From: Glenn Fleishman Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 10:27 AM Thanks for posting the link to my NY Times article. I should point out that, as with all media, I had a finite amount of space to write about community wireless networking (I'd say networking, not Internet), and the article is not meant to be a monolithic view of it.
In Boston, Michael Oh <http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,58011,00.html> is meeting with politicians, while in Seattle, they reject any government involvement. In Austin, private firms handle retail outlets' hotspot installation, but authentication and network services are free for non-profits. In New York City, they have a wireless arts festival <http://www.spectropolis.info/> . In San Francisco, there are projects like SFLAN <http://www.archive.org/web/sflan.php> , which has quite a few nodes for extending Internet access, but no particular mission that I can determine (and a very loose organizational structure). In the article, I focused on a bit of the political awakening and the turn to network neutrality (in various forms) as central issues. When you look at Portland, Ore., for instance, where they had an early group that's still active, they have been instrumental (to my knowledge) in assuring that whatever wireless network that Portland has built will include some amount of free access and some principles of network neutrality. It's interesting to see how some of the old-timers from 1999 and 2000, who were talking back then about the concerns of having all Internet access in the hands of giant incumbents that would restrict bandwidth, filter content, and otherwise monkey with a good thing, have been proven correct with the recent BellSouth and AT&T statements about who pays for bandwidth. Glenn Fleishman seattle, washington wireless data news: http://wifinetnews.com
