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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."
Will this be the first case of never-ending SOE similar to the never-ending Beta?
This way consumers get to use the service first, and companies get to roll out their services without having to abide strict regulations and/or an actual committment.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Free WiFi while significant portions of their population are still displaced and / or homeless.
Perhaps their priorities are a bit backward?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
As long as I consider the Library a government responsibility, I have to say the same about internet access.
There is no fundamental difference to me, and universal access to information is the kind of thing I would be proud to pay taxes for.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
That money would produce a safer city with more jobs if it was left to the citizens.
Last I checked, in this country, the government is composed of -- gasp -- citizens, not space aliens from Uranus. At what point did Americans forget the "of, by, and for the people" routine? Why should a state or federal authority be telling the citizens of a town that they can't do whatever they blinking well please as far as public works projects? So the _citizens_ get together and say, golly, we can all chip in ten bucks and we'll have a wonderful benefit for our community that is worth far more than ten bucks to each citizen.
What's next? Gee, sorry Podunksville, you can't build a public park with a toilet. You need to sell the land off to a private developer so you can have the privilege of paying to sit on the grass or take a leak.
I don't see how this is any different.
Say what you want about "universal access to information", but government-funded free wifi isn't necessarily a good thing. Keep in mind that this could severely hurt ISP that were already devastated by the hurricane. If you can get wifi for free, then why pay for a service that is offered by company X? Having a bandwidth limitation seems to me a good solution, as people who can't afford access can still get it, but just not at the speeds they could if they paid for it. To take your library analogy to the next level, the library only lets you have n number of books at a time, and you have to return them. You have to pay a bookstore to have books at a "higher bandwidth", which in turn helps the economy.
Yes, because the digital divide is chock-full of people who are able to afford a laptop/desktop with a wi-fi card, but can't afford basic dial-up service. And as you can imagine, that's a large, large group.
/. Because we all know elected officials never want to block the citizens they represent from information....
...
And slightly OT, but I'm going to laugh very hard and very long when the first "Municipal Wi-Fi blocking content" story hits
well, with kids yeah. We have to protect the kids. And you know how irresposible some parents can be. So lets put a huge filter on porn coming down the pipe. Tax dollars shouldn't pay for porn anyway.
Oh, and smoking. Bad. Very bad. Lets ban any site that promotes smoking. Promotion of all things smoking over publicly financed wi-fi? I think not! You might as well just shove smokes in babies mouths.
What? This site offends the sensiblities of [fill in religious group/cult of choice]? Block them too. We're all fine, upstanding [christians, jews, muslims, hindis, scientologists] and there's no way our community should have to see this.
What? People are going to RELIGIOUS sites? Hasn't anyone heard of the seperation of church and state? If someone wants to cyber-pray let them pay for their own access.
Hate speech. Who doesnt' hate hate speech? Of course! Its gone. ("by the way, what is hate speech?" "Ah.. the devil's in the details")
Wal Mart? Do we really want our citizens helping keep that community killing, baby eating, spawn of satan corperation in business by allowing them to purchase cheap shit over our wi-fi? I think not! If you want to destroy mom and pop shops do it on your own nickel.
I'd rather see privated completely deregulated electrical service as well.
When will you anarcho-capitalists actually take economics 100.
Given
A) A service that has a near zero elasticity of demand in relation to price
B) Is infrastructure
(Things Fitting A&B: Roads, Water, Sewer, Power, phone, cable, electricity, gas)
You CANNOT deregulate, you CANNOT expect the "Free market" to ensure quality and low price.
Infrastructure doesn't follow the normal rules because it's something that should not be duplicated concurrently - imagine having two roads systems, or two seperate water systems, power etc - there isn't the space to do it and the costs are prohibitive. This prevents normal competitive practices of the free-market and favors large intrenched monopolies
Have you not been paying attention? power was deregulated in some areas - it resulted in artificially created roving blackouts to give the impression that demand exceeded supply so that price-gouging could occur.
Adam Smith himself said that capitalism needs enforced rules to keep all parties treating each other fairly - why can you not recognize this?
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!