Biggest Wi-Fi Cloud Is in Rural Oregon
Way back when, growing up in the frozen wasteland that was (and to a large degree, still is) northern Minnesota, I knew that I was growing up smack in the middle of nowhere. “Going to the city” meant going to Bemidji, 35 miles north of Walker and, to this deprived child, the veritable center of the universe. Hey, it had a Woolworth’s and a state university, so it must have had SOMETHING going for it, eh? Of course, Bemidji at that time was home to something like 11,000 frozen souls. Of course, when you consider that Walker was less than 1,000, Bemidji might as well have been Manhattan.
Way back then (and this would be the mid- to late-70s I’m talking about), living where I did really did mean living in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. Thirty years later, and it would seem that our world has become a much smaller place. There realistically are very few places in this country where you really are cut off from the rest of civilization. I remember driving through the Florida Keys last summer and thinking that if you wanted to drop off the end of the Earth, the Keys would be as good a place as any. Even there, though, the reach of technology can connect you to the world in a way you might not have expected just a few short years ago.
When I was in college, being away from a high school girlfriend meant long, poignant letters full of teenage angst and phone bills the size of a developing country’s Gross Domestic Product. It was an expensive, frustrating process, but it’s all we had. Now I watch Eric deal with the separation from his girlfriend, and it’s truly amazing how much simpler, less expensive, and instantaneous it all is. Since he and his girlfriend both have Verizon as their cell phone service providers, they can talk to each other endlessly for nothing- even though he’s in Williamsburg, VA, and she’s in Galveston. Letters? Give me a break. They have email and text messaging. No wait, no mess, no misunderstandings or frustrations caused by the passage of time. Truly, our world is a much smaller place than when She Who Endures My Myriad Eccentricities and I were in college.
The times, they are a-changin’….
HERMISTON, Ore. — 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.
As the jack rabbits run by, he can watch CNN online, play a video game or turn his irrigation sprinklers on and off, all from the air conditioned comfort of his truck.
While cities around the country are battling over plans to offer free or cheap Internet access, this lonely terrain is served by what is billed as the world’s largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune.
Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition. 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.
But here among the thistle, large providers such as local phone company Qwest Communications International Inc. see little profit potential. So wireless entrepreneur Fred Ziari drew no resistance for his proposed wireless network, enabling him to quickly build the $5 million cloud at his own expense.
While his service is free to the general public, Ziari is recovering the investment through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies, as well as big farms such as Hale’s, whose onion empire supplies over two-thirds of the red onions used by the Subway sandwich chain. Morrow County, for instance, pays $180,000 a year for Ziari’s service.
The benefits to a locale as rural and off the beaten path as Umatilla County, OR, are numerous. Individuals, business, even emergency service providers benefit by having wireless access. This seems like such a no-brainer, until you consider the political aspects of this- and in that sense, your opinion of public Wi-Fi access depends on which side of the ideological fence you fall on..
Is Wi-Fi a right of all citizens, as San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has stated, or is it, as companies like Verizon and SBC have stated publicly, a service to be provided that government has no business in? Should government compete with private companies, or does government have an entrenched interest in ensuring uniform access to the Internet for all citizens?
In today’s information society, the availability of and access to information really is power, and that power means economic opportunity. The bottom line for private enterprise is to maximize value for it’s shareholders. If that happens to mean that more people have access to Wi-Fi, so be it. Companies like Verizon or SBC don’t have public access as their primary concern, though if it’s to be provided, they certainly feel that they shouldn’t be competing with government to do so.
From where I sit, I can see that both arguments have merit. When it comes to providing services efficiently and cost-effectively, it’s a rare case when government can compete effectively with the private sector. Nonetheless, government does have an interest in ensuring that Wi-Fi access isn’t limited to those of sufficient means. All that does ultimately is increase the disparity between the haves and have-nots, and that does no one any good.
Government and private enterprise both have roles to play in ensuring that all citizens have access to the Internet. Whether this qualifies as a “right” is an argument I’ll leave to minds more nimble than my own. I do, however, believe that a solid case could be made for this qualifying as a right- for how else are we to ensure equal economic opportunites for all?
