Word of the day: astroturfing.

Microsoft will provide free wireless access to Portland, Oregon.

Microsoft’s move, and similar initiatives sponsored either by municipalities themselves (Philadelphia) or commercial providers (Google in Mountain View), may be the first step toward making mobile content really rock.

City-wide wifi isn’t just about being able to get a laptop connection whenever, wherever. You can get that today in plenty of cities.

The issue is getting out from under the thumb of phone companies.

Typical telecom product cycle:

1. Take a technology that’s already several years old (see this article on Bluetooth from 2001)
2. Introduce a severely limited version of it (vide the crippled Bluetooth implementations you see on phones today).
3. Start a hugely expensive, unconvincing marketing campaign.
4. Overcharge for the service.
5. Introduce other elements of the technology slowly, overcharging at each step
6. Spend the profits on poisonous ads and fake astroturf blogs to try to kill useful and enlightened legislation such as Net Neutrality
7. Rinse, repeat

Imagine mobile VOIP, where you can make phone calls over the Internet with your mobile device (I won’t call it a phone), with no payment to the phone company. Imagine mobile web browsing, without an expensive data plan.

With wifi freely available (at least in cities) and wifi-enabled devices we may escape the telecom wheel of suffering and see some real mobile innovation.

The future of the mobile Internet is one more reason to support Net Neutrality.

Phone companies will continue to be the only choice in more rural areas, but we can hope that once the joy of mobile wifi is enjoyed in the cities, rural areas too will lobby for their manumission and ignore all the astroturfing.

Tags: astroturfing, free wifi, wifi in Portland, wifi in Mountain View, wifi in Philadelphia, wheel of suffering, we can always hope

Posted by Antony in: Internet Governance, Media + Marketing