I posted a commentary last night on my blog, Sifry's Alerts
<http://www.sifry.com/alerts>:
Business week reports on the ways WiFi are putting broadband power in
the hands of the people, and goes on to speculate on how this could
reshape the broadband oligopoly. Personally, I think that
citizen-controlled broadband access is a wonderful idea - but there are
two issues (also read opportunities) here as well:
* Interconnect to the Internet: Which means that if people are going to
violate their AUPs, oligopolies will attempt to squash them or at least
paint them in a negative light. Note how the conversation in the
mainstream media falls into the classic "Robin Hood" mold, talking about
stealing from the bandwidth-rich and giving to the rest of us.
* Management of the mesh: Until enough of these devices make their way
into people's hands, there will be reliability problems and poor user
experiences for the non-techie. And when deployment does become
widespread, interference and spectrum use become an issue, especially in
dense urban environments. For broadband to really reach all of the urban
areas in the country, we're going to need much smarter devices and we're
going to need some (loose-handed) management, especially at the network
interconnect points. That takes time and energy, which means money.
Community broadband activists: We need to be careful about how the media
portays us, lest we become painted with the same "hacker, cracker,
pirate, lawbreaker" brush that the MPAA and RIAA love to paint users of
file swapping services and internet radio. This starts with terminology
and concrete example. Why do we call it wardriving, for example? Or
Warchalking? Well, it sounds cool, and we techies like the sounds of the
terms. It sounds cool and dangerous. But it plays into the monopolist's
hands.
We can battle this. Get involved in, and promote a low-income or
egalitarian use of WiFi, like a project to wire towns in the Dominican
Republic or set up wireless access at your local library.
Besides, it'll feel good helping out, too.
Dave
On Thu, 2002-07-04 at 10:47, Dr. Sameer Verma wrote:
> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2002/tc2002073_1130.htm
>
> An interesting part of this article is about the "cease and desist"
> letter. Every semester, one of my student groups does a term paper on
> "Last Mile Solutions". The word "solutions" implies that there is a
> problem. The word "Problem" is defined in the field of decision sciences
> as an opportunity to examine an existing situation and to create a more
> efficient and/or effective method of solving it. While my student groups
> work hard and write about all kinds of creative solutions, it appears
> that our friends in the telco business have no intentions of solving the
> last mile problems...unless you are willing to stick with the older methods.
>
>
> Sameer
>
> --
> Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Asst. Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>
>
> --
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David L. Sifry
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