"Free WIFI" (Score 1)

Part of the problem is about a year ago a small town wanted to put in local highspeed internet for their school and could also provide it to the town and decided that WIFi was the cheapest way. The reason they decided to was because NONE of the local or commercial providers would provide anything but dialup. All of them citing economic reasons that the town would only be able to have dialup Internet no DSL nor Cable speeds. But SBC was able to come up with both local negative advertising and lobbying money and a state wide lobbying effort to keep small towns from doing this for their citizens. Of Course part of the reason is to protect their near monopolies in the large/easy to wire areas, But it is also to keep the rural areas ready and locked in to them for Phone service since if the have WiFi internet they can cancel their phone service and use cell phones which are often much cheaper than tradition phone service in rural areas since the people you call are spread through many long distance areas.
Also while they may not actually write the legislation since they are paying fees to the lobbying firms that are writing the legislation I think we can see throught that.