[Cu-wireless] 2wire's irresponsible new product

[Stephane Alnet]

[Dave forwarded:]
>> ----- Forwarded message from John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> -----
>> I'm a mini-WISP in a small town in the Midwest.
[...]
>> SBC recently rolled out DSL in my town.  They offered a
>> rebate or a wireless AP / firewall.
[...]
>> It's their right to sell DSL, of course, but now they're
>> also polluting the 2.4 Ghz spectrum.  These home APs were
>> lighting up the neighborhood with more power than any
>> of the WISPs in town.

On Jan 25, 2004, at 15:26, Illustrious niteshad wrote:
> Would contacting the company and pointing out the ill-effects of their 
> product on everybody's wireless networks (i.e. their own customers) do 
> any good?

Well, based on the evidences presented, it actually does their customer 
(in this case SBC) a lot of good since it reduces the extent of their 
competition (in this case the local WISPs). Conspiracy theorists will 
already have noticed that channel 6 is right in the middle of the 
available channels and thus the most appropriate to interfere with as 
much of that segment of the spectrum as possible (I'll let the techies 
on the list figure out how well a 480mW signal on channel 6 covers a 
100mW signal on channel 1 :] ).

On the positive side, there's a chance all these boxes are configured 
the same way (channel, SSID, key, ..) and thus will in short order 
offer their neighborhoods free Internet access, which as activists we 
can only applaud.

All cynicism aside, I think the only recourse would be to go and knock 
on these peoples' doors and offer them a free wireless tuning. It's 
always the same thing with the Commons: one abuser kills the Common.
S.

[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=lessig+commons

--
Mayotte - http://stephane.alnet.free.fr/