The city and state of Hawaii have broadband access available in a lot of the public transportation here as a incentive for people to take public transportation. I would love to be able to get work done while in transit but sadly public transportation is not a viable option for me. It seems though that the cable companies are worried about their dominance in the broadband delivery market and are pushing to start offering some wireless services. If it’s free and goes along with your home service I am all for it but if it cost more forget it.
We are fast approaching a level of connectivity that will result in true 24/7 connectivity. [www.thewirelessreport.com]
My parents live 6 miles from the closest town and about 3 miles from the closest high speed cable drop. Seeing this article in Engadget today got me to thinking on a solution that I may have to play around with. The key will be finding someone willing to let me mount some commercial WiFi Gear up on their roof. Need to see who I know in the area as it would be a fun experiment to get them some high speed access. [Engadgett]
I have one of those dishes in storage also and I bet you using some of my RF skills I could build a better antenna then these guys did and even increase senstivity by buying a high end amplifier for the unit.
Imagine you are a executive at Verizon Wireless, Time Warner/AOl, Earthlink, Tmobile etc and you have just spent millions upgrading broadband service and were trying to figure out your pricing model only to find out that Google is going to give free service to an entire city.
Imagine that your 69.95 monthly price tag for mobile wireless access can be routed around by a free service. As I have said before I am sure some company executives will be looking at laying some people off. Here in Honolulu I have been wanting high speed wireless service for about 5 years and I am still waiting. Verizon says sometime in 2006 well hello I am tired of waiting. Although Google says they will not be expanding into other cities the hand writing is on the wall for me. [News.com]
First I want to thank one of readers for sending us the Google WiFi link yesterday, he helped us be one of the first few sites to post the information which resulted in one of our higher traffic days around here. More info is on the street tonight.
Those of you that took the time to read the FAQ which is no longer online it was noted that the service was only going to be rolled out in and around Google HQ. A lot of people jumped on this today with lots of speculation that they are likely going to be launching something nation wide based upon all the bandwidth they have been buying up.
Time will tell but I bet that they have the telco’s, wireless and broadband providers scared to death.
Here are some thoughts.
1. Google Talk Anyplace Anytime (Replace Phone Company)
2. Surf the net Anyplace Anytime (Replace Broadband Cable Providers)
3. Sell services such as TV Programming, Videos etc through that Free Wifi pipe!
4. Sell a hardware device you can use to surf the net, talk on the phone, watch TV, listen to audio through this free WiFi Network!
If they follow through on this, this single act will route around all of the major commercial data providers. Google wins big and kills a lot of companies in the process gaining market share by simply giving away free WiFi nation wide and selling premium services. [Silicon Valley]
