Talk about a tempest in a teapot. Jeez you folks... how about a cold shower of reality here? A) Municipal Wifi does not equal Free Wifi. With the exception of a few small communities, a city-wide wifi project on the scale of Minneapolis or Saint Paul will never be free to either the end users like you and me, nor to the cities themselves. From what I hear about proposals for the Mpls project, end users will have to pay a fee, just like they do to use wireless at Starbucks and Caribou, and that fee will be more than typical DSL broadband service. B) Municipal Wifi is a glitzy, technical solution to a political problem that doesn't exist (yet). There are hundreds of ways for citizens to get involved in democracy without using a mouse. I find the prospect of providing access to democracy through a communication channel that requires at least some investment up front to defeat the purpose. You have to have money to own computers. You have to have money to buy internet connectivity. You have to have money to at least buy the coffee at Dunn Brothers to use their wireless, and most places charge much more. Democracy (little d) should not be limited to those with credit card$. C) Municipal Wifi isn't going to destroy small ISP's. Wifi, just in case you hadn't noticed, is just a networking methodology and not a very good one at that. It's slow, it's unreliable, and it's insecure as hell. Somebody has to provide the link up to the cloud on the back end, and carping about about "communism" sounds more like someone who wasn't there when the contracts were being signed. Now - Municipal WiMax...that's a whole different ball of wax. Give us ten years of technology growth with corresponding drops in Wimax NIC prices, and then maybe you've got something that'll border on a true community effort. ________________________________ From: tcwug-list-bounces at tcwug.org [mailto:tcwug-list-bounces at tcwug.org] On Behalf Of Jessica Bennett Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 6:36 AM To: tcwug-list at tcwug.org Subject: Re: [tcwug-list] THURS: International E-Democracy Event This seems totally on topic to me, and knee-jerk conservative attacks seem like the crap I'd like to see off the list. On Jun 23, 2005, at 4:09 AM, Matthew S. Hallacy wrote: Some might also say that municipal wifi is communist. How about we keep this crap off the list? On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 02:36:12AM -0500, Tim Erickson wrote: At 2:00 AM -0500 6/23/05, <mgenelin at fastcomputerserviceco.com> wrote: With all due respect, is this on-topic for this list? What does this have to do with WiFi? Good point. I should have elaborated. In attending conferences and meetings on E-Democracy or E-Deliberation, I'm finding increasing interest in the issue of municipal WiFi projects, such as what is being proposed in Minneapolis (and also St. Paul). Some might say, that municipal WiFi systems are the infrastructure for the E-Democracy of the future (or at least one possibility). I know, that as a member of E-Democracy.Org - I'm very interested in the WiFi project being proposed in St. Paul and feel as if this is something that E-Democracy activists need to pay close attention to. Its been my impression, that this group is very interested in public accessible WiFi networks. To me, this is very relevant to the work that I do in the field of E-Democracy. That's why I've followed this list for the last year or two. I know at least one of the guests at this International E-Democracy event is very interested in city wide WiFi networks and would love to chat about what is happening in Mpls. Bob Carlitz of Information Renaissance. I hope that this helps, Tim Erickson E-Democracy.Org 651-643-0722 -- ================================================= Tim Erickson http://www.politalk.com St. Paul, MN - USA 651-643-0722 tim at politalk.com iChat/AIM: stpaultim ================================================= _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tcwug-list at tcwug.org http://mailman.tcwug.org/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list -- Matthew S. Hallacy http://www.poptix.net GPG public key 0x01938203 _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tcwug-list at tcwug.org http://mailman.tcwug.org/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tcwug-list/attachments/20050623/2a09d0fe/attachment.htm