
Bush Condemns Free National Wi-Fi - adnymarc
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/bush-condemns-free-national-wifi
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noonespecial
Riiighht. Because the phone companies are such shining examples of this so
called "free" market.

As much as I'd love free national wifi, (And I do think its a great idea) I've
got no illusions about it being high quaily enough to carry voice calls for a
long time.

There will always be space for the traditional carriers to provide high
quality wired connections. The truly ironic thing is that this will force them
to actually compete with _something_ , so the great big socialist internet
project will make the telecom markets _more_ free!

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david927
Because it means the end of the telecommunications industry. Cellphones that
use Skype would mean free national telephone calls to everyone. But it's
exactly this kind of progress that can get us eventually out of this
depression.

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mdasen
Why has no one pointed out that implementing WiFi on wireless frequencies that
aren't the b/g 2.4GHz or the a 5GHz won't work with any existing WiFi devices?

Basically, this is a free, new wireless data service that requires new
equipment purposes (should it go through). It would also be a service with
near no bandwidth. Wireless is a shared resource. That's one of the reasons
its slower than hard lines. If I was the only user on AT&T's HSDPA tower
nearest me, I could easily pull data speeds better than my cable connection,
but that isn't the case. I'm broadcasting to the tower and the tower is
broadcasting to me - even though it really isn't a broadcast, but a single
connection. If we're talking about taking a small amount of spectrum to set
this up, it won't even be 700k. 100k would be lucky, dial-up speeds or lower
the likely.

In terms of providing "free" access to schools, etc. it really isn't free
since it requires new equipment. In fact, it's really expensive.

I'd argue that the FCC should do the same thing they did with the Google open
access auction. Put a reserve price on the auction. If no carrier is willing
to pay $5bn for it with the restriction that they offer free wireless to
everyone on 25% of the spectrum, then it's re-auctioned without the
restriction.

Oh, and for the article's author, when you say something like 'It used to be
that public resources like land and radio spectrum were leased to private
companies by the government so that the "people" could profit from their use,'
you need to realize that we do profit from companies paying lots of money in
licensing fees since that's government revenue that doesn't need to come from
my pocket and it's a win as long as companies don't overcharge for the
product.

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mousebender
Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez Condemns Free National Wi-Fi

There; fixed that for you.

