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Apparently these guys have contracted with the city of Sunnyvale to install their wifi transmitters on streetlights around the city (starting with a couple square-mile areas at Lawrence and El Camino, and a vaguer location "southwest Sunnyvale near 280" that might barely include my house), and the "franchised" service will be offered at $14.95/mo. Service could be available in November. If this works out, this could solve all our internet problems in this house*. When I read the article in the city newsletter I was heard to remark, "Welcome to the 21st century."
According to my dad, in Philadelphia they are looking into doing this using city money, installing it like the other utilities it is considered a city's duty to provide, such as water and garbage. Of course the actual Internet service businesses want to stop it, for the obvious reason. I don't like the idea of losing any jobs, but then there's a hint of the whole utopian, abolition-of-money-and-materialism, Star-Trek thing in it which is rather appealing...
* - Namely, two or three people contending for dial-up line at once (and of course the suckiness of dial-up); being probably outside DSL service area and the fact that DSL worth having (1.5 Mbps) cost something like $75/mo the last time I checked; and cable requiring removing alterations we've done to improve signal and that whole ugliness about Comcast charging you for each computer if they find out you're splitting your cable connection to multiple computers.
According to my dad, in Philadelphia they are looking into doing this using city money, installing it like the other utilities it is considered a city's duty to provide, such as water and garbage. Of course the actual Internet service businesses want to stop it, for the obvious reason. I don't like the idea of losing any jobs, but then there's a hint of the whole utopian, abolition-of-money-and-materialism, Star-Trek thing in it which is rather appealing...
* - Namely, two or three people contending for dial-up line at once (and of course the suckiness of dial-up); being probably outside DSL service area and the fact that DSL worth having (1.5 Mbps) cost something like $75/mo the last time I checked; and cable requiring removing alterations we've done to improve signal and that whole ugliness about Comcast charging you for each computer if they find out you're splitting your cable connection to multiple computers.