----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:14 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Lemmings - suggestions
> Mr. Hush, > > Excellent plan. What agenda item will you be working on first? > > SUGGESTIONS of what to do: > 1) Inform the AP / UPI that as an industry group, we have decided > to stage a cyclic disconnect from public Inet in protest. > > Any volunteers to write and distribute this Press Release? Nobody can write for WISPA except WISPA people, either authorized or designated by management. > > 2) As a group, inform the subs what we are doing so they are not in > the dark and clueless. Try to recruit their support. > > Tell your customers that they are no longer getting Internet? Naw, write a letter to your subs. "Dear customer, I started delivering affordable broadband several years ago, in a free and open environment, where the services I offer were not restricted nor taxed, nor controlled by any state or federal regulatory agency. Recently, the FCC has reversed this trend, and has mandated that I provide the ability to tap and deeply examine, and then provide requested information from the traffic that travels to your home / office / computer / etc. The costs of this are as yet unknown, and my ability to provide you affordable broadband is in serious jeopardy. While assisting law enforcement's legitemate need to track down criminal, criminal activity, and other hazards to our community and / or nation is not objectionable to us, and we in fact wish to help where we can, the FCC has decided that providers will bear the costs of compliance with as yet undetermined requirements. This mandate upon my business could very well put me out of business with no notice whatsoever, and leave you without service unexpectedly. I would encourage you to read the FCC's comments and rules at www.fcc.gov and to contact your representatives at the federal level and the FCC to ask why your internet service must be placed under the control of the federal government, putting your ability to get affordable broadband at risk. There are some options, one is to simply duck the law, and hope enforcment never catches us. Another is just to pre-emptively shut down and find other means of earning a living, but losing all my investment, time, and the jobs my business creates. Yet another option is to estimate the cost of compliance and assess you a one time fee for capital expenditures, since we lack the ready capital to buy the very expensive "solutions" currently in existence, or to finance this with a permanent CALEA surcharge on top of our normal service charges. These fees could range from $50 to $500 dollars one time, or $5 to $15 per month for continuing compliance costs. The federal government long ago used your tax dollars to pay for the the telephone companies to be compliant with CALEA, but since WISP's are small business, we have no multi-million dollar lobbyist industry in Washington DC to protect us from arbitrary mandates and regulations. This pattern of regulation and usurping the ability of small business to provide necessary services is a benefit to the large corporate entities like telephone companies and cable companies who, if small businesses like us are force into non-competitive price structures or just out of business, will have no competition, allowing prices for internet to spiral out of control. > > 3) Present to the press the WISPA member total subs count, and ask > for the FCC / Gov to really evaluate the economic impact to GDP per > state / national level that shutting off wisps would result in. > > No one knows this number, but you can take the count from the 477 forms. > It was about 2% right? Ahh, we're dead anyway. Might as well call it 0%, right? -- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
