WiFi activists on free Web crusade
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/11/21/yourtech.wifis/index.html
...Richard Dineen, senior analyst at UK-based consultancy Ovum said
"I think WiFi will act as a compliment to 3G. Its success is heavily
dependent on people setting up good business models as it is more
expensive than most people think."
... he says WiFi enthusiasts forget that running a public network is difficult.
..You need a good network management layer, billing service and user
software so they don't hog all the available bandwidth."
Hear hear.
Owner-operated community networks cannot give serious competition to central-controlled capitalist models, unless every node has a way to communicate some economic signals to other nodes. In my opinion, a small payable /receivable event table would suffice. When another node is significant enough to exist in your router table or to be "permitted" in your filters then it might perhaps, be transparently created as an account in your payable/receivable system. Nodes could submit bills and the other party could drop them or walk down the street and pay them. The most critical problem is efficiently communicating and administering the amounts, not measuring traffic, or good heavens not settlement such as digital coins. Just a common framework to send a bill for x cents would be sufficient. (any number of small but useful applications are possible on community networks, for example, schemes for registering latitude/longitude of your node, schemes for emergency or distress pings, schemes for robust identity, reputation or encryption, etc. All of these ideas are lost in the background noise. How can society compete with the marketing of companies like Microsoft who spends $5.2 billion/year on R&D and more on marketing? $5.2 billion is enough for 50,000 fulltime people at $100,000 per year. The egyptian pharaohs built the pyramids with such numbers ...an equally useless piece of crap) Todd -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
