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Comments: 111 + - Your Rights Online: US Considers Some Free Wireless Broadband Service on Wednesday March 10, @12:29AM
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gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored.
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heh (Score:5, Insightful)
First comes government cheese. Then comes government health care. Now comes government internet connections. Next comes government monitoring and censorship of said inter- *NO CARRIER*
Re:heh (Score:5, Funny)
Well it's obvious the whole purpose of this is to ga*NO CARRIER*
Parent
Re:heh (Score:5, Insightful)
Though you know this is government we're talking about. That NO CARRIER will not be due to filtering and regulations, but simply to shoddy, half-baked and simply not working connections.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Fuck YOU and fuck the people that modded you up.
I am so sick of people saying that. The government does tens of thousands of projects every year, within budget and of incredibly high quality.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Name one.
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Roads in most states. Now in the long term, they fall apart because they fail to budget for required long-term maintenance, but when they first pave the things, most of the time, they're well built. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
By those standards, the federal government basically doesn't do projects. Mostly, the feds just create agencies to distribute funds and regulate things. Pretty much everything the federal government does that qualifies as a "project" involves giving money to the state earmarked for a specific task. Even things like the NEA (.gov, not .org), DARPA, etc. involve giving money out to somebody else to do the project.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They may be shoddy. They most certainly will be overloaded. I know someone whose municipality gives "free" broadband, and in the evenings, it's next to useless. They still subscribe to the, fortunately, still available private service in order to play games or surf at a decent rate.
No "single payer" there, yet.
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Re:heh (Score:4, Interesting)
But for regular browsing news and Facebook-type stuff? Yeah, bet on monitoring...though the data collected won't be representitive of all demographics because the middle-class and wealthy will still have the "full-featured" broadband from cable providers...which are kinda monitored anyway, but that's beside the point.
Since the service must be allocated among a list of open frequencies, it's also possible that people subscribing to the service would need new gadgets to access the pipes. There's a lot of possibility for abuse if, say, the extra communication logic is subseqently required for "emergency" purposes in all gadgets.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...though the data collected won't be representative of all demographics because the middle-class and wealthy will still have the "full-featured" broadband from cable providers...
At first. Eventually the only people that won't use it will be the security-conscious, the torrenter, and the government conspiracy theorist.
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And then they get to pay for both, one with paycheck, one with taxes. Who doesn't win?
Re:heh (Score:5, Insightful)
I see nothing in the liked article that says the "free or low cost service" would be run by the government, just that they'd consider allowing companies, localities, and nonprofits to use these frequencies if that's what they do with it.
As always, you put a lot of your trust in your ISP, so choose carefully.
Parent
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" Yeah, bet on monitoring.."
that would be a loosing bet.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
First comes government cheese.
Yeah really. I'd much prefer government Twinkies.
Re: (Score:2)
First comes government cheese.
Yeah really. I'd much prefer government Twinkies.
The cheese was surplus that would have gone to a landfill. My grandmother got some of that cheese, and it was the best damned cheese I ever ate! Government twinkies, otoh, would only line the pockets of whatever multinational corporation manufactures twinkies.
Don't woosh me, bro.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First comes government cheese. Then comes government health care. Now comes government internet connections. Next comes government monitoring and censorship of said inter- *NO CARRIER*
If you hadn't noticed, Government has been monitoring communications since they set up ECHELON in the 60s.
If you really want to talk about goverment cheese, let's discuss the billions in subsidies/tax cuts/etc that have been given to telecom companies.
Anyone with two eyeballs can look at the market for certain services (including healthcare) and see that the market is broken.
Re: (Score:2)
There actually has to be a market to even talk about the market. For health insurance and telecomms there simply is none.... Too few players all in quiet agreement; and when the product is a NEED instead of a WANT there really is no 'market'.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for the long-gone government cheese; it was surplus anyway, and hungry people need food. Better to give it to the poor than to pour it into a landfill. "There but for the grace of God go I". I have a decent job, but lots of folks aren't so fortunate. I don't mind some of my tax money going to feed the hungry, but I do object to it going to a senseless war like Vietnam or Iraq, or pork projects that serve no purpose other than to get Senators re-elected, or grants to IBM and Kodak that are bigger tha
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>First comes government cheese. Then comes government health care. Now comes government internet connections. Next comes government monitoring and censorship of said inter[net.]
I *know* ... it's ridiculous!
All those things should be the preserve of private corporations!
Re: (Score:2)
But I am lactose intolerant, you insensitive clods.
Parent == no clue (Score:2)
The parent ether has no clue, or works for
IPS or a cell phone carrier. Reading on
other posters also simple don't understand how the Internet works, and that a grid of
roof top routers can and will ( when its legal ) replace low bandwidth comumications
like cell phone carriers. Well perhaps not
as a foot ball game. Of in a harbor tunnel.
But most any place you can see a roof top
you should get coverage. We are talking ranges of 5 to 10 miles.
NOw that that is said when will the FCC
put out the standards of fai
This isn't new (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't remember the name of the company but suffice it to say, there is a company who has been riding the back of the FCC for years, trying to get them to approve some kind of free wireless broadband plan just like is being described here.
The old plan was to have the government collect some revenue from the company in exchange for offering exclusive use of the spectrum. The company was planning to filter the connection, specifically to block porn, because they had some significant ties to the moral morons in the "family" groups.
I don't recall how they were planning to pay for the whole thing, but i seem to remember they had for-pay plans that might have subsidized the free (censored) plans.
Re:This isn't new (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the company http://www.m2znetworks.com/ [m2znetworks.com]
They originally wanted a 15 year exclusive spectrum license, and as you can see from their website, even now after their original plan was totally rejected, they're entirely committed to filtering things to make it "family friendly" if they get approval as a licensee.
Parent
Community fiber (Score:5, Interesting)
We've already paid for it, but will never get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can bet if all a startup had to d
redefining 'free' (Score:2)
unless nobody gets paid for providing that, and nobody gets charged to make up for the free stuff, the word you're looking for is not "free", it's subsidized. Not that I'm against it, I really have no opinion right now, but I'm tired of people thinking stuff is free because others pay for it.
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The "public" air waves, which insofar as they can be "owned", are owned by the people of the United States (in this case), have been leased out for a fraction of their value for decades by the US government. There's your subsidy. Where is it written that corporations which have been getting an (almost) free ride virtually since the dawn of broadcasting are entitled to expect it in perpetuity? The people own that bandwidth, and if representatives chosen by the people to deal with these matters decide tha
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Where is it written that corporations which have been getting an (almost) free ride virtually since the dawn of broadcasting are entitled to expect it in perpetuity?
"Free ride" is a bit of a misnomer. Broadcasters will be pretty upset that the $20 billion they just spent on the FCC mandated transition to digital television is to be thrown away (not to mention the >$1 billion taxpayer dollars spent for DTV converter box coupons, and the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on Public Televisio
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They spent that money in the mistaken belief they'd be getting it all back and plenty more besides. There were even plans afoot to take the bandwidth that would normally carry one high-definition channel and split it into two or more. They completely failed to see what broadband and the virtually instant availability of everybody's favorite shows on-line would do to their business model. The point remains...they've had a free ride almost since broadcasting began in North America. I only wish I could rem
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There were even plans afoot to take the bandwidth that would normally carry one high-definition channel and split it into two or more.
I can assure you that if you drop MPEG-2 HD video below ~15 Mbps live encoded, your sports are going to start to look bad. You can't fit two good-looking HD channels with serious motion into 19.39 Mbps. You can sneak an SD of 4-5 Mbps stat muxed in with an HD into 19.39 Mbps, but that is it. I'm not saying people aren't trying to mux 2 HDs into 19.39, just that it doesn't
Why not just (Score:2)
Her actual comments are less tech-oriented (Score:4, Informative)
The actual remarks [fcc.gov] by Commissioner Clyburn are a lot less technical than the SL summary implies. What she wants doesn't have so much to do with the physical deployment of broadband (the "last mile"), as it does with actually adopting the broadband that's available (what she called the last "half-mile".)
Apparently, 93 million Americans don't use broadband, even though they could. Why? The Commish says its because 1) broadband costs too much, 2) non-users lack "digital literacy", and 3) non-users just don't see the benefit. Her proposed fixes have a lot more in common with the Peace Corps than with the White Spaces Coalition: provide free broadband to the poor, and form a National Digital Literacy Corps to deliver a National Digital Literacy Program while going home-to-home to help set up broadband. Her model is the recent national switch-over to digital TV, where hundreds of thousands of volunteers went around and hooked people's TVs up.
4) considers the current providers immoral.... (Score:2)
4) considers the current providers immoral....
and refuses to pay for that which the FCC has denied us all this time.
more likely motivation (Score:3, Interesting)
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Ah, yes... I see the problem now.
I understand it's a new concept to some of you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have any of you tuned in to over-the-air television recently? Imagine that, but with the internet.
The FCC would be doing it's job properly to open a range in the spectrum to public internet, license it to qualified providers, and then play watch dog over it.
If you're worried about internet wardrobe malfunctions being banned, and you should be, then you should stop with the grumbling and get behind this movement while promoting freedom of speech and expression on the internet as it always has been.
Just because Cable TV has more channels, that doesn't mean it's the only way to tune in. Trust me, I know. I grew up in an area that you couldn't actually get cable. Which also means I couldn't get broadband.
Eventually we will all have to get used to the idea that the internet is a utility in the sense that it drives commerce and carries public concern. It's our modern electricity. It has to be made available to everyone for us to continue as an equal society. The government will become involved. It's up to us to determine whether that's in a fashion like our current electric and telecom monopolies or in a more acceptable manner.
In a sense, it doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
The media people receive in sparsely populated areas is already "heavily filtered, censored, and monitored." Just drive across Wyoming some time and see what the radio offers.
Re:quit worrying (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not worried about it, i'm worried that there are too many stupid people willing to change their behavior when they should be changing their government.
Parent
Never leave the basement (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a big fan of free broadband WiFi provided by neighborhood associations, local business alliances, charities, etc, etc, etc - but not by an overgrown mafia organization with a monopoly on violent force!
The geek out-of-doors is truly a babe in the woods.
The neighborhood association can be far tougher and more relentless in its demands for conformity than any governmental agency you are ever likely to encounter.
The real Mafias of this world begin with control of the street.
They see themselves - and want to be seen by others - as an extended family or clan. More Russian than Russia. That gives them legitimacy and power a gun cannot buy.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You are an idiot.
You have far more control over what happens with government provided access then you do with private organizations.
Here is a clue, moron: the government DOES control the internet. It created it, and it controls right away for the pipes. Contrary to what myopic morons like yourself seem to believe, against all evidence, you DO have a voice in the government. you do NOT have a voice with a private company, unless you own a significant portion of said corporation.
Re: (Score:2)
you DO have a voice in the government
More like a 1/100 millionth of a voice.
you do NOT have a voice with a private company
Yes, I can say "no, I won't buy your product" to them. I can't say "no" to the government.
You have far more control over what happens with government provided access then you do with private organizations
Honestly, have YOU ever controlled something that government has done? Just you.
I have regularly told cable companies and DSL providers, on my own, that I don't want their service. An
Re: (Score:2)
Allow people to complain that they don't have broadband online(they can use dialup or someone else's service). Then the biggest clusters of people complaining get targetted first.
Targeted how exactly, and for what? "Take off and nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" type targeting, or something slightly more benign? Could you mean targeted as in for putting every man, woman, and child, as well as their children and grandchildren into virtual economic servitude to pay for their own enslavem
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You've never visited a rural area, have you? Draw a circle even 50 miles around a major population center and I guarantee there are pockets where people live and can't get broadband.
Just because cities are covered, it doesn't mean everyone is. I do admit that it is becoming less of an issue even in small towns, but any time I go back to Willis Texas, I am reminded that "DSL doesn't cover it and the cable company won't go there". Once again, just because you look around and find it to be quite available, it
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Yeah, I live inside the DC beltway & have FIOS; one of my coworkers lives about 35 miles away, and can only get dial up. It's pretty patchy coverage, considering that she's basically between DC, Baltimore & Frederick, all of which have decent broadband. She ended up getting a Sprint MiFi, which is actually becoming a viable alternative in a lot of places & will get more so as they expand their 4G/WiMax coverage.
We are not talking about a government utility. (Score:2)
We are talking, Free as in freedom of speech
Not as in your free to read for me in the city square.
It is currently Illegal for me to put a
Cell Phone Router on my roof.
It is legal for me to go out and buy a gun.
It is not legal for me to shoot you with it.
There have to be Rules to make a Wireless
Network Grid Work. And until the FCC gives up
the spectrum and makes the rules, hardware can not
be built and I can not join in to the free open cell phone network.
Yes you could text and get e-mail too so how much do