Open Spectrum Does Not Mean Free Internet

CowboyRobot writes "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently proposed making RF spectrum publicly available, and many in the media (including the Washington Post) have been mistakenly conflating open access to WiFi signal with free Internet access; anyone can put up a wireless access point but that doesn't give them access to the Internet. The proposal will probably mean more attempts at providing free Internet access to specific neighborhoods or municipalities, but as Larry Seltzer at NetworkComputing points out, these programs also usually forget that access to signal is not the same as access to the Internet. After getting the funding to wire a city, these isn't money left to pay for the actual bandwidth usage."

Comments

This could be useful but won't be

[fadethepolice]

IF local businesses used it to advertise and sell directly to consurmers through it. This would basically allow the traditional (city net) we used to see in matrix style hacking videos / books in the eighties and early nineties. If there is a critical mass of businesses offering services over a local wireless mesh network then the 'internet' will want to access that market. Make a peering deal and you could enable internet access to / between these citywide wireless nodes. The main issue at this point is making sure everyone has access to personal ipv6 addresses. It is possible, but not likely, as the general public has no knowledge of the benefits of having a free access local mesh network.