One Frightening Chart Shows What You Might Pay For Internet Once Net Neutrality Is Gone

[hunter]

93. Tough to do when so much of the radio spectrum is "owned" by big business...

... and then the electronics needs to be mass produced without the support of those technically obsolete big businesses.

I think huge swaths of the radio spectrum need to be clawed back for true public use, with open source commodity sorts of electronics created to utilize it.

If I want to open a local radio or television station, or an open wireless provider, I ought to be able to buy the equipment, set it up, and turn it on. The equipment itself would hunt around for open spots in the radio spectrum, lock them in, and those would be fixed until I quit providing the service. Sort of like a homestead on a near-infinite plain.

But do you think companies like Verizon, AT&T, or Comcast want to see "mesh networks" or a national "free internet super-highway," a cellphone and internet service owned by WE THE PEOPLE that doesn't require any monthly fees? Hell no they don't.

Every highway or road mile marker, and every streetlight, ought to be a free, moderate speed, wireless internet access point, provided as a public service. Where there are no mile markers or streetlights, wherever people are living, public internet access ought to be installed.

But that would destroy too many existing business models. Existing Big Businesses are sacred cows in the U.S.A.. Radical innovation is nearly impossible unless it is underground.

I offer wireless internet service for my house guests and my neighbors. No password. It's not fast enough to watch movies so it doesn't get hit too hard, it's just a way of being friendly. When our latest next door neighbors moved in they used my wireless a few weeks until they got their own. (their's is a rental house, gawds know who actually owns it now...) I was cool with that. Last month's rent and deposit is a squeeze. Been there.

I don't log anything. If I'm using the bandwidth myself then the open channels simply slow down. I lose nothing.

I used to have secure wireless passwords until my kids were teenagers living at home and all their friends were here at every hour with electronic devices. I removed the passwords. If anyone was having trouble connecting I could simply tell them there is no password. Then it was all their problem and I could go back to sleep.

Free wifi, but not like a motel or hotel where anyone can walk in and ask the desk clerk for the wifi password whether they are a "guest" or not. (Try it sometime...)

Someone is going to tell me I'm crazy, even here on DU, but they are the unwitting "Think of the Children!" tools of big business and our National Security apparatus that always wants to know exactly who a person is communicating with or what they are looking at.

Aerogel. The secret is Aerogel.