Weirdest bill in Congress: free Wi-Fi for all, no dirty words
What are the enlightened US Congress representatives doing when they’re not worrying about the sinking dollar, the collapse of the financial markets, a recession, the war in Iraq and global warming?
What else: auctioning off even more spectrum (as if we need yet another spectrum monopoly) so that some poor idiot can provide free Wi-Fi to consumers and public safety users, and of course, protecting those young impressionable minds from “obscene content”. Just to show you that silliness knows no party boundaries, this bill is sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat congressperson.
I have posted below for your reading pleasure the entire press release which is on Congressman Cannon’s website describing this rather curious bill. While I admire his desire to provide free Wi-Fi (who doesn’t want free Wi-Fi or free beer or free holidays on the Cote d’Azur), I have to admit this is one of the strangest telecommunications bills I’ve seen. If the Congressman really wants to bring fast cheap broadband access to Americans, he should instead introduce a bill that requires structural separation of the infrastructure and service businesses of telecom operators like AT&T and Verizon, as well as the cable companies.
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FREE NATIONWIDE WI-FI – CANNON ASKS “WI NOT?”
Cannon Introduces Bill to Create Nationwide, Family Friendly & Free Wi-Fi Hotspot
WASHINGTON DC – Congressman Chris Cannon (R-UT) and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA), today introduced The Wireless Internet Nationwide (WIN) Act of 2008. This legislation will not only help America make up lost ground in the global contest to adopt information and communications technologies, but it
also opens new ways for family friendly protections to be implemented as a standard feature in advanced networks, recognizing the right to freedom of speech.
Upon introducing this bill, Congressman Cannon said, “Access to the internet continues to be cost-prohibitive for many in America’s rural communities. The FCC holds the rights to the wireless spectrum that belong to the American people. This legislation requires the FCC to put up for auction spectrum that would implement technologies that allow better access to broadband and let parents know they won’t get indecent and obscene material.”
Cannon continued, “The United States has fallen behind many other advanced nations, including other geographically large and diverse countries like Canada, in terms of broadband deployment and affordability. This means that our workers, entrepreneurs and students are not getting the same access to competitive resources as their counterparts in other nations. We must ensure that this alarming trend is reversed and that all Americans, including those living in our states in the west, have reliable and affordable high bandwidth broadband Internet connections.”
Currently, more than 100 million Americans do not have broadband at home and 69% of Americans living in rural areas do not have broadband.
If enacted this legislation would:
a. Mandate that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auction spectrum and provide a new nationwide license.
b. The winner of the auction would be required to build and complete a network within 10 years which must provide coverage to at least 95% of our country.
c. The licensee would provide service for free to consumers and public safety users.
d. The licensee would protect underage users from accessing obscene or indecent content.
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