The Wi-Fi Network needs it's own Al Gore

[Uncle Joe]

http://www.networkmagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=164901619

"Last month, TCP/IP pioneer Vint Cerf presented former Vice President Al Gore with a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award. The intention was to correct "one of recent history's most persistent political myths" and acknowledge then-Senator Gore's role in Internet development. Specifically, Gore recognized in the early 1980s that packet-switched data networks could bring great social and economic benefits.
At the time, most politicians accepted the claims of AT&T, which (correctly) viewed any innovation as a threat. The monopoly's lobbyists had first prevented the Department of Defense from building its proposed nuke-proof network, then confined the nascent Internet to academia. History is now repeating itself, as the telecom industry once again tries to prevent the emergence of new technology--in this case, free Wi-Fi networks.
Unlike the Internet, free Wi-Fi doesn't require massive federal investment. It does, however, require that the government actually allow it to happen. This now seems unlikely, thanks to the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act (PITA) currently under consideration by Congress. The name is Orwellian, but the acronym appropriate. It might just pass, as the telecom industry has been successful at spreading its own myths about municipal Wi-Fi. Here's what the carriers want us to believe and why we shouldn't:"