One Nation Under... Corporations

An interesting, in a geeky way, story this morning on Yahoo caught my interest.

Biggest Wi-Fi Cloud Is in Rural Oregon is an AP piece about wireless local area computer networks. The entire point of Wi-Fi is to allow mobile devices such as laptop computers and PDA's access a local network wirelessly. The coverage area for a Wi-Fi LAN is called a "cloud". Alright... enough geek-speak.

The AP story relates how the largest Wi-Fi cloud in the nation is found in northeastern Oregon. Which is very handy for onion farmer Bob Hale.

"Parked alongside his onion fields, Bob Hale can prop open a laptop and read his e-mail or, with just a keystroke, check the moisture of his crops."

'"Outside the cloud, I can't even get DSL," said Hale. "When I'm inside it, I can take a picture of one of my onions, plug it into my laptop and send it to the Subway guys in San Diego and say, 'Here's a picture of my crop.'"'

So why does Morrow County, which doesn't have a single traffic light, spans 2,000 square miles and is home to only 11,000 residents have access to the biggest Wi-Fi cloud in the nation?

The short answer is: politics. The long answer is: corporate ownership of politicians. And you are paying the price.

Consider the town of Hermiston, the county seat of neighboring Hermiston County, which borders Morrow County and is covered by the Wi-Fi cloud. Their police department has been able to reduce overtime pay because officers are now able to file crime reports from their cars rather than having to drive into the station and rack up overtime writing up reports at the end of their shifts. Guess who pays for that overtime. Citizens pay it via taxes.

The possibilities for Wi-Fi are virtually endless. But, big corporations which are racking in $$$ with competing systems for internet access such as DSL and Cable, such access is only one small part of what Wi-Fi offers, have put up stiff resistance to efforts to introduce large-scale Wf-Fi clouds to heavily populated metropolitan areas.

In Philadelphia, for instance, plans to blanket the entire city with Wi-Fi fueled a battle in the Pennsylvania legislature with Verizon Communications Inc., leading to a law that limits the ability of every other municipality in the state to do the same.

One Nation Under... Corporations and their legislative stooges. And YOU are paying the bill.