A wi-fi in every pot
: Micah Sifry, who’s helping out in Andrew Rasiej’s campaign for NYC’s Public Advocate, sent me text of a speech Andrew gave today at City Hall criticizing a Bloomberg report on communications and drawing a line in the sand at universal and inexpensive wi-fi for all. Hell, if Philadelphia can have it, why can’t we? I’ll be this will become an issue in every city — and then suburb — in the nation. No more letting Korea lead. No more letting telecom companies keep us back. We need to be connected to this connected world. Anything less is like not having indoor plumbing.
: Just to make clear, since some commenters didn’t get it, I’m not advocating government-run ISPs. I’m advocating government freeing up the means for industry to provide this service: Give the city ubiquitious and decently priced service and you get on our poles. Everybody benefits… except the old telecom dinosaur.
: See also Smartmobs reporting that Dell is opposing bills that back by telecom dinosaurs that would prevent local governments from encouraging ubiquitous broadband. The dinos are afraid they’d be put out of business by decent competition. Dell is afraid that the telecoms will succeed only in holding back the adoption of technology that will expand everyone’s business, including Dell’s. Dell is right.
