At Freedom to Connect , James Salter is talking about the need to get the US connected right. He builds fiber networks. We’re at 19 in the world in bandwidth and falling. Fiber can carry 100 terrabytes a second. [Did I hear that right?] YouTube uses more bandwidth than the entire iunterent did 5 years ago. A utility in the southeast is wiring every house with fiber, for $1250 per home, complete.

Who’s doing fiber? Verizon, selectively. They’ve done a million or more homes, but it’s going mainly to the rich and the white. Gov’t ought to be an enabler of fiber.

John Waclawsky of Motorola says we’ve evolved from plain ol’ telephony that was simple and reliable to having many options. Connectivity is becoming ubiquitous. And complex. But it will get simpler. We will have a smart edge and a facilitating core, as opposed to a smart edge and a dumb core.

Sanjit Biswas of Meraki has what David Isenberg thinks is the “holy grail” of wifi mesh networking. It’s a $50 mesh router. It’s a spinout of MIT’s Roofnet. They want to create networks deployed by communities without involving a telco (except for one person’s access). They’ve been in beta for 6 months. Meraki’s market is the “next billion” Internet users. They have 15,000 people connected. It costs users $1-$2 month. Meraki is trying to engage local entrepreneus to create these networks. Today he announces they’re building a “huge experiment” in San Francisco, building a network of 1,000 repeaters with free DSL bandwidth – maybe 30 lines would serve the area. [I spoke with Sanjit afterwards and asked him why he won’t get sued by the telcos. He said that it’s an uncertain area, there are some IPs who are ok with it, they’re working mainly in low income areas where a law suit would look really bad, and that he’s focused more on areas outside of the US.] [Tags: wifi fiber mesh meraki san_francisco ]

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Tom Evslin is interviewing Jim Douglas, 1the governor of Vermont. He is turning Vermont into an e-state. Anywhere you open a laptop, you will be online. [Note: As always, I’m paraphrasing, missing stuff, getting things wrong…Also, no time to re-read before posting., Ulp.]

Gov. Douglas says he’s doing this for reasons of public safety, and to help the economy. It’s also important for travel and tourism. He says Americans recognize the importance of innovation, but elected political leaders have been “fairly slow to respond.” He asks: “How do we apply technology in ways that enable innovation?” They’re up to 87% broadband availability. The last 10% will be the hardest, but it’s vital, he says. “We can’t let anyone go unserved” as Vermont uses the Net for local services. The state will partner with private providers and invest in infrastructure (e.g., fiber optic). The last mile will be provided by private providers. [Bob Frankston in the on-screen chat objects that the state should worry about coverage more than about broadband, and that the private partnerships are mistake.]

Q: What kind of things have you thought of so your providers can stay up to date?
A: That’s vital. I’m not a techie. Let’s ask Tom Evslin, who’s on the tech advisory board…
A: (tom) The goal is 3M by 2010. The goal for 2013 is 20M symmetric [download and upload…yay!]

Q: What’s the role of spectrum in your broadband vision? Why aren’t the rural governors asking for spectrum reform? 95% of spectrum in VT is unused.

Q: who besides VT is working this way?
A: No one. [Chris Meyer, sitting next to me, points to the RI-WINS program for border-to-border coverage in Rhode Island.]

Q: Verizon has proposed selling its VT infrastructure to FairPoint, a tiny company.
A: We haven’t decided whether we’ll support this transaction.

Q: I’m with the American Library Ass’n. Libraries are the #1 provider of Net access in VT. What role did libraries play in your planning?
A: Libraries are important. We hope they’ll play an even bigger role. E.g., access the Oxford library.

Q: There are challenges connectings kids to the Internet in a school setting, largely because the adults are uncomfortable with it and worry that it’s out of control.
A: Parents should be parents. [paraphrase]

Q: How about if the municipality owns the backbone, with private financing. E.g., Burlington
A: There are lots of models that work.

Q: The key question is: Who’s going to own this? Will some business interest be able to put in a toll booth, and also decide when the tech gets upgraded in a given corridor? Gov’ts don’t biuld roads; they put out bids to build roads. How will the state decide when it’s time to upgrade?
A: I’m cautious fiscally.

[Micah Sifry, who is in the house, posts to the chat the Gov’s financial profile…] [Tags: f2c vermont wifi broadband net_neutrality ]

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David Isenberg opens the F2C conference with a ringing invocation to friends, wifi roamin’ and countrymen. (Actually, the incredible Howard Levy opened the conference with a harmonica solo. I’ve heard HL before. He does things with harmonicas that physics doesn’t like.)

It’s streaming here… [Tags: f2c net_neutrality david_isenberg ]

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(See disclosure notice at the end of this post.)

Fon continues to try to build critical mass by offering wifi routers at a price waaaay below their cost. The current version of the router, La Fonera, actually is quite a nice object. Today—and I think only today—you can get one for free if you live in the US. It’s Fon’s first birthday today…

(Disclosure: I am on Fon’s board of advisors and have been granted some stock options. But I joined the board because I think Fon is a crazy idea that could help make free wifi far more widely available, including and especially in poorer parts of the world.) [Tags: fon wifi]

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Glenn Fleishman well covers the iPhone announcement. Yes, he got to fondle one, and he loves the interface. In a follow-up, he notes that it’s a closed system and wonders what that means for running skype-like VOIP on the device.

I can’t say that I’m filled with technolust for an iPhone. On the other hand, I don’t find my drool response stimulated by the iPod’s imperial pearly whites…despite Steven Levy‘s perfect book. [Tags: iphone ipod glenn_fleishman steven_levy apple voip skype]

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Glenn Fleishman writes in the NYT about T-Mobile’s combined cellular and wifi phones and plans. Glenn writes: “In my own testing, I found the service a reasonable first draft of what could become a reliable alternative to both all-cellular networks and an emerging set of Wi-Fi-only phones.” [Tags: wifi telecom glenn_fleishman]

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David Isenberg has three reasons to be hopeful that cellphones are going to be opened up, maybe sometime soon. [Tags: cellphones networks david_isenberg ]

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Fon (Disclosure: I am on their board of advisors, a compensated position) and Skype are making available a combination of a Fon router (La Fonera—a nicely designed piece of hardware that automatically creates two networks, one public and one for your private use) and a wifi phone that lets you make Skype calls wherever you can find an open wifi signal. It’s $159 (£99, €139), and it comes with a bunch of SkypeOut minutes for calling regular phones (as opposed to calling computers running Skype). Judging from the Skype accessories page, it looks like this combo is a big price break: A skype wifi phone by itself costs $219 (after a $30 rebate).

You don’t need the Fon router for the Skype phone to work, and it doesn’t work only with Fon signals. It looks like the bundle is intended to encourage those of us who rely on open wifi signals to provide free wifi signals at home, which is more or less Fon’s raison d’être. [Tags: skype fon wifi]

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The FCC has ruled that landlords can’t keep tenants from using the wireless devices and services they want. Harold Feld and Susan Crawford have excellent posts explaining it. (I’m sure others do, too, but I’m in a hotel restaurant leeching wifi…) [Tags: wifi fcc harold_feld susan_crawford -berkman]

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John Mitchell has an excellent explanation of Culver City’s announced terms for offering free wifi access to “the Internet.” It’s free, but they get to decide which sites you can go to. Further, by pressing the “yes” button, you explicitly agree to waive your First Amendment rights.

From a legal standpoint, it is the same as if the Culver City public library were offering you free access to newspapers, but was first clipping out the articles it didn’t like and making you agree not to sue for censorship if you wanted to read what was left.

President Bush was perspicacious when during the 2006 debates he referred to “the internets.”. [Tags: wifi digital_rights culver_city john_mitchell]

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