[Cu-wireless] My vision

[Ralph Johnson]

I imagine a system that covers all of Champaign-Urbana.  There are
at least 10,000 users, more likely 50,000.   Every business is
connected, you can read your e-mail from your laptop in any cafe
and in any park.  You don't have to ask anybody to join.  Japanese
visitors can just open their laptop, see the open network, and join.
They might have to enter a credit card number to access their home
system, but anybody can access local systems for free.

I expect that such a system would cause lots of changes.  Lots of
people would drop their second phone line or their AOL account.
But new businesses would spring up.  For example, someone might
start a business installing antennas.  ISPs would sell bandwidth
to the internet.  Someone might start a "CU internet radio" that
streamed MP3s and a little local advertising.  Maybe we would
have fire alarms that notified the fire department.  Older people
could have heart monitors.  Eventually every house in town would
be connected, and there would be so much redundancy that the system
would be very reliable.

I've been thinking about this for a few months.  It has a big impact
on things other than bandwidth, such as security.   I hope that I can
make it to a meeting soon to talk about things like this, but Sunday
afternoon is a very bad time for me.

-Ralph Johnson