Ok, so Google has let out the note that they are giving free Wifi to everyone in SF pretty soon. Ok, neat, but no big deal.
Then it hit me today…
I’m paying like $50 to have DSL to my house every month. I don’t get that much bandwidth on the upstream! Now people are going to have that kind of access for free, if they can get decent line of site to an Access Point.
This should actually be very interesting! I wonder what the effects of such a baseline infrastructure will be socially and economically?
yeah this souinds to be very intersting.. googe is back with a bang..first it gave 2GB free pop mail service n now its givng free Wi-Fi access. thts really kool.. they may generate lot of revenues in advertising.
No no no, Dru. Though I’m as excited about you as the possibility of telling greedy $50-a-month-Earthlink to go stick it, there are some problematic issues in the way:
1) This is only a proposal to the city of SF. As others have pointed out, expect to see major political mudslinging… and also lawsuits from telcos and such. No idea if Google’s proposal will actually see the light of day in reality.
2) The WiFi Google has proposed is at speeds much lower than the DSL you and I and other geeks are accustomed to (300kbps, I think).
Sorry to rain on the parade a bit 😐