In the Bay Area -- home of the Silicon Vally--there are not too many
independent Internet service providers to choose from,but that could be
changing, well at least for some lucky San Franciscans.
Monkey Brains is a San Francisco ISP that has been in business since
1998. Co founders Rudy Rucker and Alex Menendez started with a web
hosting company that over the years has expanded to a business class
internet provider. They have currently started offering residential
internet services with a twist-- high speed wireless connections using
lasers and microwaves. For more on the back store on Monkey Brains check
out this video:
Using lasers and microwaves connections is not new, they have been around since the late 1970. Mostly in dense urban environments, but due to high cost of equipment they have been mostly used for corporate use only. Monkey Brains use new lower cost equipment to make it available to the general public. This approach offers alternative to running cables thought the city.
Here is how the system works. Monkey Brains sets up a few microwave dishes and laser system on a roof top in a neighborhood. They run fiber to their new towers to provided the connection to the internet. Then they set up smaller microwaves and laser systems on the customer side. The system is line of sight -- there needs to be a clear line from one dish to another. This can be difficult in hilly San Fransisco, so the system is set up to act as a relay to other roof top system.
Now like an most things there is catch. Not all of San Fransisco is
covered mostly around Mission, Bernal, Bayview, Castro, Noe, and SOMA.
They are moving to deploy more systems to cover new neighborhoods but
it's a slow process. Also there is a $250 fee for the setup but the rate
is $35/month after that. I heard that in pilot neighborhoods, users can
get up to 4 months of free service. Speeds are around 8Mbps to 20Mbps
up and down, not as fast as cable but beats the hell out of DSL. Form looking at there Yelp page most customers that they serve are pertly dam satisfied. So if
you live in one of these luck neighborhoods you should look at Monkey
Brains.
11/16/11 is American Censorship Day. The day is sponsored by
organizations and web companies that support free speech and open Internet that
opposes two new bills in the US congress. These organizations include
Electronic Freedom Foundation, Demand Progress, Fight For the Future,
Participatory Politics Foundation, and Creative Commons. On the corporate side
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Twiter also oppose theses proposed
bills.
Two misleadingly named bills -- Protect IP Act (PIPA -
S.968) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA – H.R.3261) have been currently
introduced into Congress. If passed, the bills will do permanent damage to the
Internet, commerce, and free speech in the US. If you don’t want to read these
long bills, watch the four minute video that provides a quick summary of there
impact.
The bills would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to
deny access to users trying to access websites host copyrighted material -- movies,
TV shows, software etc. Most of the
sites are internationally based, like the Swedish site ThePirateBay.org. So the
bill would force the ISP to black hole a website from being accessed by users
in the US.
The bill gives government the power to go to court and
obtain an injunction against any foreign website on the grounds that they are
hosting copyrighted material. The websites have a maximum of 5 days to “prevent
access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign
infringing site.”, before the government cuts-off the website in the US.
The bill goes farther, by enabling the government the right
to go after anyone who builds a tool that "circumvention or
bypassing" the Internet block. In the government's ongoing campaign to seize
Internet domain names -- taking over the web addresses of sites they believe
contain infringing content; when they asked Web browser makers like Mozilla to
remove access to these sorts of tools Mozilla refused. The new bill will ban
such tools completely.
Search engines, don't escape the consequences either, they
will have the duty to prevent the web sites in question “from being served as a
direct hypertext link.” This means the website won't show up in a Google,
Yahoo, or Bing search engines. Payment processors and ad networks would also be
legally obligated to cut off the website.
To top it all off ISPs and payment processors -- PayPal and
Visa, can simply block access to sites they think could be in volition with no
notification to the site owners. As long as they believe the website is
“dedicated to the theft of US property,” they can't be sued.
Here is a quote from James Allworth -- Harvard Business
School, on what the bill will do for America.
"It contains provisions that will chill innovation. It
contains provisions that will tinker with the fundamental fabric of the
internet. It gives private corporations the power to censor. And best of all,
it bypasses due legal process to do much of it."
You may think those who back such a broad law with the
potential to abuse it –Hollywood– Time
Warner, Viacom, and Disney, among other media companies. Nobody unaffiliated
with media companies stands to benefit from these bills; they don't extend
their new powers to stop spam, virus, adware, or internet crimes. The bills
were created for one reason alone: to protect the film, music and TV
industries, I guess that’s what $91 million per year on lobbying gets you.
If you feel like I do please contact your representative,
especially the ones co-sponsoring the bills and tell them to not pass these
bills. Here is a list:
Do you have the right to communicate? The constitution clearly states that Americans have the right to free speech and the right to assemble. Does that mean you have the right to use the internet and phone during a protest? After reading several articles on the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and other protests around the world, I start to see a disturbing double standard.
The US and many European countries are debating if they should have the power to cut phone and internet services, what opponents would consider "criminal behavior". While they support protesting and revolts in other countries--Libya, Egypt, and Syria, but not at home.
Almost all Western countries raised protest when the Egyptian government cut phone and internet service in the country, in a attempt to slow protests against the government. Shareholders of Vadophone even joined NGOs in shaming Vadophone-- the largest cellphone company in Europe, for shutting down during the Egyptian revolution. This shutdown was viewed as an assault on freedom of speech by protestors seeking more freedom.
Protestors in Eygpt used Twitter and other social networking sites to organize the protest. This was considered so important that the US has set up the Senior State Department Officials on Internet Freedom Programs to promote access to the internet in oppressive countries. They even built an "internet in a box" app-- an app that encrypts the data sent by protestors and can wipe a phone clean of all data afterwards, to ensure that protestors could connect freely.
Fast forward to the London riots. Youth throughout London rioted after a series of disputed police shootings of a teen, after several large scale protests over university fees. Again protestors used Twitter, Google maps and Blackberry messenger to communicate.
Rioters used Blackberry messenger-- BBM servers to send messages to linkup and give updates on police attempts to stop them. Riots even setup Google maps with police movements and riot sites. BBM was popular because all messages were encrypted and hard for police to track.
Many protestors gave their phones to friends or simply threw them away before they were arrested. This was an attempt to stop the police from reading messages and to protect other rioters -- in England even posting a message proposing that people set up a riot is a crime even if nothing happens.
The governments response to the use of technology was much different than in Egypt. The UK's Prime Minister and the police blamed social networking sites for helping the protestors and rioters organize. They called for a review of these services used during "violent riots", they even went so far as to state they should have the power to turn off these services during further riots. They stated this was necessary due to the need for law and order.
Here in the US, Bart shutdown cell phone and internet usage during protests over shootings by bart police over the past year. One of the reasons given by bart officals was that the public had a "constitutional right to safety" -- however there is no such right in the bill of rights. After a large amount of public pressure the BART Board of Directors promised a review of their cell phone service policy.
Although I believe the government should have the power and tools to ensure the safety of the general public, people have the right to communicate. The government should not narrowly limit freedom of speech.
In light of the present AT&T and T-mobile merger I wanted to review some of the lesser known products of "Old Mama Bell."
When you think about a video phone most people think of the iPhone face time, Skype or iChat. What most people don't know is the concept for the video phone has been around since before World War 2.
The first video phone was built in Germany in the 1930's. The service had video telephone lines linked from Berlin to Nuremberg, Munich, and Hamburg. Terminals were integrated within public telephone booths and transmitted at the same resolution as the first German TV sets. The person on the other side of the call would go to a special post office video telephone booth in their respective
cities. The service end at the beginning of World War 2.
In 1964, AT&T unveiled their "PicturePhone" at the New York Worlds Fair . Two years later they had a Telephone Pavilion in the Montreal World Fair. It was offered commercially in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. PicturePhone booths were set up in New York's Grand Central Station and elsewhere and in select progressive companies.
The user would have to make a reservation at time slots for the cost of $16 per three minute
call. The high price for a call made from public booths greatly limited the appeal to the point that
they were discontinued by 1968.
In less than 5 years the video phone was died. Bell labs-- AT&T research branch, spent a reported 500 million developing the tech behind it. What hurt the video phone was the cost of the device, each unit cost 1,500 --you can imagine how ludicrous of a price this was given that it was the mid 60's. This points to a wider flaw in AT&T, They have always been great visionary, but not the best in rolling out new tech to the general public.
AT&T and Radio
AT&T wanted to completely dominate the nation's system of broadcasting. The Telco's
plan would make it almost impossible for broadcast license holders not
affiliated with the carrier to operate. The scheme was hatched in 1922 and abandoned by 1926.
On August 28, 1922, WEAF in New York City aired a a ten-minute talk by a representative of a
real estate company--this was the first
radio commercial. The station charged $50 for it, and another in the
evening for $100.
AT&T had other big ideas—a network of almost 40 radio stations
strung together via the Telco's long distance lines. They would
broadcast to local areas wirelessly and share content via AT&T's
long routes. The company intended WEAF as the beginning of that
experiment.
They tired unsuccessfully to push out competitors by first denying non-Bell System radio
stations access to its long distance lines for shared projects, forcing
other networks to experiment with inferior telegraph rather than
telephone connections for their experiments. Then AT&T became more aggressive by suing a nearby competitor of WEAF, claiming that its broadcast
operation infringed on the carrier's patents.
After government pressure and increased competition AT&T got out of the Radio business.
Beijing will begin rolling out
a new free WiFi service across the city at the end of the month. The “My Beijing”
wireless network, is being built by three of the
largest telecom companies in China. China Mobile, China Unicom and
China Telecom, and will provide residents 2Mbps broadband WiFi to about 60
percent of Beijing. The system will eventually use 90,000 access points.
The new WiFi service will be free to use during the three year pilot
program. At the end of the pilot
program the government may change the model and
begin charging individual or businesses users for access.
Like all things, is offer comes with a catch -- a big one. Users will have to submit their phone number in exchange for
access. Privacy enthusiasts have pointed to the possibility
of tracking users through their phone numbers. Chinese
government representatives have said that the numbers would only be used for
"identity authentication" -- insinuating that tracing
of individuals only for online activity might "endanger social security."
The Chinese
government tightly regulates Internet
access throughout the mainland. The government has recently clamped down on cafes, hotels, and
other businesses offering public WiFi to its customers. The government in some cases requiring
these businesses to install surveillance software to monitor Web
users activity. There has even been the threat of fines or termination of
their WiFi service for businesses who do not install the software.
High-minded privacy concerns aside, there's the very real danger of
phones being bombarded with spam, not to mention what happens when the
three year trial period expires -- users of the service could get stung
with exorbitant costs to feed a public WiFi addiction.
Here is how the system works. Monkey Brains sets up a few microwave dishes and laser system on a roof top in a neighborhood. They run fiber to their new towers to provided the connection to the internet. Then they set up smaller microwaves and laser systems on the customer side. The system is line of sight -- there needs to be a clear line from one dish to another. This can be difficult in hilly San Fransisco, so the system is set up to act as a relay to other roof top system.
