

Wi-Fi Should Scare the Hell Out of Verizon and AT&T - roye
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-08/wi-fi-should-scare-the-hell-out-of-verizon-and-at-and-t#r=hp-ls

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kaoD
I'm still dreaming of a world connected by a giant Wi-Fi mesh network (or
several federated networks) fully maintained and supported by its users. It
would be like the Internet as it should've been: free as in freedom.

There are efforts underway such as Guifi[1] (very popular in Catalonia) but
there's a high barrier to entry, the documentation is very sparse and mainly
in Catalan. I'm a technical person but gave up researching how to add a node
in my city.

The project is really cool and provides both connectivity and services for the
network, including gateways into the Internet.

Why didn't mesh networks flourish? What killed the dream of a truly free and
federated internet? Is there a similar effort in the US or other parts of
Europe?

How cool would that be? I'll keep dreaming...

[1] [http://guifi.net/](http://guifi.net/)

~~~
femto
> Why didn't mesh networks flourish?

Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has a
few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the hierarchy
of NICs).

There was intense activity in community based WiFi, soon after decent speed
WiFi debuted in the early 2000s, but they mostly died, due to the above issue
in my experience. Nodedb [1] is still a remnant of that era, which indicates
the level of activity that was.

[1] [http://www.nodedb.com/](http://www.nodedb.com/)

~~~
kaoD
> Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has
> a few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the
> hierarchy of NICs).

How is that an issue? You mean it's a problem because of the lack of
volunteers for the job, or because of technical issues to achieve proper
networking?

Guifi has network management policies which you have to follow to be part of
the mesh (IP address space, network topology, routing at supernode borders,
QoS, etc.) but everything else is decentralized. To be honest I've never been
their user, so I'm not sure how good their networking is.

Guifi is quite active in Catalonia. What surprises me is how lacking mesh
networks are everywhere else. Perhaps I should be surprised at how active
Guifi is.

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jrapdx3
Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned by
Verizon, etc. WiFi is not 100% available everywhere, may not be secure (but
then again, the cell connection isn't either...). Nonetheless, cell connection
is often the only way to get Internet at all.

I guess the gripe might be not using cell networks makes it hard to charge for
some cell services. I suppose WiFi will just cost more. WiFi may be "free" at
the hotel I stay at, but the hotel is paying for it (and probably padding
their rates accordingly).

IOW, strongly suspect the costs will "come out in the wash", we'll pay for it
one way or the other. Besides, FWIW I know several people who use their cell
connection to feed WiFi routers. Think about it, since more and more people
are abandoning land-lines and "going all cell" where would their WiFi be
connected to anyway?

~~~
signa11
> Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned
> by Verizon, etc.

yes, but wifi is unlicensed spectrum, whereas cellular (lte/hspa/cdma/...) is
licensed, which translates to huge capital expenditures by operators, and
hence i guess, the need to milk it (the correct term is 'monetize') for all it
is worth. which i think, also might account for great eagerness on operator's
part to move to virtualized world where equipment costs are further reduced.

------
walterbell
> Startups have started building low-bandwidth wireless networks for connected
> devices that cost only a fraction of the subscription fees for LTE networks.

Too bad they didn't name these startups.

~~~
roye
if they did, there would have been 3 comments already labeling this a "puff
piece." Still could be - who knows...

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Why, exactly? I wondered the same thing--what are these so-called startups
that are achieving this, how big a trend is this, is it just a local Silicon
Valley thing or is it widespread, etc.? Seems like the author dropped the ball
here.

~~~
walterbell
I've read articles about at least two, but sadly can't find them now. They use
unlicensed spectrum to deliver low data rates, which is enough for IoT
devices.

~~~
roye
You reminded me of this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877).
(Earlier post of mine, but on topic...)

~~~
walterbell
Thanks, that was one of them :)

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cornewut
I would love a mechanism that would reimburse me for sharing my WiFi with
others.

~~~
DanBC
Fon - you share part of your WIFI and you get free access to other people's
shared wifi.

[https://corp.fon.com/](https://corp.fon.com/)

~~~
icebraining
Yeap. In places where they partnered with large ISPs, such as here in
Portugal, it's well worth the money. The routers are expensive (relative to
their quality), but it's a one time cost and now I have a free WiFi spot on
almost every block of the largest cities.

