government should be in sole control of all transportation and communications infrastructure, as well as other major necessities that corporate cartels regularly gouge and abuse us for, like home heating oil, gas, and electricity. They can pay for it by eliminating the corporate welfare given to these same companies that are colluding to keep prices up and gouge the consumer.