Computerworld Blogger Patrick Thibodeau makes a case for the US Government to create and build a national "super wifi" network for all to use freely. He likens it to the creation of roads in the early 1900's when expensive rail or dirt roads were the only options available to the public.
(http://blogs.computerworld.com/sites/computerworld.com/files/imagecache/blogger_big/patrick-thibodeau-new-full.png)
http://blogs.computerworld.com/mobilewireless/21732/data-caps-are-so-wrong (http://blogs.computerworld.com/mobilewireless/21732/data-caps-are-so-wrong)
His ultimate desire is to break the incumbent carriers of their poorly priced data caps that encourage less usage.
Data caps are the clearest sign that America is in decline.
We either come up with a strategy for removing data caps, or surrender the future.
Part of this comes from personal experience with my mobile phone.
The short story is this: I had to upgrade my broken Droid and sign a new contract with my carrier, Verizon. That contract changed what had been an unlimited 3G data cap to 2 GB cap and with it LTE.
At 2 GB my bill remains at about the same, $126 a month. That includes unlimited voice and now unlimited text, an inconsequential benefit.
To raise the 2 GB cap to 4 GB is an extra $10; to 6 GB is yet another $10, all the way up to a 50 GB shared data plan of $375 a month. At any tier, it is no bargain.
Please note: I could have kept my previous unlimited plan if I paid full price for the Samsung Galaxy, at about $600. But Verizon, according to various reports, is throttling unlimited data customers who go above 2 GB, so one frustration may have been replaced with another.
The very notion of having to check my data usage is loathsome. It feels so 1990s.
The industry isn’t going to retreat on data caps. But data caps are completely at odds with what we want to achieve as a society. Metered access to wireless networks is not in step with the broader social needs.
Just take online education, as one important example. More students are turning to alternative education options, such as the massively open online courses (MOOC). A lot of their course work will be via video, and they’ll want the flexibility and freedom to do this work from any place.
The FCC is considering a move to use available spectrum to build Wi-Fi systems that can cover an entire metropolitan area. It argues that these “super Wi-Fi†networks could free up billions of dollars in new economic activity, according to a report in the Washington Post.
The FCC’s idea is disruptive, but so were roads.
The American Automobile Assn., which was formed in 1902, spent its early years arguing for government spending on roads. Approving bonds for road building, when the majority of the population still did not own cars, was difficult.
The argument for paving roads was made this way: It took one gallon of gasoline to transport one ton 14 miles on an earth road; 21 miles on a gravel road, and 31 miles to transport a ton on a concrete pavement, Those were the numbers used by engineers in 1922 to justify the cost of paving 7,000 miles of roadway in Minnesota, reported one state newspaper, The Princeton Union.The state estimated that the savings on gasoline alone would cover the cost in 10 years.
Where was the larger social benefit in road paving? People saved time. Paved roads were less expensive to maintain than dirt or gravel roads. Lower transportation costs of goods improved efficiency. New industries were stimulated. Cars, by the way, would also suffer less wear and tear, as well as the people in them.
But roads were a threat to railroads. The 1950s-era launch of a national highway system enabled the trucking industry, and the railroad industry did what it could to throw impediments in its way. (See: Moving the Goods, by Richard Weingroff of the Federal Highway Administration.)
Are building national wireless networks any different from highway building? If these networks are to become a source of economic growth do we want them totally dependent on what amounts to overpriced toll roads? The argument that new and freely accessible roads could deliver enormous economic benefit, stimulate new industries and jobs, is the same one used for expanding high-speed wireless access as a pubilc good.
Alternatives to telecom wireless systems, especially government inspired super WiFi, will face massive industry opposition, and it’s going to take compelling economic argument and public awareness to take it on.
Without alternatives we are left with data caps and pricing structures designed to nudge costs ever higher. If we’re going to live in a world of data caps, we might as well drive on dirt roads.
http://www.livescience.com/26908-super-wi-fi-truths.html
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No, Obama's Not Giving You Free 'Super Wi-Fi'
Francie Diep, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer
Date: 06 February 2013 Time: 01:08 PM ET
Does it wear a cape? Can it fly?
A recent front-page Washington Post article suggested that U.S. agencies want to build a nationwide "super Wi-Fi" network that would be free for anyone to use. That's far from the truth, however. What the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering isn't fully built Wi-Fi. Instead, the agency is trying to make frequencies available to carry a new type of wireless Internet connection. If and when the network is built, it's unlikely to be free.
Yet, if it does goes online, so-called super Wi-Fi would be pretty super, able to penetrate obstacles such as trees and reach users miles away. It could also enable futuristic, not-yet-invented devices. The FCC has been working to build the foundations of super Wi-Fi for a few years now, but it needs to overcome a lot of political uncertainty first. It will also require a lot of additional research, as most of the applications the Washington Post mentioned don't yet exist or are in their earliest prototype stages.
The Post article spawned three major misperceptions. Here we set them right.
1) It's not really Wi-Fi
So how does super Wi-Fi work? It's not the wireless Internet you pick up at the local coffee shopwhich uses 2.4-gigahertz frequencies. Instead, super Wi-Fi uses long-wavelength signals that are able to travel much farther than your average coffee shop signal, which reaches about 100 feet. Broadcast from a tall tower, it could reach users 10 miles away, said Edward Knightly, a Rice University engineer who has built his own test of a super Wi-Fi network in Houston.
It's not clear yet if the signal will go directly to laptops and other devices, the way Wi-Fi now does, or if it'll go to a modem in people's houses the way cable and DSL does.
Super Wi-Fi could be a boon for Americans living in rural areas, which usually have much slower and spottier Internet connections than the rest of the nation. Companies have not wanted to invest to bring expensive Internet connections out to sparsely populated areas.The FCC has been working to enable wireless Internet service for rural American for several years.
2) The government isn't going to build it
What the FCC wants to give out isn't a ready-to-use connection that the average citizen's laptop could recognize. Instead, the agency hopes to make available certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that aren't available today. Various parts of the spectrum carry signals for TV networks, regular Wi-Fi providers, baby monitors, garage door openers and much more.
Right now, TV stations own most of the airwaves over which super Wi-Fi would work. The FCC has been trying to entice stations to sell their bandwidth for years. The agency has already made unowned, unused slices of spectrum located between owned frequencies free for use. Knightly's Houston super Wi-Fi uses those free, unlicensed "white spaces," as do some experimental devices.
The FCC's plan now is to create "incentive auctions" to entice TV networks to give up some of the bandwidth they own. Exactly how many American towns could get super Wi-Fi depends in part on how many networks take the bait. Free white space exists mostly in smaller U.S. towns; major cities that get dozens of TV channels have no white space left.
"Unless the TV channels move, we'll have TV instead of wireless Internet," Knightly said.
3) It won't be free
The FCC isn't planning to offer free service. Instead, it hopes to make available more airwaves for paid and free services.
Because some portion of the spectrum will be sold by auction, whatever company buys those rights will want to recoup its investment. At the same time, the FCC says it is committed to setting aside some airwaves for unlicensed use, which means any individual or company could send signals over them. That's how regular Wi-Fi works today.
It's still unclear how much bandwidth will be available for unlicensed use and how much will simply be licensed to new owners.
If there's plenty of unlicensed bandwidth available in the future, the landscape might look a lot like regular Wi-Fi does today. Some places may still ask users to pay for wireless access, the way hotels do today, while others may offer free connections, the way Starbucks now does.
4) Bonus: Totally new tech
Super Wi-Fi isn't the only technology that could use newly freed, unlicensed airwaves. In theory, anything could transmit over this chunk of spectrum. That's why some companies, such as Google and Microsoft, support leaving super Wi-Fi-grade spectrum unlicensed. For example, citywide sensors and monitoring systems could communicate for free over this space, Knightly said.
"When 2.4 gigahertz opened up, the goal wasn't free Internet. The goal was baby monitors and nobody needed this spectrum anyway," Knightly said. Baby monitors and cordless phones were among the first users of 2.4-gigahertz spectrum. Then people invented Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Knightly and other free-spectrum supporters hope unlicensed super Wi-Fi spectrum will kick-start the next generation of such inventions.