Thanks for another interesting WiR, Jack.
This new trend of cities setting up their own free wireless networks is very interesting and promising. The fierce lobbying efforts by the telecom corporations to ban a good thing before it has hardly got started are very reminiscent of the content industries' efforts to ban p2p. Free wireless access does not prevent commercial bandwidth vendors from running a business but it does force them to offer more and cheaper bandwidth to remain competitive and it also prevents them from playing with availibility issues. Just like free p2p does not prevent commercial content producers from doing business but forces them to offer more bang for the consumer's buck and also prevents them from playing with availibility issues. Both good things for the proverbial 'consumer'.
- tg
