The Members Forum

Students are slowly beginning to move in to their new homes in and around their respective universities in preparation for the upcoming academic term. Most bills and subscriptions like electricity, gas, water, TV licence and other commodities are provided already and simply need a direct debit to continue without a cut in service.

Getting the broadband up and running can prove lengthy at times, however. In my case, going into my second year of university, it took me an entire month of wading through the bureaucracy of having a previous owner tagging the line.

It was like the Shawshank Redemption; except with more wading through crap and no bloody redemption.

This is on the day that the plan to open up the spectrum and provide a coast-to-coast wireless service, giving many of the estimated 100 million US citizens free broadband access was shot down by the FCC.

The Digital Economy Bill, in essence the United Kingdom’s legislation to prevent piracy and hammer down on Internet related ‘crime’ could still threaten public wireless access in the country. Universities were at risk from closing down their wireless hotspots on campus because of the risk factor relating to students downloading copyrighted material over their networks.

So with this in mind, should public wireless hotspots be free? Taking into account wireless security, piracy and privacy, as well as the businesses who provide the network, frankly I personally still can’t decide whether they should be or not.

ZDnet has the rest of the article HERE!