Brewed Fresh Daily

The NewStandard, an online progressive news service, is running a major article series on Wi-Fi and grassroots community networking. It includes several interviews with wireless networking activists and policy advocates, including the Center for Digital Democracy, NYC Wireless, Austin Wireless City, etc. You can read parts one and two by visiting the NewStandard website. Articles like these provide a counterpoint to the Heartland Institute's and ALEC's anti-municipal broadband agenda. These groups, including the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), which recently put out a "Just say no to municipal broadband networks" paper at the Heartland Institute's conference (on just how bad municipal broadband networks are) completely ignore the fact that having only one or two broadband providers in a community ensures high prices and slow, lousy service, not to mention cherry-picking in which the providers ignore low-income areas. This is not surprising when you consider that people from incumbent telcos are sitting on the boards of these organizations. If you are curious enough to find out what IPI has to say about the evils of municipal broadband, you can download the "Just Say No" paper from the IPI.org's website.