

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks - wallflower
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/tech-telecom-giants-take-sides-as-fcc-proposes-large-public-wifi-networks/2013/02/03/eb27d3e0-698b-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html?hpid=z1

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Blueliner
This FCC proposal to deploy nationwide FREE public wifi networks if successful
will be a huge boon to all citizens as well as entrepreneurs/startups. As you
would expect the cable and telco monopolies are fighting it hard consequently
it is critical that as many people as possible contact the White House, the
FCC and their reps in Congress to voice strong support for this proposal. Not
only will it help break the cellphone and broadband monopolies cable and
telcos have that completely eliminates competition and choice in these markets
but it will generate significant economic growth, jobs and overall wealth
creation across the country.

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YesThatTom2
I explained Super Wifi about a year ago.

[http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/12/superwifi-better-
than-...](http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/12/superwifi-better-than-
sex.html)

Warning: it is kind of a rant, but I think I got all the tech stuff right.

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meta
Political musing aside I think it may be disingenuous to compare modern
collision-free Ethernet vs shared-medium solutions.

Modern Ethernet over twisted-pair connect directly to a switch, a quite
intelligent piece of technology. During this transfer you will not get a
collision because it is your wire. When all the various clients packets
converge at the switch the software there will sort and buffer the traffic in
a hopefully 'fair' way and then send all that traffic out a collision-free
link. Repeat. (Note: old Ethernet did at one time transmit on a shared medium
but most people thing of Ethernet as our modern twisted-pair-switch-n-router
architecture).

ATM and other channel access methods[1] are solutions dealing with a different
problem. A shared medium can quite easily become overwhelmed even if everyone
is playing fair. If the link just has too many clients the network collapses.
One might liken this to the "hotel wifi" or "stadium wifi" problem.

While I think more open wifi is good, the technical challenges are not
trivial. Many hotels and stadiums are moving to WLAN Controller architectures
coupled with highly directional APs. Just a bit ago we saw an article on how
the Super Bowl will be RF Spectrum policed this time around - just to try and
keep the shared medium working. There would be many policy questions around
deploy, management, policing, etc. and many technical questions about channel
access, network health, buffering, etc.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_access_methods>

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meatsock
I support this idea, but i'm guessing any company that makes eighty bucks per
house per month for internet access may disagree. i am looking forward to
hearing the proferred arguments _against_ free internet for anyone who wants
it as it would have to be a rather clever argument to succeed at contravening
common sense.

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silentOpen
This article talks about spectrum allocation but lacks any details about
_which_ _frequencies_. The closest it gets is "television guard bands". Is
this the state of technical governance reporting in a modern, digital society?

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YesThatTom2
I explained Super Wifi about a year ago.
[http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/12/superwifi-better-
than-...](http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/12/superwifi-better-than-
sex.html) Warning: it is kind of a rant, but I think I got all the tech stuff
right.

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frogpelt
Ever since I watched Kevin Slavin's "How algorithms shape our world" on TED, I
have been wondering whether we really need everything in the world to be
monitored and decided by software.

Why would two cars a mile away from each other need to communicate? Perhaps,
to warn that an accident has happened. But what happens when all cars within
in a mile radius are trying to communicate with each other to alogrithmically
develop traffic patterns? Would there be "flash crashes" like there are in the
stock market from time to time?

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xntrk
This seems really awesome for the people but I have a feeling a few
companies/lobbies would not allow this to happen.

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tokipin
it's not that simple... at least it hasn't been that simple in the last few
years. consider these examples:

    
    
      * Obamacare vs health insurance industry
      * Wall Street reform vs Wall Street
      * The tech industry vs SOPA/PIPA

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dolphins
This would be much better than existing mobile data infrastructure for
consumers.

