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[IP] Philadelphia Citywide WLAN in Jeopardy





Begin forwarded message:

From: Jeff Porten <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 20, 2004 12:47:56 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Philadelphia Citywide WLAN in Jeopardy

On Nov 19, 2004, at 6:44 AM, David Farber wrote:

It's called House Bill 30, and it's currently in the Pennsylvania General Assembly. If it eventually passes the state Senate and gets a signature from the governor, it could be the end of any municipally-run broadband (wireless or wired) throughout the state.

As Dave well knows, that would be the signature of Governor Rendell, former mayor of Philadelphia. Odds of his approving this are near zero, although it's been years since I lived in PA so I don't recall what the lege needs to override a veto.

For folks near Philly, I propose two arguments:

1) for those who think this is unfair competition, please remind reactionary GOP politicians that those of us who subscribe to private networks get both multicity roaming, and a guaranteed dedicated wire shared by few people at each POP. I'd rather have a T1 at Starbucks than share citywide bandwidth with 10,000 friends.

2) why, exactly, is Philly planning on spending huge piles on WiFi when WiMAX could do it cheaper in around the same time frame it'll take them to actually deploy?

Best,
Jeff Porten

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