San Jose Plan Reintroduces Large-Scale Municipal Wi-Fi Coverage 61
alphadogg writes "San Jose is casting a vote of confidence in municipal Wi-Fi from the heart of Silicon Valley, planning a new, free network just a few years after such networks were declared all but dead. The California city of about 1 million intends to offer high-speed Wi-Fi throughout its downtown, covering an area of 1.5 square miles in the middle of this year. But unlike earlier municipal Wi-Fi initiatives, such as a Google-sponsored network that would have covered San Francisco, the San Jose system will be able to pay for itself entirely by helping the government do its job. In the middle of the past decade, ambitious projects in several cities, including parts of San Jose, promised to blanket outdoor areas with Wi-Fi and provide built-in sources of revenue. Home broadband subscriptions, browser-based advertising or small-business use would help to pay for equipment and operations. But those complicated business models depended on assumptions that often proved unfounded."
Re:The problem hasn't been lack of demand (Score:2, Insightful)
Those companies should no longer be given monopoly status over local markets. Let them compete for customers amongst one another. (Or else if they are granted monopoly status, they should be strictly regulated like the electricity, water, and natural gas monopolies.)
The article says the Wifi net will cost $22,000 per year to maintain. That sounds too cheap?
the city has been striving for years to get workers to leave their offices and make the district more lively and lucrative for small businesses.
If this plan works, all it does is transfer the workers' spending money from the cafeterias/vending companies inside the offices to the street restaurants. It doesn't create any new wealth or boost to the economy.
Re:DNW (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Think of the children!
Okay.
When the children grow-up, as they will fairly quickly, I'm sure they'd rather live in a society where they are free to speak, create, and express themselves without restriction, rather than live in a world where their ideas are censored by internet police (Obama's ACTA, Bush's DHS, and so on).