[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Say Goodbye to Muni-Fi here

[451422]

Network 1 Communications of St. Louis, MO has such a business model. The business (aka O'Fallon Wireless, St. Louis Wireless, Dardenne Prairie Wireless, Cottleville Wireless, St. Paul Wireless, Crestwood Wireless, Florissant Wireless, Brentwood Wireless, and Kirkwood Wireless) is just kicking off late last year. The irony is the company believes people will pay for interior-grade wireless networking being used outdoors to penetrate residential houses. The fastest speed is 6MBPS in the interference-free world. Their customers can get faster speeds for the same pricing from their local telcos or cable providers with speeds that run circles around Network 1 Communication's service. This model is doomed to failure as your article suggests. The company has sunk tons of monies into equipment installed on publicly owned infrastructure to generate profits at the citizens expense. The cities are lured into thinking weak wireless signals as this will provide communications to the police force and other city owned services.

[aklimento]

It is so disappointing to see how bright and promising idea being buried by greediness. Big guys need big profit and do not care for society and future. And city governments are lack of responsibility and wisdom to fight for people's vital interests. History is repeating. Times ago were attempts to commercialize water, sanitation, electricity, public transportation... Now it is the fight for freedom of information, its exchange and distribution. And for progress after all.

Whole idea of wireless cloud is simple. It will work most effective in dense populated areas. By reprogramming existing personal routers into relays transmitting the signal to next relay-router (or base station, like Apple's Airport Extreme) we can easily built our own network. Folks network! Sure big guys would not be happy. Through Internet we can talk free with each other, get last news on our own choice, watch any movies, search for goods without intermediaries, providers, commercials or any other similar "helpers".

We are the people©. And our future is in our own hands. We can spend our money more wisely, than throw them to the guys who were tricky enough to grab freedom of information for the throat.

[451422]

Good point, aklimento.