Activism around WiFi: what Friedman got right
A piece on Morning edition Monday noted that there are 14 states that have already put laws on the books restricting the establishment of municipal WIFI, including Pennsylvania (Philly is grandfathered in here). Moreover, a republican congressman is trying to make this national.
If we get WIFI in the same category as public water, power, etc, we win big time. It is obvious. And as with public power (say Sacramento Municipal Utility District), running WIFI nonprofit will most assuredly level costs and access (the Morning Edition piece quoted Philly's estimated WIFI access costs at 1/4 what the local phone company is charging for broadband).
Dean and Kerry proved that small contributions from lots of people can level the playing field. Hackett proved just yesterday that fast moving internet action can make a big difference to a campaign. If we get full WIFI access in this country, it is not unrealistic to see say 40 million people give 10 to 20 bucks to a progressive campaign and you can see where that goes.
We need to really get behind Rasiej, Philly, and, yes, in this case, Friedman. To keep democracy in the hands of the people, lets block the efforts of industry paid politicos to close the digital commons. Let's get the municipal WIFI movement front and center in the left leaning blogosphere.
The problem isn't that Japan is kicking our butts on electronic infrastructure. It's that places like Ghana are starting to look better than us. Americans who don't travel internationally aren't aware of just how badly we suck, and how much more we pay for how much less, in both wireless and broadband.
But we've been moving in the wrong direction: telecom lobbyists have persuaded states to ban competition, and the FCC and courts have allowed phone companies and cable companies to ban competitors from providing services.
In the US, we have an effective duopoly for broadband: you must either buy from your telephone company or your cable company. In South Korea, the broadband leader, there are many competitors.
Some progressives can say that all that tech stuff doesn't matter when there are human needs that are going unaddressed. But this is a false choice. It's the fact that the government is captive to a broken ideology that is causing both problems (the infrastructure lag and the inattention to human needs).
August 3, 2005 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me say ask is Atrios as big a jerk as his comment about the column would suggest?
August 3, 2005 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't think Atrios' comment was that bad. Friedman's column is good, particularly by his own low standards, but it's a funny time to start worrying about cell-phones.
Why don't you read Eschaton for a while then tell us what you think - and we can all have a heated debate about it!
August 3, 2005 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will do but I think Friedman is the columnist who most speaks for me. Thus to my mind while Krugman and especially Frank Rich are excellent as is E.J. Dionne Friedman is the best columnists.
August 3, 2005 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, Atrios is spot on. I agree with the other reply you got, you should start checking him out.
He updated his comments later today:
August 3, 2005 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with Atrios that it definitly is not the most pressing worry, I do think that Freidman did a huge disservice by not talking about the efforts of late to prevent the "municipilization" of wifi.
It is not enough to say we should do "this" without pointing out that there is an ongoing effort to stop "this" from happening.
August 3, 2005 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that the only way these anti-WiFi laws can pass is if the public doesn't know what is going on. I don't think even many political conservatives (I don't mean the corporate whores in the GOP establishment, I mean voters) would support PROHIBITING local governments from building WiFi networks, any more than they would want to prohibit them from providing free access to the Internet at the library.
Thus, has anyone thought of doing ballot initiatives to overturn the state preemption laws? Sure, big telecom companies would spend a lot of money to oppose them, but they'd have a very hard time convincing the public that some town providing free or cheap Internet access is some horrible threat.
Seems like the perfect candidate for an issue to take to the voters.
August 3, 2005 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, I agree the Friedman column was weird and incomplete, but I do take my hats off to him for raising consciousness on the general set of issues. No one else is really doing it in the MSM for perhaps obvious reasons.
August 3, 2005 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem isn't that Japan is kicking our butts on electronic infrastructure. It's that places like Ghana are starting to look better than us.
That's it. we are falling behind in so many areas, because the Bush administration's policies are all for the big companies that contribute massive money to Republican causes. These companies are anti-competition; forget the free market. It's their share of the market that they want to protect against upstart competition. To talk of a level playing field in the US economy is a joke.
August 3, 2005 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
haha.
But really -- I completely agree that this is a huge opening for Dems, and they are letting it slip by. Dems should be championing technology, and equal access to it for all.
The problem, as we know from the Bankruptcy Bill, is that many Dems are as much corporate whores as the Republicans.
I'm not an expert at organizing and getting things like this off the ground, but no one is going to recognize the digital public commons unless it comes from the grassroots.
We need to force the Dems to take on this issue.
August 3, 2005 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Five years ago, when NTTDoCoMo annouced it's build out of the wireless infrastructure, most industry analysts praised (with skepticism) the effort. Since DoCoMo not only completed the build-out, but did it along their plan to boost the available bandwidth to G3 levels, Americans are oooing and ahhing.
What we fail to recognize is that there is a substantial infrastructure investment that has been made (for better or worse) in the copper industry. American telecoms have a legacy of wire that has slowed them down on two fronts:
1. It's a great excuse for not doing anything until the last nickel is wrung out of the capital, and;
2. It's a great excuse for continuing to roadblock any effort to create a public network infrastructure, like say, water or gas or electricity which might fall under the regulation of a local or state authority.
As long as the telecoms have the open ear of the FCC to their excuses for lack of vision and their quest for inordinate profit, that will be the only call that gets through.
August 3, 2005 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points . . . the telcos and cable companies aren't really interested in the internet as you and I understand it--the freedom of municipal wifi, with publicly accountable access providers isn't really part of the plan. They're all looking to the rollout of IPTV (Microsoft is already on board, they have the global contracts to provide software for the telcos hardware), high bandwidth direct to consumer stuff, where they'll control both the pipe and the content--this is where your media consolidation really leads. Think of it as a combination of DirecTV and AOL. It's not about democracy, it's about selling content that people will buy.
The recent Supreme Court Brand X decision and this Friday's probably decision to free the Baby Bells from sharing their DSL lines puts control of broadband back into the hands of the large cable and telecom companies. They control the access to this much vaunted Internet (everything from blogs to eBay), unless you want to do it over dialup . . . or over municipal networks, who may be the only entities able to afford the backhaul and distribute costs. The Telecommunications Act of 2006 (it's coming) will determine how people communicate for the next 80 years, just like its predecessors (the Acts of 1928 and 1934, which created the FCC). Drafts are available, and it doesn't look pretty.
And yeah, we should all mobilize on this, but I don't think the Dems are all that well equipped to do it . . . they're as much in the telcos pockets as anyone, they do a good job of spreading their money around.
August 4, 2005 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thomas Friedman fills about two-thirds of his column’s space advocating broader cell phone services and the other third discussing public wireless internet access. By writing on these subjects, he completely ignores a more fascinating topic— the need for accelerated internet communications. Widespread application of the technologies being developed through the Internet2 program, “a not-for-profit consortium, led by over 200 US universities,” could result in dramatic data improvements. Cellular reception on subways is nice, but the exponential mushrooming of bandwidth achievable by using an Abilene-like network (currently operating at a speed of 10 Gbps) would change the way the internet is used.
Anyone who uses current broadband can attest that it allows exchange of enhanced media and web-content that was impractical using a dial-up connection. Similarly, the next boom in internet speed would produce improvements, likely on an even greater scale.
Developed countries like South Korea have already succeeded in providing a large swath of their citizenry high-speed service. While my optimism may be of Friedmanian proportion on this point, investing in these types of internet speed improvements could enable the US economy to surge. By boosting speed, we could not only establish an exportable networking infrastructure, but also spawn an industry devoted to providing richer personal and business services. Moreover, using the improved connectivity, applications that are currently far-fetched may even become reality. Would anyone care for a remotely performed surgery?
August 3, 2005 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Intresting off topic tid-bit! A friend of mine who works at Blizzard, a gaming company, says that he's seen a report on the two biggest factors for why South Korea is now the leader in broadband: a game called Starcraft, which Blizzard makes, and a porn video that has a famous South Korean celebrity in it. Now the question is should we thank porn and video games for the expanse of broadband in South Korea thereby the expanse of important technology, or does this make us realize the darker side of why people actually would need broadband? Sorry, I know this was off topic but i thought it was really funny when i heard it.
-G. New
August 3, 2005 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is the US behind in high-speed internet access - because of stupid government regulations!
August 3, 2005 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
We don't need wi fi. The world is flattened. We can just jack it up at one end, stuff our messages in bowling balls, and roll them at each other. That's how we used to cheat in eight grade social studies, and the world was still round then. Imagine the possibilities.
August 4, 2005 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
We really need to consider the implementation of public access because if we don't we'll find information filtered and controlled by powerful interests not unlike the circumstance we have witnessed for the public airwaves via TV and radio. That is the real problem that confronts us. Public entry into a commercial marketplace is far less worriesome than the dangers of vesting the power and control of information to corporate interests. Controlling the message is a major goal of both business and government and that control does not provide for an equitable and unbiased distribution of information. We know that as a fact and need to actively counter that action. Decentralizing the distribution is a solid first step to the citizens holding the reins controlling the flow of information.
Corporate America, aided by the administration, has demonstrated a desire to place a stranglehold on information and I can think of little else that so undermines the basic workings of a democratic state.
thepeoplechoose
August 4, 2005 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink