At 11:44 PM 9/21/2002, Julian Bond wrote: >Todd Boyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>Well, a CWN is not a global internet, it is a local apparatus >>that has an upstream (the internet gateways, which must be >>paid for) and it has a downstream (users of gateways and >>routes to reach them) and there is not going to be any CWN >>unless USERS are willing to pay a few bucks. > >So the NoCat people should build a PayPal subscription system into NoCatAuth?
ABSOLUTELY NOT. Paypal is nothing but a front end for banks. Peer to peer settlement systems must not have *any* component hardwired to any particular bottleneck. Otherwise that *one* actor is in a position to harvest much of the economic value generated by the entire system. >Or we all just use one of the commercial roaming systems like >Boingo/Joltage? [1] SAME PRINCIPLE. There are p2p settlement systems and there are central-server settlement systems. The two things are oil and water. >The too free to bill approach actually makes quite a lot of sense in >several scenarios. >- So few people use my node that I won't bother. Anyway I'd pay for the >bandwidth anyway for my own use so it's not costing me anything extra. >- I'll just mark it up to advertising. I've only got to sell 3 extra >coffees a day to cover it and I'll use the bandwidth myself in the evening >anyway. I agree, there are business models for hotspots supported by T-1s and somebody might even make money doing it someday! Right now however, even these "Cream of the Cream" markets are losing money. Julian, CWNs are either going to be relevant for millions of people, or irrelevant even for geeks. Urban CWNs need a sufficient density of nodes before they are viable. When they are viable, then, they become viable for millions of people. The question is, "What is the missing enzyme? Why is this taking so long" ? One element will be performance and you cannot have good performance for millions of people without some expensive routers and backbones supporting the network, and *substantial labor cost*. Our tremendous advantage is, we own our premises and don't face a gauntlet of rents for rights-of-way, we don't have determined bad actors like telcos limiting the capability of the network just to feed their profit models as a hub architecture, etc.etc.etc. >Where it might be a pain is in the first scenario except that your >location means that there are 10s of people using it all the time. > >[1]There is a trick here that Boingo-Joltage have spotted and somebody >will make work, which is the global roaming system for the rest of us on >an MLM-franchise model. The T-Mobile-Starbucks-BT Openzone approach is >very capital intensive and will never get universal coverage. But some tie >up between a Telco and hardware-software manufacturers might be able to >put a package together where the operator made money as well. So who's M$ >going to partner with then? Those are hub-and-spoke models with 2, 3 or even 4 big global businessess having a hook into the consumer (software vendor, cellphone operator, global banking/settlment system, etc. etc.) I thought this is for community wireless networks :-) Todd >-- >Julian Bond Email&MSM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Webmaster: http://www.ecademy.com/ >Personal WebLog: http://www.voidstar.com/ >CV/Resume: http://www.voidstar.com/cv/ >M: +44 (0)77 5907 2173 T: +44 (0)192 0412 433 >-- >general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> >[un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
