

Should the U.S. roll out nationwide free Wi-Fi? Depends on which administration you ask. - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2008/12/11/national-wi-fi-plans/

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mdasen
This is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard. WiFi has a typical range of 32m
indoors and 95m outdoors. With a range of 95m, each access point would cover
0.0283385 km^2. The lower 48 states have a land area of 7,663,941.71 km^2. So,
we'd need over 270M access points to cover the continental US. But that's an
underestimate since you'd have to have a lot of overlap given that if you put
two circles next to each other (oo), you would have gaps. So, you'd probably
need around a billion. Also, remember that you'd have to run power and data
lines to all of them (very expensive) and pay for the power (hey, a billion
devices using as little as 10kw per year would cost a ton). It just isn't a
feasible project. Heck, to provide indoor coverage you'd need around 10bn.
WiFi is barely a decent idea in the densest of cities.

Now, if you want to propose that the US use the spectrum freed up by the
discontinuation of analog TV in a few months for free nationwide wireless,
I'll listen. Those signals can go for a hundred km! That moves it from being a
stupid proposal from someone who doesn't understand how radio works to
something really workable. Now, because of power limitations in battery
operated devices, you'd have to place sites every few miles like cellular
operators do, but that's still going to make it a matter of, say, 50-100k
sites vs. 10bn.

But wait, wouldn't that just make the government another wireless carrier?
Pretty much. Maybe the government could do it cheaper, but I'm not so sure I'm
into that. I mean, carriers are already competing hard core to get wireless
internet to people (all of them are around $60/mo). Would the government be
able to roll out an entirely new network just for data cheaper? Would it be
more effective?

If we've concluded that WiFi is a ridiculous proposition, then people would
have to buy equipment to use with this new technology (whether it be WiMAX,
EV-DO, HSDPA, HSPA+, or LTE). That's the real appeal of WiFi, the idea that we
already have the equipment for it. Anyway, we can already buy that equipment
from carriers. Would we get it cheaper from the government? Likewise, we can
already get service from carriers. Would the government be able to provision
it cheaper?

There is the case to be made that wireless is a natural monopoly and so you
see efficiencies by having one regulated (or government) operator rather than
having competing companies duplicating each others efforts in building a
network. However, the government isn't going to compete with them directly. It
just won't happen. The companies have invested hundreds of billions in
developing networks.

So, I think the best we can hope for is that the new white-space created by
DTV is allowed for open use (ala Google's push).

------
devicenull
Would you trust this network anyway? I wouldn't. It would (by necessity) be a
public network, meaning no encryption, meaning everything you do can be viewed
by your neighbors. I imagine it would become a major source of phishing/spam
emails, since it's basically impossible to block a semi-skilled user from an
open wireless network.

