Free WiFi in Orange County
The best things in life are free, in this case internet access.
I personally don’t see the point of paying 9.95 for a days worth of internet access when I’m only going to use it for an hour. The OC “Rag”ister published a great piece on where to find free WiFi through out the OC. In fact, I’m writing this post at one of the locations: It’s A Grind on La Palma and Tustin in Anaheim Hills.
In my previous post about the Downtown Fullerton WiFi project I discussed how the county tends to lean towards making the citizenry pay for everything (a sort of pay to play approach) when it comes to services in the county. The fact that some businesses have stepped up and are providing free WiFi is a step in the right direction. Even Starbucks is offering free WiFi at their Downtown Fullerton location so you no longer have to suffer through the T-Mobile
You do know that “free” wifi provided by your local municipality isn’t really free, right? Let’s call it “subsidized” instead. Thank you.
I beleive that is what Verizon said when they challenged Phildelphia’s attempt to offer muncipal wifi. Of course Verizon was slow to wire the inner city with broadband acess so the city was trying to speed up the roll out by offering it for “Free.”
The term free is after all reliative. What may be free to me, may be expensive to you. To say it’s subsidized (which in some cases is correct) may lead to the argument that the city is attempting to serve as a communist state by buliding and then controlling access to the network. In that case the network would be subsidized and the citzenry would have to work with the city on access and availibliity. No profit would be made and thus the corporate fabric of america would be threatend.
Or maybe it would cause the TelCo’s to get up off their butt and deliver internet access to the public so they can make a profit.
Wi fi is “free” in the same way that drinking fountains are free, and roads are free, and parks are free. In Fullerton, the offer is not based upon empowerment of the inner city, but on receiving additional tax revenues from high-end businesses locating in the area.
Perhaps you could give us an example of “free”, as opposed to “subsidized” WiFi or Broadband internet service? The “free” WiFi you’re using at your favorite coffee shop is subsidized by the slightly higher price you pay for each cup of coffee. It’s a great example of capitalism: the coffee house knows that if they give you a reason to stay, you’re more likely to stay and buy more overpriced caffeinated hot water.
The “free” WiFi in Fullerton is not for the use of the residents or businesses of Fullerton, ONLY for the consumers of goods and services provided by the businesses in Downtown Fullerton. So that “free” WiFi is subsidized by higher prices of those goods and services AND/OR higher taxes and fees.
Regarding government funded services like Broadband, don’t you find it the least bit troubling that a City Government wants to provide Broadband service (for free or otherwise) where no corporation has found sufficient profit potential to offer such a service? I don’t understand the TelCo’s problem with this plan. Unless the city’s plans also include exclusivity that bars Broadband competition, it seems to me that it would be highly profitable to let the city squander tax money installing the physical infrastructure which could then be used by private competition without the expensive risk. There’s just not enough demand from inner cities for Broadband to risk building the infrastructure to support it.
It’s not the TelCo’s that need to get up off their butt, it’s the inner city residents who need to get up off their butt and earn enough money to afford to pay for Broadband.
NooC:
But it’s not only for patrons of businesses in downtown Fullerton. I can sit on a bench outside, or in my car, or in the offices around there, and use the WiFi too.
Do any companies find it profitable to maintain city sidewalks and streets? Or libraries? Even for services that private companies DO maintain, the public sector offers many of the same services. I believe the public is greatly serviced by this sort of internet access.
Michael Doss:
True, you CAN sit on a bench outside but “The intent of the FullertonWireless network is to bring to the area more visitors that are tech savvy and businesses that wish to provide wireless service to their customers. [Furthermore,] It is not the intent of FullertonWireless to provide service to residences in the downtown nor to provide businesses with their primary means of Internet connectivity.”
They accept the risk that you will come to the area for the WiFi convenience and not help support the service. They assume that enough people will decide to spend money in the area just because they happen to BE in the area already.
The SAMLARC home owners association profits (actually just breaks even) by maintaining the city sidewalks, walking paths, water fountains, boulevards, playgrounds, even an entire man-made lake in Rancho Santa Margarita. Correction, SAMLARC contracts other companies to do that work who in turn DO profit from it. And libraries? “Libraries” weren’t always the domain of the government and don’t have to be, although with libraries squarely in the hands of the central authority, centralized spying is much easier. Government controlled libraries also make it easier to restrict what the public can access, like banning Huckleberry Finn when it was first published, or banning access to certain web sites today. Even today, the private libraries like those at private universities and the Carnegie libraries rival or better most public libraries. Then there’s the brick and mortar bookstores. Where do you do more reading, the public library or Barnes & Noble (et al)?
How is the public greatly served (even though you said “serviced”) by the FullertonWireless WiFi model? Are “have-nots” driving to Downtown Fullerton with their laptops and doing valuable research? Or are the “haves” being treated to yet another weeknight/weekend plaything? I would bet that most of the people who take advantage (within the terms of the agreement) of that WiFi service have access to Broadband at home or at least could and CAN afford to.
NOoC,
I would tend to agree with you that “most of the people who take advantage (within the terms of the agreement) of that WiFi service have access to Broadband at home or at least could and CAN afford to.”
However, that does not mean municipal wifi should not be offered as a public good. The internet has become as important as roads and electricity and running water, and we wouldn’t think of privatizing those things. If we did, they would start to fall apart in many areas (they already are since we don’t have enough tax revenue to maintain them) and as time goes on, there would be a greater discrepancies between different areas.
Right now, we see large discrepancies in the availability of high speed interent access. What many cities are trying to do is even out those discrepancies. I’m not saying Fullerton is trying to do this, because they aren’t. But you cannot just look at Fullerton and proclaim that everything done by the public sector is bad.
Grant:
NooC can and will say that the public sector is bad - he’s been posting that sort of stuff to my site for years now. I’ve never seen him pull the “libraries are centralized spying” card, but it didn’t surprise me. Appearently he’s unaware of the actions taken by many libraries against things like the Patriot Act, and the fact that librarians are some of the strongest supporters of Free Speech.
Grant:
I didn’t mean to use Fullerton’s model as an indictment of all public sector efforts to provide “free” internet access. It just so happens that free WiFi services in OC is the topic of this discussion. But I disagree that internet access is even close to being as important as roads, electricity, and running water. Please say you were exaggerating to make a point. I bet you know people who have made the decision to not get on the net, who don’t want to be connected because they just don’t see the need. I know a couple of them myself, and being someone who gave “high-speed internet” as an absolute must to his realtor, I CAN understand how someone could live a normal productive life without the internet. I can’t imagine anyone living without roads, electricity, or water. Speaking of which however, there are private roads, private electric companies, and private water suppliers. Granted it would have been exceedingly difficult and risky for a private company to build the aquaducts that bring water to us here in SoCal. Who knows what it might be like if the government hadn’t. Maybe the population would be tiny here. Maybe conservation would be more than a fad. Maybe the river waters would still be following nature’s design.
To what discrepancies are you referring? Poor, inner city, access versus affluent, suburbia? Are you gonna force me to provide “underprivileged” families with computer hardware that can keep up with mine too? What about all the firewall, anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-virus, and applications they need to keep up with the spoiled brats of Coto-de-Caza?
If cities want to encourage broadband development, they need to understand what is discouraging it now and what the city can do about it within the limits of their authority. That said, there should NOT be any law blocking a city from offering internet access to its residents or businesses as long as they don’t take advantage of their government authority to thwart competition. Absolutely, TelCo’s should not be in a position to force passage of a law that would prevent cities from taking that action.
Mike:
I didn’t say libraries ARE centralized spying. I said it’s easier. And I didn’t say librarians were acting as spying agents for the government. But they have been ORDERED to. It took incredible strength that I admire greatly for the librarians and the ALA to resist the recent government attempts to use public libraries to spy on individuals under Bush’s Patriot Act and to censor web site access under Clinton’s Child Online Protection Act. That doesn’t change the fact that Patriot and COPA DID require such actions of libraries and librarians and we may not be so lucky with future government efforts. That’s why I’ve also argued with you for years that it’s wrong to vest more power and authority with the federal government, and we even need to restore some of that back on the state and local governments and the individual.
NooC:
State’s rights is a double-edged sword. While I think states being able to legislate ahead of the curve can be productive (right to die and a repeal of sex and drug laws), legilating behind the curve can be dangerous - I honestly believe some Southern states might still have segregation if their majority voted and the federal government wasn’t allowed to intervene. It’s a tough line to draw.
Of course it’s a double-edged sword. Isn’t everything regarding government a double-edged sword? The question is where does bad policy and corruption do the most harm? Local, state, or federal level?
Segragation wasn’t something exclusive to the south, but I doubt it survive a modern “equal protect” trial. Then again, what would be the recourse if such assault on individual liberty was a federal policy? What if the federal government was THEE internet service provider for all poor communitees in the U.S., imagine how easy it would be to censor and monitor. Would you be in favor of the federal government being the poor man’s ISP?
But it’s not the only ISP - Fullerton has their free access, and you and I can use it, or not, and can pay for access at home. It’s not like your Big Bad Government is making so you have to use Fullerton’s wireless…
That was a “what if”. Would you support the federal government operating, providing, and regulating the one and only ISP available to all poor, inner city communities? Do you trust the web to the likes of Right-wing, christian conservatives? I don’t. I don’t want Bush’s ideology as the filter in our schools, libraries, or the internet.
Btw…it is Big and it is Bad.