Bill Calls For Wi-Fi Base Stations In All Federal Buildings

GovTechGuy submits this from Hillicon Valley: "Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced legislation on Friday that would require all public federal buildings to install WiFi base stations in order to free up cell phone networks. The Federal Wi-Net Act would mandate the installation of small WiFi base stations in all publicly accessible federal buildings in order to increase wireless coverage and free up mobile networks. The bill would require all new buildings under construction to comply and all older buildings to be retrofitted by 2014. It also orders $15 million from the Federal Buildings Fund be allocated to fund the installations."

Comments

We don't have the cash for this let the cell phone

[Joe The Dragon]

We don't have the cash for this let the cell phone companies pay for it.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.....Poor mobile phone providers....Waste tax payers money building out a completely useless wireless network so they do t need to upgrade their own networks.

If your public servants need a wireless network to do their job, install a wireless network, dont mandate it in legislation!

Re:Bah

[gnapster]

Come, now. I was aiming for funny, not insightful. But since you ask..

Senators are US citizens, just like most people living in the USA. Introducing legislation is one of the special powers that they have as members of the legislative branch of the government, and as such it is more effective for them than for the rest of us. But do you really believe that legislation is the only tool US citizens (legislators or not) have for getting things done? You must feel pretty powerless. :c(

They could talk to the people in charge of technical infrastructure in federal buildings. Communicate with people in the FCC and Presidential cabinet. I don't know who would be in charge of the oversight and implementation of the installations that they are trying to introduce with this bill, but it seems to me that Congress is probably not the closest Womb of Policy for this particular issue. I have no doubt that if I felt strongly about increasing wireless coverage, I could find out who the important people are, and get in touch. As senators, Snowe and Warner have more ready knowledge of these hierarchies, and the station and name recognition to have their voices heard.

That said, the article indicates (in the fourth paragraph) that they are not only interested in Wi-Fi coverage in Federal buildings, but "preventing dropped calls that occur indoors and in rural areas due to poor cell phone coverage, while also hopefully boosting wireless network capacity". This sounds much more comprehensive than the summary, which indicates that they are simply focusing on federal buildings. That is a scenario where legislation may be warranted.

My comment, however, was simply playing off the parent, who was basically asking, "Do we really need a law on the books so that members of Congress don't get dropped calls in the Capitol Building?" If that is all this bill is about, then it seems like these senators would be better-served by walking down the hall and knocking on the door of their helpdesk. Maybe they've already tried that, and now are going over the head of an ornery sysadmin.

Who was behind this? ATT?

[olsmeister]

So nice of our gubernment to take some of the load off of those congested cellular networks. Phew.

Why?

[Jrono]

The government doesn't need to be wasting money on stuff like this right now... Not only do the wifi base stations cost money, there are also the reoccurring Internet connection costs and general maintenance costs. Or is this supposed to be some sort of telecom bailout? Besides who wants to use an Internet connection directly controlled by the feds?

Re:Why?

[squiggleslash]

Absolutely. This isn't even stimulus-worthy, Wifi base stations require virtually no American labor.

It also promotes the lie that the cellular networks are congested due to lack of resources. In reality, AT&T and Verizon, to name but two, are sitting on unused AWS spectrum in virtually the entire country, that they've made a policy decision to buy but as yet not deploy anything to. There are also several companies sitting on spectrum in the 2GHz to 4GHz bands, supposedly to roll-out TDD variants of WiMAX and UMTS-TDD, but who've not had the funds to actually set the things up.

There is, believe it or not, a spectrum *glut* by any sane measurement of spectrum usage at the moment, and as spectrum efficiency improves year by year, with technologies from HSPA+ to LTE improving available bandwidth per MHz exponentially, the old arguments for treating wireless services as inherently more expensive than wired are fast falling away.

Re:Why?

[BrokenHalo]

Why not just force the telcos to provide BETTER CELL service in the first place?

Telcos could do more, but it seems to me that sooner or later, especially in congested urban areas, just about everybody is going to be fighting for bandwidth over the cell networks. As phone usage approaches 100% of the population, in combination with usage of USB/PCMCIA wireless doodads, something is going to have to give, especially if/when the world moves on to IPV6.

Seems to me the sensible thing would be to get as much traffic as possible moving along optical or wired networks and out of the air.

Free wifi here!

[soupforare]

We're not sniffing every connection and logging every packet, honest!

Not for long

[Chelloveck]

Don't worry. By 2016 they'll have figured out that having access points everywhere is a security risk of some sort. The current act will still be in force to require them to be installed, of course, but the We're Scared Of Our Shadows act of 2017 will require that they never have power connected. No problem.

They should go wider...

[Haedrian]

Over here where I come from, not only do government buildings have free wifi - but so do public areas such as parks or gardens.

You can just bring a laptop and work there (for as long as your battery lasts at least) or whatever. That way people who don't want/have data plans can still get wireless internet.

Re:They should go wider...

[TheRaven64]

Yeah, because internet access is a RIGHT

In the EU, it is now regarded as such, along with things like clean water, heating, and access to education, because it is increasingly difficult to participating in society without Internet access.

and the government should be spending our taxpayers money to make sure everyone should be able to get online

One of the things that governments are responsible for is ensuring that everyone has (at least approximately) equal opportunities.

Re:They should go wider...

[reasterling]

The more that our government uses the internet for the purpose of public services (ie. pay your taxes online and such) the more it becomes a necessity. To much of our lives the internet is allready something we can not live without. Just think of all the places where you are required to fill out an application online before you are even considered for a job. And not every community has a library. I welcome the day when our local post office will be a local hotspot.

If our society requires that an individual have internet to function, then it should be made available to those who can not afford at the tax payers expense. If you don't like that then perhaps we need to quit useing it for things that are necessary to peoples lives.

Great

[Stellian]

WiFileaks.org ?

Re:Good idea

[hedwards]

You were going to make the same bullshit antitax rant? When you pay to buy a plot of land from the owner, you own it lock, stock and barrels. The government can't take that property just because it wants it, they have to either pay for it or use eminent domain to seize it. But even then they have to pay you for it.

The taxes they charge are for the services they provide as a result of your owning that property. The reason why they can seize the property if you fail to pay the taxes is that it's how they collect the debt. They've paid for the property by way of the individual not being taxed on it for a period of time.

But no, the GP's argument is really accurate, there are no protections against the government seizing your land. /sarcasm

unfortunate summary

[TheBeardIsRed]

This is actually a piss poor summary of the bill. Having contracted on a number of government sites let me say that through no attempts at such, the buildings act as Faraday cages. Anyone who read the bill would have noticed that they're talking about using femtocells to improve reception of cell phones throughout the buildings. Additionally, considering the widespread use of Blackberry devices, this would allow them to continue to the roll out of of VoIP which has been happening (at least in both Dept of Treasury and Dept of Commerce) which would lower some of the costs associated with the mobile contracts. Considering the high number of employees with these devices and at 15 million dollar price tag, I wouldn't be surprised if this produced a cost savings within 2-5 years.

Re:We don't have the cash for this let the cell ph

[BrokenHalo]

Well, I guess it doesn't need to be WiFi. Any Government building probably (in most cases) already has some sort of halfway-decent broadband access. Internal phones could easily be connected to the outside world via wired VOIP. I don't see any requirement for anyone visiting the building (or in the vicinity) to be able to take a free ride on the Government's internet connection.

Re:Good idea

[nschubach]

Just to be clear here... "Fair" does not mean more. The rich are already paying a higher percentage of their income (28-35%) than the poor (10-25%.) (Arbitrary line drawn by me) You can see by the first chart:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
that even after adjustments, the rich still pay over 17% (up to 23%) where the "poor" pay under 15% (as low as 2.59%.)

I think what you are referring to as "Fair" is the rich being taxed so much that they can only afford minimally more than the poor. This is only "Fair" if you think that net income (after taxes) should be equal. Or that "Fair" constitutes a specific standard of living and anything above that is "excess." The problem with that is that it's only fair until you cross the line where it's now, "not fair" that they are taking more of your income than your neighbor who doesn't work as many hours or have as much responsibility as you.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on what you are thinking.

Public WiFi

[Doc Ruby]

We should go all the way, make a Federal law requiring counties and municipalities to deploy and operate a unified public WiFi network with complete coverage wherever the public access density exceeds some small number of people (the number in which at least 10 people an hour are statistically likely to be present). The Feds should back that mandate by hosting WiFi and Internet interconnect infrastructure in any Federal building at Federal cost, as designed by the municipality/county. And pay for the entire operation with a Federal tax on private wireless network businesses, like mobile telcos. The telcos should pay for the service to them that offloading to public WiFi delivers, but the public should organize the effort and reduce the cost with existing infrastructure.

Re:We don't have the cash for this let the cell ph

[camperdave]

I couldn't agree more. This is one of those good ideas we just can't afford, especially with the country's present financial condition.

Oh for the love of Pete! You spend over half a trillion dollars a year on your military, as much as the rest of the other militaries on the planet combined. Cut your military spending by a few percent and you could pay for proper schools, the space program, and still have money left over to put wifi in your government offices.

Not exponential

[Mateorabi]

with technologies from HSPA+ to LTE improving available bandwidth per MHz exponentially

Not to get all nitpicky, but I think there is this guy Shannon who would disagree with you. (Also this has a more concise formula.)

Re:Good idea

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Just to be clear here... "Fair" does not mean more. The rich are already paying a higher percentage of their income (28-35%) than the poor

Fair does indeed mean more. The rich use significantly more government resources than the poor.
Their income is dependent on massive federal infrastructure and subsidies like interstate roads, civil courts, "small" business loans (currently totally 84 billion dollars) and enormous indirect oil subsidies, mortgage deductions, state department promotion of international business, etc, etc.