-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 02/22/2013 07:46 PM, Bart Kus wrote:
Hello, "The Doctor"! Do you have a The Name? :) I do remember reading
If you like, call me Bryce. Most everybody else does.
about Byzantium when I was doing initial research for HamWAN, so welcome to the mailing list!
Thank you very much.
You make an interesting, but scary point about laws banning public networks. I'm not so much worried about ISP policies; ISPs can be
Not necessarily, due to existing non-competition laws. Telecom companies tend to have limited monopoly rights in certain areas (such as Comcast being the only cable company in an area, or all broadband links being owned by Covad, which other broadband providers have to rent from to rebrand). For example, in Washington, DC (where I live) there are regions of the city where broadband isn't possible because the non-competition laws don't permit any of the usual suspects build out the infrastructure because they'd be stepping on the toes of the other telecom companies. Columbia Heights is one such area, meaning that HacDC is limited to cellular access and the T-1 that our landlord negotiated from someone for a scary price. There are no plans to extend FiOS or even ADSL into this area because everybody's lawyers will cry foul - we've tried. And don't get me started on the municial fibre network which nobody but the government of DC is allowed to connect to (not even the public schools). For more information on that, please contact the New America Foundation (newamerica.net) because they are the subject matter experts in wireless policy these days.
changed. I've surfed through the link you provided and while it makes claims that laws have been passed, I can't seem to find any direct link to state legislature legal websites which publish the ratified laws.
ยง 54.16.330, "(b) For the provision of wholesale telecommunications services within the district and by contract with another public utility district. Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize public utility districts to provide telecommunications services to end users." Also, this bit from section 2: "Rates, terms, and conditions are discriminatory or preferential when a public utility district offering rates, terms, and conditions to an entity for wholesale telecommunications services does not offer substantially similar rates, terms, and conditions to all other entities seeking substantially similar services." In other words, municipal projects that compete with existing LECs can't actually compete with the LECs.
The short blurb of laws cited at the top of this page <http://www.cybertelecom.org/states/wa.htm> only seems to require that any public network give explicit authorization to the general public for connections. This seems like a reasonable policy and should not kill intentional public networks. In our case, we're not an open public
Except for the bit where it also can't compete directly with existing providers, who have limited monopoly rights. If they see it as a threat they'll close it down. If you like, I can contact some legal experts who are involved in this aspect of community wireless, I'm on the engineering side. I speak Babel better than legalese. :)
network, and do require user registrations. Since we're using spectrum reserved for hams, we just have to make sure each user is a ham. It's not hard to become a ham, either. So we're just 1 step removed from being fully open to the general public. :)
In that regard, I think you should be fine. It would be hard for an ISP to claim that you're trying to cause trouble in a non-compete area.
The laws on the main page look to be concerned with local GOVERNMENTS offering free networks and stomping out free enterprise competition.
Not just governments; the project in Portland, OR got shut down, in part, due to legal pressure from Verizon and Comcast out there. It also didn't help the project that got killed in Pittsburgh back in '01. - -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] Developer, Project Byzantium: http://project-byzantium.org/ PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1 WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "'PC LOAD LETTER'?! What the /[a-z]{4}/ does that mean??" --Michael Bolton, _Office Space_ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with undefined - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlEpeTwACgkQO9j/K4B7F8HipACg5MNcif4MRENTJBqDENGkrJVj azcAn1bOGRMU0VodTJhHB/9eyKuYSnaD =Dt96 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----