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Free Nationwide WiFi

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Tinman57:
[ And of course us taxpayers would be paying for it all....]

 Is a free nationwide WiFi network coming to the U.S.?
The U.S. government proposed a massive public WiFi network that's causing excitement for some industries, anxiety for others.

As you can imagine, support of the proposal is split between two major industries. On the one hand, the telecomm industry is lobbying the government to keep those airwaves in the hands of businesses.

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft, however, see a nationwide public WiFi network as a catalyst for innovation (and increased sales of their products). Though Google, at least, isn’t waiting for the government to act to offer free public WiFi. In New York City, the company recently launched free public WiFi in the Chelsea neighborhood.


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 http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/is-a-free-nationwide-wifi-network-coming-to-the-us/11994

rgdot:
At the risk of making this a basement thread.
Would you rather pay for weapons or this? Not that it will really ever happen but still. Leaving it to corporations is of course an option but you will be paying for it in that case too because there is no chance in hell that would be free for ever, via Google or whoever

40hz:
Wow! Uncle Sam as your friendly and free wireless ISP?

Hmm...look at it this way: if the government owns a public wifi network, it can pretty much do and monitor anything it wants on it. And all without an authorizing law, warrant or finding. So long there's wording in the TOS that says any "use of" or "information transmitted" over the network may be monitored and recorded, they have carte blanche.

But on the positive side, this idea may also provoke some positive changes in the way the telcos and big ISPs are doing business.

Maybe all those arbitrary and pointless data caps will finally fade into memory should Uncle Sam start providing free bandwidth to the masses.

Renegade:


;)

...and this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42665617@N07/6261894730/ :D

mwb1100:
if it's free, you're not the customer, you're the product
-Renegade (February 05, 2013, 10:02 PM)
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Does this apply to Linux and other open source software?

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