Wireless neighborhoods

[DCT Jared Smith]

Wireless neighborhoods was just discussed on Slashdot yesterday,
for anyone who missed it:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/18/1716222&mode=thread

If  you're short on time, set the threshold to about 3 or 4 to read only
the most relevant comments.

I'm for one am very interested in this project, and I don't think it's a
folly at all.

H o w e v e r , it needs to be approached very carefully, because with
dotcoms like SprintION crashing around us (still), they're looking
for both scapegoats and cash, and will not be kind to people using
bandwidth without paying for it. At this moment, I'm reminded of the
way Firestone, General Motors, and Standard Oil played mean and
dirty when it came time to defend their investments. Ralph Nader
gives this example whenever it's time to look seriously at
large corporations and how they deal with competition:

<snip from AlterNet.org>

"...in the 1930s and 1940s, General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone
collaborated to buy up trolley systems in 28 large metropolitan areas,
then ripped out the tracks while pushing legislators to fund a national
highway
system. For this, [Nader] said, the companies were indicted by a federal
jury in Chicago just after World War II, charged by the Justice Department
with a criminal violation of antitrust laws, and convicted and fined
$5000 per company for what Nader called "one of the economic
crimes of the century."

With that in mind, gotta make sure the NANs don't get squashed
early by not being prepared for the fact that the cable companies and
the SWBells are in direct competition for this "friendly, neighborhood"
idea here.

Say $20 a month might be reasonable to cover costs, but that's $30 less per
month than a cable modem, and if I were selling cable connexions,
I'd do all I could to keep from selling a $50 connexion to someone
who then divides it up to four other people for $20 each... God forbid
the multilevel marketing folks get ahold of this idea.

In other words, let's do it honestly, for example, to the point of creating
a new form of contract with the cable co's than currently exist, if that
needs to happen.

Hope this makes sense,

-Jared