Lowell Deeds

Previously we’ve reported how Philadelphia and San Francisco are building municipal wireless internet networks to give the citizens of those two cities free or very inexpensive high speed wireless internet access. Now a company in California wants to do the same thing, but for the entire country. M2Z Networks has asked to federal government to grant it a chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum so it can use it for a nationwide wireless network modeled after commercial network television. In pre-cable times, television transmitters around the country pumped out signals that were received by the antennas we all had mounted on our roofs. Television viewing was free to the viewer, paid for by advertisers whose commercials appeared during breaks in the programming. This proposed wireless network, which is featured in a story in today’s New York Times, would work the same way. You would get free wireless internet access in return for watching some online commercials during your session. Based on the cable industry’s reaction to the Philadelphia experiment (cable lobbyists flooded the Pennsylvania legislature with campaign contributions and the legislature passed a law prohibiting any other municipally owned wireless networks), this proposal stands little chance of seeing the light of day in Washington, but we can always hope.