Be your own ISP -- with Speakeasy Wifi!
Okay, this rocks like a Rush concert: Speakeasy, the incredibly forward-thinking ISP, has set up Netshare -- a new system that lets you charge your neighbors small amounts of money to dip into your Wifi signal.
Say you're living in an apartment building or neighborhood with good radio-wave access to a dozen other households. You could sign up for a $50-a-month DSL account, set up a Wifi node, and share the signal with four other paying neighbors. Speakeasy takes care of the billing, charging everyone their fraction. Presto: You're all getting broadband for $10 a month, and saving about $500 a year each.
Sure, there'll be the occasional crunch in bandwidth if everyone tries to download 100-meg movie files at the same time. But quite frankly, how likely is that to happen? My girlfriend and I have been sharing a Wifi node for months now, and we both download high-bandwith stuff -- music files, online video, big pieces of software -- and I've never once noticed a problem.
This is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea. I hope other ISPs pick up on it, but I'm not holding my breath.
(Thanks to Slashdot for pointing this one out!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at July 03, 2003 02:10 AM
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Well, it's about bloody time. But, as you say, Clive, will the big ISPs touch this with a ten-foot pole? Clearly they will have to reckon with the explosive growth of residential WIFI--and goodness knows they'll find a way to monetize it. I just said monetize.
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I, too, have used "monetize". I also once used "liaise" as a verb; apparently it's in the dictionary, but that didn't make me feel any better.
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Well, it's about bloody time. But, as you say, Clive, will the big ISPs touch this with a ten-foot pole? Clearly they will have to reckon with the explosive growth of residential WIFI--and goodness knows they'll find a way to monetize it. I just said monetize.
Posted by: Jeff at July 3, 2003 3:57 AM
I, too, have used "monetize". I also once used "liaise" as a verb; apparently it's in the dictionary, but that didn't make me feel any better.
Nice blog you've got there, sir!
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Nice site. thx.
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