4 ms·

Wi-Fi Should Scare the Hell Out of Verizon and AT&T

24 points by roye 12y ago

cornewut 12y ago
I would love a mechanism that would reimburse me for sharing my WiFi with others.
- fru2013 12y ago
  https://www.divvywifi.com/ https://www.divvywifi.com/ Be warned though, I entered my address in their system and they ended up physically spamming me with pamphlets to share with my neighbors.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Fon - you share part of your WIFI and you get free access to other people's shared wifi. https://corp.fon.com/ https://corp.fon.com/
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Yeap. In places where they partnered with large ISPs, such as here in Portugal, it's well worth the money. The routers are expensive (relative to their quality), but it's a one time cost and now I have a free WiFi spot on almost every block of the largest cities.
- pulkitanand 12y ago
  Read about it some time ago, interesting concept along similar lines. https://yourkarma.com/ https://yourkarma.com/
walterbell 12y ago
> Startups have started building low-bandwidth wireless networks for connected devices that cost only a fraction of the subscription fees for LTE networks. Too bad they didn't name these startups.
- roye 12y ago
  if they did, there would have been 3 comments already labeling this a "puff piece." Still could be - who knows...
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    Why, exactly? I wondered the same thing--what are these so-called startups that are achieving this, how big a trend is this, is it just a local Silicon Valley thing or is it widespread, etc.? Seems like the author dropped the ball here.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      I've read articles about at least two, but sadly can't find them now. They use unlicensed spectrum to deliver low data rates, which is enough for IoT devices.
      - roye 12y ago
        You reminded me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877. (Earlier post of mine, but on topic...)
        walterbell 12y ago
        Thanks, that was one of them :)
jrapdx3 12y ago
Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned by Verizon, etc. WiFi is not 100% available everywhere, may not be secure (but then again, the cell connection isn't either...). Nonetheless, cell connection is often the only way to get Internet at all. I guess the gripe might be not using cell networks makes it hard to charge for some cell services. I suppose WiFi will just cost more. WiFi may be "free" at the hotel I stay at, but the hotel is paying for it (and probably padding their rates accordingly). IOW, strongly suspect the costs will "come out in the wash", we'll pay for it one way or the other. Besides, FWIW I know several people who use their cell connection to feed WiFi routers. Think about it, since more and more people are abandoning land-lines and "going all cell" where would their WiFi be connected to anyway?
- signa11 12y ago
  > Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned by Verizon, etc. yes, but wifi is unlicensed spectrum, whereas cellular (lte/hspa/cdma/...) is licensed, which translates to huge capital expenditures by operators, and hence i guess, the need to milk it (the correct term is 'monetize') for all it is worth. which i think, also might account for great eagerness on operator's part to move to virtualized world where equipment costs are further reduced.
kaoD 12y ago
I'm still dreaming of a world connected by a giant Wi-Fi mesh network (or several federated networks) fully maintained and supported by its users. It would be like the Internet as it should've been: free as in freedom. There are efforts underway such as Guifi[1] (very popular in Catalonia) but there's a high barrier to entry, the documentation is very sparse and mainly in Catalan. I'm a technical person but gave up researching how to add a node in my city. The project is really cool and provides both connectivity and services for the network, including gateways into the Internet. Why didn't mesh networks flourish? What killed the dream of a truly free and federated internet? Is there a similar effort in the US or other parts of Europe? How cool would that be? I'll keep dreaming... [1] http://guifi.net/ http://guifi.net/
- klez 12y ago
  Here in Italy, ninux seems to be taking some mindshare. http://wiki.ninux.org/ http://wiki.ninux.org/ Unluckily, the English website is almost empty.
- femto 12y ago
  > Why didn't mesh networks flourish? Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has a few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the hierarchy of NICs). There was intense activity in community based WiFi, soon after decent speed WiFi debuted in the early 2000s, but they mostly died, due to the above issue in my experience. Nodedb [1] is still a remnant of that era, which indicates the level of activity that was. [1] http://www.nodedb.com/ http://www.nodedb.com/
  - kaoD 12y ago
    > Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has a few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the hierarchy of NICs). How is that an issue? You mean it's a problem because of the lack of volunteers for the job, or because of technical issues to achieve proper networking? Guifi has network management policies which you have to follow to be part of the mesh (IP address space, network topology, routing at supernode borders, QoS, etc.) but everything else is decentralized. To be honest I've never been their user, so I'm not sure how good their networking is. Guifi is quite active in Catalonia. What surprises me is how lacking mesh networks are everywhere else. Perhaps I should be surprised at how active Guifi is.

24 points by roye 12y ago

cornewut 12y ago

I would love a mechanism that would reimburse me for sharing my WiFi with others.

fru2013 12y ago
https://www.divvywifi.com/ https://www.divvywifi.com/ Be warned though, I entered my address in their system and they ended up physically spamming me with pamphlets to share with my neighbors.
DanBC 12y ago
Fon - you share part of your WIFI and you get free access to other people's shared wifi. https://corp.fon.com/ https://corp.fon.com/
- icebraining 12y ago
  Yeap. In places where they partnered with large ISPs, such as here in Portugal, it's well worth the money. The routers are expensive (relative to their quality), but it's a one time cost and now I have a free WiFi spot on almost every block of the largest cities.
pulkitanand 12y ago
Read about it some time ago, interesting concept along similar lines. https://yourkarma.com/ https://yourkarma.com/

walterbell 12y ago

> Startups have started building low-bandwidth wireless networks for connected devices that cost only a fraction of the subscription fees for LTE networks. Too bad they didn't name these startups.

roye 12y ago
if they did, there would have been 3 comments already labeling this a "puff piece." Still could be - who knows...
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Why, exactly? I wondered the same thing--what are these so-called startups that are achieving this, how big a trend is this, is it just a local Silicon Valley thing or is it widespread, etc.? Seems like the author dropped the ball here.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    I've read articles about at least two, but sadly can't find them now. They use unlicensed spectrum to deliver low data rates, which is enough for IoT devices.
    - roye 12y ago
      You reminded me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7771877. (Earlier post of mine, but on topic...)
      - walterbell 12y ago
        Thanks, that was one of them :)

jrapdx3 12y ago

Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned by Verizon, etc. WiFi is not 100% available everywhere, may not be secure (but then again, the cell connection isn't either...). Nonetheless, cell connection is often the only way to get Internet at all. I guess the gripe might be not using cell networks makes it hard to charge for some cell services. I suppose WiFi will just cost more. WiFi may be "free" at the hotel I stay at, but the hotel is paying for it (and probably padding their rates accordingly). IOW, strongly suspect the costs will "come out in the wash", we'll pay for it one way or the other. Besides, FWIW I know several people who use their cell connection to feed WiFi routers. Think about it, since more and more people are abandoning land-lines and "going all cell" where would their WiFi be connected to anyway?

signa11 12y ago
> Curious. I mean WiFi still connects up to something, probably a line owned by Verizon, etc. yes, but wifi is unlicensed spectrum, whereas cellular (lte/hspa/cdma/...) is licensed, which translates to huge capital expenditures by operators, and hence i guess, the need to milk it (the correct term is 'monetize') for all it is worth. which i think, also might account for great eagerness on operator's part to move to virtualized world where equipment costs are further reduced.

kaoD 12y ago

I'm still dreaming of a world connected by a giant Wi-Fi mesh network (or several federated networks) fully maintained and supported by its users. It would be like the Internet as it should've been: free as in freedom. There are efforts underway such as Guifi[1] (very popular in Catalonia) but there's a high barrier to entry, the documentation is very sparse and mainly in Catalan. I'm a technical person but gave up researching how to add a node in my city. The project is really cool and provides both connectivity and services for the network, including gateways into the Internet. Why didn't mesh networks flourish? What killed the dream of a truly free and federated internet? Is there a similar effort in the US or other parts of Europe? How cool would that be? I'll keep dreaming... [1] http://guifi.net/ http://guifi.net/

klez 12y ago
Here in Italy, ninux seems to be taking some mindshare. http://wiki.ninux.org/ http://wiki.ninux.org/ Unluckily, the English website is almost empty.
femto 12y ago
> Why didn't mesh networks flourish? Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has a few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the hierarchy of NICs). There was intense activity in community based WiFi, soon after decent speed WiFi debuted in the early 2000s, but they mostly died, due to the above issue in my experience. Nodedb [1] is still a remnant of that era, which indicates the level of activity that was. [1] http://www.nodedb.com/ http://www.nodedb.com/
- kaoD 12y ago
  > Because of the need for network management. Even the idealised Internet has a few centralised resources, such as the IP address space (IANA + the hierarchy of NICs). How is that an issue? You mean it's a problem because of the lack of volunteers for the job, or because of technical issues to achieve proper networking? Guifi has network management policies which you have to follow to be part of the mesh (IP address space, network topology, routing at supernode borders, QoS, etc.) but everything else is decentralized. To be honest I've never been their user, so I'm not sure how good their networking is. Guifi is quite active in Catalonia. What surprises me is how lacking mesh networks are everywhere else. Perhaps I should be surprised at how active Guifi is.