How can there be a controversy? If municipalities want to provide free high-speed access to their citizenry, who would object? Answer: telecos and ISPs that believe that such free access will limit their ability to make a profit. David Weinberger is at a meeting called "Freedom to Connect" and has a nice post about the Muni-Wifi discussion. Here in New Orleans a showdown is brewing and the city’s chief technology officer, Greg Meffert, is digging in his heels. I have posted several things about this topic before.
The bottom line is that people are increasingly going to expect high speed connectivity, especially the free kind. Are those expectations realistic? Maybe not now, but then most technological revolutions started out with unrealistic expectations. The question is whether the expectations are persistent. Methinks they are.
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I wonder if they also expect public telephones to be free, or their mobile phone service.
TANSTAAFL
Not that I know of, but I plan to talk to some legislative folks about this and make sure that we push for this wherever we can.
Ernie, I agree with you. Is there something we can do in the legislature to encourge this. I have been writing emails for the effort for unified levy district in orleans and also have written to my representative about the 7 assessors in orleans. Have any bill’s been introduced this session that we can encourge?