Wi-Fi Fight Brews in Big Easy

WI-FI FIGHT BREWS IN BIG EASY
[SOURCE: Red Herring]
After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network—originally deployed to link surveillance cameras—to anyone who needed it. For free. Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree. State law prohibits cities from providing more than a relatively sluggish 128-kbps network, but New Orleans offered its faster network as an emergency relief effort. “The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,” said Mr. Meffert.
http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=16232

See also --
* Google's Wi-Fi Privacy Ploy
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060410/chester