Blogging in the Park
OK, this is pretty cool: Alexandria is opening a free wireless internet network for the King Street corridor. It's geared to people who want to use their laptops at outdoor cafes or public parks. There are apparently plans in the works to do similar things in Arlington, Montgomery County, and on the National Mall.
Other cities, like Philadelphia, have drawn up plans to blanket an entire city with wireless internet, and sell access to it to residents like a public utility. It would cost much less than high-speed internet from current commercial sources (I've heard about $10-$15/month for a subscription) and would be available anywhere you went in the city.
I'm absurdly excited about this. The prospect of sitting in a park and doing my homework? Some day, having a wireless connection anywhere I go? Who would oppose that?
Well, Congressman Pete Sessions, for one. He's introduced a bill that would prohibit any governmental entity from offering a telecommunications service to residents if a similar service is available from a commercial source. He claims it's "unfair competition".
My feeling is, if Arlington County can provide me with wireless internet anywhere in the city for less than what I pay Comcast right now for broadband internet just in my house, why shouldn't voters be able to choose to allocate our tax dollars in that way? If Comcast offered a subscription to wireless anywhere in Arlington, or the DC area, for a reasonable price, I'd pay for it, but they don't.
A government shouldn't prohibit private companies from offering whatever services they'd like for whatever price they can get, but I want my cheap, universally available internet now, damn it!
5 Comments:
Woah.
Mr. Sessions is treading on extremely slippery ground. He must have Michelins.
Gotta love those small government types who don't want to regulate businesses but now want to regulate government for competing with business?
Add a dash of home rule on top and you got yourself one nice little hypocracy there Mr. Sessions.
Keep up the good work!
This shows the outright greed and hypocricy of the Republicans and their K Street allies.
Capitalism is formed on the basis of competition and whatever the govnernment does the best job of providing is considered a public good. Why the fuck shouldn't counties be allowed to provide wireless internet to its citizens. Why is this congress so intent on protecting corporate america from having to provide consumers with better deals.
Government should be prohibited from providing services just because a private industry could potentially offer them! If voters want a service and taxpayers are willing to pay for it by pooling their resources, they should be allowed to. If the voters don't want a service to be publically funded, they will make themselves heard on the issue. Why should Congress tell cities what to do with their resources? Why should Congress be protecting private competition over regular citizens?
I've read a lot on wireless internet access. The one common fear among security experts is that with open and easily accessible wireless access it is really tough to trace back where online transactions originate.
For example, right now I'm using GW wireless. It requires you to use GBUSNET to login so there will be a record of your login with your IP address. Therefore, if I do anything illegal online the FBI can trace it back through GW which has a record of me being logged in and they can trace it all the way back to me.
But when I sit in Dupont Circle and I use some random open wireless connection there is no record of me logging in and if I did anything illegal online it would be traced back to whomever's internet access I was using. So some poor little company with no security measures on their internet access gets investigated for something they had no part in.
This is exactly why I use WEP security on my wireless at home. While I would like to help someone who doesn't have wireless out...I'm not going to jail for someone else!!
I think before cities start implementing open wireless internet access they need to have some sort of registration/login system in place.
But there's a big difference between using another private individual's internet access (which, let's face it, is stealing bandwidth, if only a little bit) and using a publically provided open network.
There are already a million ways that individuals are anonymous on the web. All AOL members have the same IP address. I get a new IP address everytime I use Comcast internet, an IP address that is sometimes used by other Comcast users. I don't sign into Comcast, because I don't use their portal. My modem is just connected to their cable. Anonymizers are programs that falsify a users IP address when visiting websites--a perfectly legal tool.
And, quite frankly, we shouldn't make all of our telecommunications decisions based on what makes it easiest for the FBI to investigate us. Open wireless allows me more privacy? Great. Sign me up.
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