Right, but Google is also going to be deploying a internet connections, most likely via wireless (perhaps wimax, depending on how soon they get it off the ground). They'll be using all the dark fiber they've bought up as well as their vast number of blackboxes around the country... and this certainly will not be free, at least not from the standpoint of freedom! It'll very likely by dollar-free, though, which is an interesting contrast to Microsoft's likely course of action. One must choose the lesser of two evils, no? Michael Baron wrote:
I believe there are a number of major corporations (Microsoft included) that are trying to develop a so-called "NGN (Next Generation Network). However, there are a number of issues associated with it.
The simplest but yet the most comlex of them all is "who is going to pay for the maintanance and upgrades?" Right now, the Internet is free to use (ISP charges are for connection not for use of the network really). If Microsoft develops a private network of this kind, I doubt it is going to be "free for all".
On 8/2/07, Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/01/news.internet/print
Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu)
Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron
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