wi-fi- Archives - Successful Blog

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

We pointed out the other day that net neutrality fiends want public ownership of the Internet access network. HereÃ¢â¬â¢s a report from Broadband News on what that looks like:

Culver City, California was the first Los Angeles municipality to offer the public a free all-access Wi-Fi network. TheyÃ¢â¬â¢re also the first to ban all porn and p2p from that network, according to an announcement made yesterday.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Municipal WiFi is the new hope for Net Neutrality – thinker [via ZERO PAID]

Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig has argued the WiFi clouds popping up across cites from Philadelphia to San Francisco could provide broadband access over the “last mile” between the internet cloud and users’ doorsteps.

Lessig, author and co-leader of the Creative Commons, told LinuxWorld attendees in San Francisco, that unification of the WiFI patchwork would provide an infrastructure that frees the last mile from the “proprietary control” of carriers like AT&T and Verizon. This would restrict carriers’ ability to charge content providers different fees in order to prioritize delivery of their data packets across the internet.

“When one owns the wires as these network operators do, there is a desire to leverage control. To exploit and capture the value up the stack,” Lessig said.

“There’s an explosion in municipal mesh networks… as you see the clouds exploding above the cities and people unify them, the last mile is solved. The last mile is provided free of proprietary control,” Lessig said

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Google: We Only Want to Be a Catalyst in Wi-Fi

The free Wi-Fi network offered by Google in its hometown of Mountain View has gone live.But donÃ¢â¬â¢t look for the search giant to go nation-wide with its broadband wireless agenda. The New York TimesÃ¢â¬â¢ John Markoff has this piece today noting that Google has said no to jumpstarting wireless competition to incumbent broadband providers beyond its deal with EarthLink to deliver wireless services in San Francisco.

Not that Google wouldnÃ¢â¬â¢t like to see a third broadband pipe into homes; it would make net neutrality a moot issue.

Ã¢â¬ÅI think there wouldnÃ¢â¬â¢t be a Net neutrality debate in this country if we really had a competitive environment for access,Ã¢â¬Â said Chris Sacca, a Google executive who heads special initiatives for the company. Ã¢â¬ÅThe Internet is not pervasive as it could be, or democratic.Ã¢â¬Â

[. . . ]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Pro-Internet Democracy Blogs Run Ads for Corporate Takeover of Net: Another Example of Why BuzzFlash Won’t Accept Advertising
[via Truth Dig ]

The ad in question leads to an Orwellian flash that tries to convince the viewers that the government is trying to “interfere” with the Internet and that this will destroy it, which is exactly what the people behind the ads are trying to do. . . . (See http://www.dontregulate.org/)

If you watch the ad, you find it is sponsored by a coalition misleadingly called “Hands Off the Internet”.If you look at the members of “Hands Off the Internet,” they are the very Telecom companies who have given large donations to members of Congress to pass legislation — now having cleared a House Committee — to allow them to squeeze democracy out of the Internet in order to increase their profits. Members of the cynically named “Hands Off the Internet” coalition include AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular, along with some “front” organizations that again employ the Bush tactic of sounding like they are on your side when they are trying to get away with grand larceny (see
http://www.handsoff.org/hoti_docs/aboutus/members.shtml). As many on the Net have noted with contempt, the group is masterminded by former Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

A BuzzFlash reader pointed out this entire scam to us and how he had tried to get the progressive sites to have the ad removed on their sites, but to no avail.
The ad is part of a package offered by a company known as BlogAds. (See this url if you want to know which liberal blog sites financially benefit from BlogAds: http://www.blogads.com/advertise/liberal_blog_advertising

Proposed Rule Changes Would Tangle the Web

Many people believe the InternetÃ¢â¬â¢s decentralized structure guarantees that no company or oligopoly could control it. Internet censorship – whether by corporate or state interests – simply sounds impossible. Yet not only is it theoretically possible, but the history of telecommunications regulation tells us it is probable. By the time the telecoms start changing what you see on your screen, it will be too late to complain.

PDF Panel On Net Neutrality
[via The Original Blog]

Like it or not, the Internet is not a public entity. It is not a company for which others provide service and it is not a public good. It is a nebulous arrangement of interconnections between private networks. If the net neutrality guys would like the government to compensate the private companies that have invested hundreds of billions to make it work, and declare those pipes a public good, thatÃ¢â¬â¢s fine. The tab will be staggering.

That will do wonders for the deficit and guarantee great service. After all, the government does everything really well, right?

If, instead, you want a competitive environment, then you keep what you have. Existing competition has moved us this far, so why not let it continue? Some suggest the answer is because there are only two competitors – cable and telcos. That ignores the possibility that the DBS guys will ever develop the technology to compete. That ignores the possibility that governments will provide wi-fi as a public good, and it ignores the possibility that Google or someone else will provide wi-max to compete with the cable and telco guys?

It also assumes that two competitors is somehow inadequate for real competition. Honestly, I think a football field would get crowded with four teams.

. . . Cable faces different competition on the programming side. They face competition from satellite and now telcos on video. They face competition for phone service from wireless, VoIP, and the telcos. They face competition for data services from telcos, cities increasingly providing wi-fi, PC by satellite (which admittedly is inferior currently, but that will change shortly), etc.

Competition works. But you have to let it. For Congress to act now, absent an actual threat, would be the height of folly.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Internet & Mainstream Media

Every little while a story will appear in the Mainstream Media about the Internet or Blogging that calls out to me. It calls either because it’s being touted as one thing when it’s another, or because it tells a story that invites analysis of a kind that I enjoy. They stories have tended to build on each other over time.