SF WiFi: Mayor loses vote on EarthLink Google WiFiinitiative

[Todd Boyle]

At 09:20 AM 2/16/2007, Matt Westervelt wrote:

>Tell us the reasons you haven't done anything Todd.

Is that a counter offer?  I accept.  I presume you will
disclose to us your analysis, in exchange for mine. :-)

I didn't install SWN's Bx, Cx, etc. or any other CWN,
because *I could not find a turnkey device that provided a
useful enough function, cheaply.*  (Note this is within the
political economy of a suburb, of single family houses.)

The corollary to this, is that I couldn't find any turnkey device
fit to sell or promote among my neighbors.

The 2nd corollary is, as soon as there is a cheap, turnkey
device i.e. not requiring a todd roll, every time one of my
neighbors gets stuck, I would buy it, and promote it among
my neighbors.

But there has never been any such turnkey device.  I couldn't
explain the value proposition. What useful thing would a Cx Node
do for them?   Even if it was really lame, and did nothing else
but VOIP and games for teens and tweens, or pool our upload
connections, people might buy a thing if it was like, $50 to 100.

But things at the $500 level would have to do something
seriously good/useful.   Here in the suburbs, *every person* who
would be a market for a CWN already has a broadband account.
Will a Cx Node or CuWIN let them drop their broadband connection?
no.  Then, what cool application remains, that they don't already
have on their DSL or Comcast?  (The answer includes things
like the following, which are not politically correct)

1. free telephony, i.e. parasitic, e.g. VOIP and sharing telco lines 
efficiently
2. free commerce including unregulated payments/settlement infrastructure,
3. free software, video and music content; unrestricted sharing of content,
4. connection poolling to give us faster/reliable upstream and downstream
5. parasitic sharing of other electronic services like TV, or CATV/broadcast.
  including edited content, deleting ads or adding corrections or improvements.
6. unregulated porn.
7. sufficiently strong privacy and anonymity, when desired for use cases,
8. sufficiently strong identity to enable use cases, when desired.
9. governance over these things by the physical device owners,
who are the information stakeholders, instead of global corporations
and governments.

These are the real reasons there's no $50 edge net device at
CompUSA.  A manufacturer could be wiped out, lose their
entire inventory and investment. So they don't dare.

And hobbyists in community networks tend to be in the tech. industry,
and they also know what side of the bread the butter is on.

i.e. they *invariably* adopt the consensus favoring police protection
of intellectual property, and a regulatory regime that is based on rent
collection for information and information services,
kind regards
Todd





> >
> > Why ordinary people never installed community wireless.
> >
> > Millions of people ran open APs on their DSL or cable.
> > Usually accidentally but often willfully.
> >
> > But that's as far as it ever got.
> >
> > There was almost no routing beyond the original link.
> >
> > TOdd
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> >
>
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