Wireless Mesh May Be The Right Choice

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Wireless Mesh May Be The Right Choice

The pentagon has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for Afghanistan and Iraq. San Francisco, California, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for local broadband infrastructure. Ypsilanti, Michigan, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for a nontechnical approach to local broadband infrastructure, monitored and operated by two fellows with laptops. Perth Amboy, New Jersey, has opted for wireless mesh technology as the right choice for their "Canopy" approach to local broadband infrastructure for their city.

Perth Amboy has completed their pilot program, and reports the city will save some $10,000 per month in communications expenses. The cost for the canopy, on the other hand, is a cool $500,000. Five months break even point? You gotta be kidding!

Global Internet access will be handled separately. That means every house will most likely have either a home network with internal network routing (technical stuff), or, as the majority option, multiple computers that can be obtained through recycling centers (nontechnical preferred approach). If I were still in the labor force, I'd definitely get into the webcam reselling business in Perth Amboy.

It won't take long for them to ramp up their home digital recording studios, and start creating and producing their own live interactive tv and radio shows, their continuous telethons, continuous garage shopping network, and live, interactive town hall meetings ad nauseum. Congratulations to those communities! Now, if the rest of the country could do the same.

Today's technology presents some exciting promises. A cheap desktop PC-based computer can be loaded with freely available audio and video software from Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Each month, a single click will update the system, ensuring an enduring state-of-the-art digital recording studio for even the poorest individual, low-income neighborhood, or rural community.

In February, 2009, the nation goes digital. There's a national "make sure every American gets to watch digital tv" policy being executed in a coordinated fashion. The converter boxes cost some $50 per house. Within a year, the entire nation will roll out the ability for every American to watch digital tv. For that same $50, a wireless router/access point/node on a local broadband infrastructure would be possible. Every American would be able to communicate across their local community with broadband speeds that are tenfold faster than what is being offered in the United States, today.

For the price of a few hundred dollars, communities could be connected to each other, and entire counties, and states could be operational with a low-cost "last mile solution" that would serve to distribute locally created and produced phone, tv and radio services. The states would then be positioned to negotiate reasonable wholesale pricing for Internet access. The logic is so low-cost, even if the result was unsatisfactory at one level, the certainty that every child in America would be able to access their school's network from their homes to do homework in the evenings and on weekends is absolute.

The call for a national decentralized broadband policy is more important, today, than it was even three weeks ago. The FCC has all but sealed off the airwaves that are owned by the public, by auctioning off our airwaves to a handful of corporations. For decades, our country has followed a policy of using the private sector to build and operate our telecommunications infrastructure. With the advent of the Internet, and wireless technology, it no longer makes sound business sense to rely on a business model that serves the special interests of corporations, at the expense of the public.

Our kids need to receive a 21st century education. They can't receive that education, without an affordable "last mile solution". The telecommunications industry will not permit that to happen. We have no choice, but to do it ourselves, and act on that knowledge, today, not tomorrow.