FCC Member Copps In Favor of Municipal WiFi 188
Cryofan writes "Michael Copps, one of the five members of the FCC, spoke on the recent controversy over legislation to outlaw municipal WiFi: "I think we do a grave injustice in trying to hobble municipalities. That's an entrepreneurial approach, that's an innovative approach. Why don't we encourage that instead of having bills introduced--'Oh, you can't do this because it's interfering with somebody's idea of the functioning of the marketplace...a municipality is a democratically run institution. They can make their own decisions. They don't need the Bells. They don't need the Administration, and they don't need me telling them what kind of decision they should be making.'"
make up your mind! (Score:5, Interesting)
if its NOT, then let the moneygrubbing telco's sharpen their knives and move in.
but as I road-warrior-drive about, I don't want to be disconnected at every jurisdictional and regulatory boundary such as state lines and city limits.
Re:Be still my heart .... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The FCC is provided certain authority ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even on the subject of regulating what appears on those frequencies is within this scope. If Kansas rules against any nudity, foul language, or unwed mothers are to appear on TV, and Missouri allows a broadcast Playboy channel, whose job is it to build the lead wall between the two in order to keep the smut out of Kansas?
Re:Today in Bizarro Land (Score:3, Interesting)
All I can say is... (Score:1, Interesting)
It will be a cold day in hell when I allow my tax dollars go to pay for some cheapskate to DL porn for free.
The communist manifesto is alive and well on
Get your damn priorities straight you bunch of ivory tower hippies!
Bully Pulpit mode Off:
But you know, the bully does make some sense. We have come a long way from the government providing our comminications and our fuel, I'm not sure why we would start going backwards on this issue.
Especially an issue that is far down on the radar of most people. I mean, why does the government not provide free TV? Free Phone? Free Electricity or Gas? Well free in that our tax rate will of course go up to pay for it all. But shouldn;t everything be free and equally divided among everyone?!?!? Whoops, were back to communism again, I'm sorry...
Re:make up your mind! (Score:3, Interesting)
Where the analogy to older utility development may hold is uniformity of service: is local government, perhaps with guidance from standards bodies, or is private industry, jockying as it must for advantage over its internal competition and alternate services, the better way to provide a seamless or the most uniform WiFi service? Rail commerce did not take off until all the rail barons agreed on a rail guage that allowed cars to move from one carriers territory to another. Similarly, I expect WiFi won't be more than a convenience for pockets business travelers until WiFi is uniformly [and securely] supported in urban areas and the travel corridors between them. I want to be getting and sending my VOIP and email CONTINUOUSLY all the way from Boston to NY to DC and on my train ride to work in the morning...Are Verizon and SBC and their ilk going to cooperate on billing so I can do that?
Re:When municipal networks attack.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just to start a little discussion... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a fun little thought exercise, think about municipal wireless and liability. For that matter, think about any public wireless and liability. We can probably dispose with reasonable expectation of privacy, since it's an open network, but what about spoofing? What if someone hijacks the municipal net and does bad things to the users? What if someone (locally) takes down the municipal net and (locally) sets up a phony replacement?
Now, think about the differences between a network maintained by the government and one maintained by a private interest. Discuss.
Re:I'm mixfused (Score:1, Interesting)
Commodity or Utility (Score:2, Interesting)
Whereas bandwidth and internet access should be utilitarian - that is: like potable water, access to the global information networks should be something that is a) trivially accessible in a civilized society, and b) raises the quality of life for everyone who has access to it.
The telco approach is to retain access to the internet - and wifi acccess in particular - as a commodity.
It's about time somebody at the FCC started doing their job. It'll be interesting to see how successful this particular David is at taking on the Goliath of the combined Bells, cable companies, ISPs, and (probably) the entertainment industry (guessing that e.g. Time-Warner et al is backing or will be backing the telcos in this particular power grab).
Re: public wi-fi (Score:1, Interesting)
Air traffic control: I'm sure if left alone, the airlines would get together and provide some sort of communication so their planes don't crash into each other...just maybe.
water: the water in my town makes me physically sick, I have to buy it from safeway
Police: yeah, damn potheads, they should all be locked up
Tax collection/war: no shit gov't does these better, they have an incentive to
Border patrol: that's why Arizona citizens are making militias to patrol those walking into their state...ah...
defense: um, how has the US gov't defended it's citizens in the past 50 years? Oh that's right, by intervening in other sovereign countries, and waging undeclared wars...now I understand.
So that leaves sewage and fire departments, but I've read some free market solutions to fire departments(kind of like insurance, where if you don't have it, they let your house burn to the gound if everyones safe). So Sewage. Good job, you gave one instance of gov't maybe doing things better than free markets.
Ummmm, yey! (Score:2, Interesting)
> need the Bells. They don't need the
> Administration, and they don't need me telling
> them what kind of decision they should be making
As long as the munincipalities don't try to outlaw the Bells, etc. from providing, either.
Like they did with cable -- one cable company only, with kickbacks, poor service, no competition. Thanks, government!
Let's consider the situation... (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone will come back and point out you can get more than 11 Mb/s out of this stuff, let's assume 54Mb/s, or even 100Mb/s. In the end it will still reach saturation, everybody will have to be throttled at some low amount of bandwidth to keep things fair, and service overall will be crap. I can't even keep a 802.11B connection stable from across a room (nothing in between) due to interference, much less across a city block. Leave this stuff to the pros to figure out a reliable way to deliver internet.
Re:The FCC is provided certain authority ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah kind of like how they had to step in on the private sector with that VHS vs betamax thing... Oh wait the private sectore did eventually work that out. Kind of funny how a standard did work out without regulation... Broadcasting is still a business and while I do agree that there is some regulation needed, the FCC goes over and above constantly.
As far as the lead wall is concerned, if the people in Kansas are so inept that they are not capable of changing the chanel or just plain not watching what they dont want to watch, then it would be up to them to put up the lead wall. At that point if I lived in Missouri I would probably sue them for the cost of putting up a protective barrier against the lead, blame them for poisoning the water ways with the lead etc. etc.
What the FCC seems to do primarily (at least what hits the media) now is regulate morality and if they enter this fight about municipal WiFi it is just another attempt to control local government.
I fail to see the benefit to the people if they regulate this. I do see a benefit to big business - such as SBC or the cable companies. Of course we also know that municipalities are going to contract this out, so somebody is in for a sweet government contract if they bid wisely on this...