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Re: Saturday, May 24, 2003
Doc, read the NYC Network report a little more closely (and give your readers a link to it, please: http://www.council.nyc.ny.us/pdf_files/reports/broadbandcity.pdf ). Dark fiber notwithstanding, New York city is NOT supplying the bandwidth for all those 120 nodes you found between Tompkins Square and Battery Park. The report proposes that they SHOULD move to do that, abandoning current reliance on expensive contracts with Verizon for city needs, in order to create a climate where excess bandwidth COULD be provided more cheaply to citizens and community groups. All those nodes are leakage from people paying extravagant amounts for bandwidth - as almost everywhere in the United States. Most of them in the nycwireless ad hoc network are doing it in defiance of terms of service agreements that specifically prohibit giving it away. Let's not leave your readers with the idea that New York is some kind of wireless utopia - yes, the density of wireless nodes is high, but how many are open? Midtown and downtown have cute wireless bubbles for the prosperous lunchtime laptop crowd. At one nycwireless meeting someone said they had had as many as 20 people on the Bryant Park network at one time. Golly! Where is the free wireless in the housing projects, in the outer boroughs? There is the tendency in the blogosphere to assume that everyone has broadband, isn't it grand, we'll have videoblogging any day now. Thus all the whining when bloggers travel and have to put up with dial-up. Which is the state of affairs for 90% of internet users in the United States. Blogging? Creative liberation? For whom? Your pal Dave Pentecost dave@gomaya.com There are responses to this message:
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