[Cu-wireless] Keep Wi-Fi Free (Austin) - NYT (fwd)
Zachary C. Miller
zach at chambana.net
Tue May 4 11:48:39 CDT 2004
Just a random article from a friend.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/technology/techspecial/04SCHW.html
>
> The New York Times
> May 4, 2004
>
> In Austin, Paving a Way Past Invisible Tollbooths
> By JOHN SCHWARTZ
>
>
> AUSTIN, Tex.
>
> ALL the big social movements can be summed up on a T-shirt: "No
> taxation without representation"; "Libert?, egalit?, fraternit?"; "Make
> love, not war."
>
> Now there's one more: "Keep Wi-Fi Free." Richard MacKinnon is wearing
> the T-shirt (white letters against a blinding orange background) and
> leading the charge.
>
> In Austin, you can pick up some rays just about anywhere these days ?
> 2.4 gigahertz radio waves, that is. This central Texas city has become
> something of a hot spot for hot spots, with hundreds available in
> businesses, restaurants and parks. In many of them, anybody with a
> Wi-Fi-equipped laptop can turn on and tune in at no charge.
>
> "Austin is the freest unwired city in the world," Mr. MacKinnon said,
> sitting in BookPeople, a large bookstore, with a fellow project leader,
> Jon Lebkowski, a technology consultant. "It's like a road ? the best
> way for a community to flourish is if the roads are free. The quickest
> way to squelch it is to charge for access."
>
> Austin already had hundreds of volunteer hot spots (not even counting
> home users who share their networks), but Mr. MacKinnon is trying to
> push the idea further still with the Austin Wireless City Project. He
> is evangelizing for a movement that blends free wireless, free software
> and even free computers into a growing citywide network. The movement
> rebels against the practice of charging for hot spot surfing the way
> Starbucks and other businesses do.
>
> So seven months ago, Mr. MacKinnon and like-minded geekerati started
> their project. The premise: they would install a Wi-Fi hot spot ? free
> ? in any business that had a high-speed Internet connection. They use
> recycled computers donated by a local company, Image Microsystems, to
> give the project a green halo: "By saving the environment, we also
> found a cost-effective (free!) way to put hot spot servers in our
> venues," Mr. MacKinnon wrote in an e-mail message.
>
> They also keep costs down by loading the machines with free software
> like the Linux operating system and other programs that they developed
> to enhance the network for users. Anyone who is connected through the
> network can see who else is logged on and send Web-based e-mail or chat
> live with them, wherever they might be in town.
>
> In the seven months that Austin Wireless City has been around, the
> group of about 30 volunteers has installed about 40 hot spots. It has
> signed up 7,200 users, Mr. MacKinnon said ? far more than T-Mobile and
> Starbucks locally, according to an analysis in Wi-Fi Networking News,
> and growing at a rate of about 30 percent every two weeks.
>
> For its part, Starbucks, which now has hot spots in 2,700 stores, is
> not perturbed by the rise of free wireless, a spokesman for the
> company, Nick Davis, said. "We believe that the increase in Wi-Fi hot
> spots is a good thing ? it builds awareness and helps increase customer
> adoption of Wi-Fi across the board," he said.
>
> Joe Sims, the vice president and general manager of T-Mobile hot spots,
> with 4,600 sites nationwide, including those in Starbucks, said that
> free and for-pay hot spots could coexist. Some people will pay for
> access because they want to know that they are getting something that
> is safe and dependable, he said, adding, "Why is there demand for
> bottled water?"
>
> Mr. MacKinnon says there are about 100 businesses waiting to join.
> "We're Santa Claus," he said.
>
> As one example of what the network can do, during Austin's recent
> "South by Southwest" music festival, the project made songs by more
> than 600 artists available to users.
>
> Is there a business in such a network? Members of the project say they
> hope so, but they do not yet know what that will be. They know that
> there will be innovation, and they know that there will be surprises,
> for good or ill.
>
> That might sound a little like the unfortunate
> if-you-build-it-they-will-come fantasy of the dot-com bubble. But Gary
> Chapman, the director of the 21st Century Project at the Lyndon Baines
> Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin, has written glowingly about
> the network and Mr. MacKinnon's company, which he sees as "kind of an
> anti-dot-com, or perhaps an Austin-weird way of doing things, but a
> model that could take off."
>
> In an interview, he said, "They've obviously latched onto something
> that's picking up steam." In fact, he said, it could change the way
> people look at the wireless market. "I think the presence of the free
> spots in town is making people sort of expect that that's the way
> things ought to be."
>
> Copyright 2004?The New York Times Company
--
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology
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