mips
February 14th, 2007, 09:55 PM
http://www.theregister.com/2007/02/14/sfwifi_vote/
What the populist mayor hasn't yet figured out is that the free service he's proposing is a paltry 300Kbps. That isn't enough to chat on Skype or upload and consume videos. Critics charge Newsom's plan is a thinly veiled attempt to balkanize San Francisco's destitute to a new sort of ghetto.
300Kbs shared or per person ?
If 300Kbs then that is just fine for skype. Video might be a tad slow but once streamed like youtube you can watch it again. I have 384Kbs adsl in africa + about 350ms latency to far away places on the slower end of the scale. I find it sufficient for my needs. What are people expecting for a free service ? We don't live in a Utopia. If this service reaches people that never had net access before then sure it is a major benefit ?
If you offered me free wireless in such a large geographic area for free I would be on both knees accepting with both hands.
Suppose some might complain because it is to slow to download their 2Gig torrents...
What the populist mayor hasn't yet figured out is that the free service he's proposing is a paltry 300Kbps. That isn't enough to chat on Skype or upload and consume videos. Critics charge Newsom's plan is a thinly veiled attempt to balkanize San Francisco's destitute to a new sort of ghetto.
300Kbs shared or per person ?
If 300Kbs then that is just fine for skype. Video might be a tad slow but once streamed like youtube you can watch it again. I have 384Kbs adsl in africa + about 350ms latency to far away places on the slower end of the scale. I find it sufficient for my needs. What are people expecting for a free service ? We don't live in a Utopia. If this service reaches people that never had net access before then sure it is a major benefit ?
If you offered me free wireless in such a large geographic area for free I would be on both knees accepting with both hands.
Suppose some might complain because it is to slow to download their 2Gig torrents...