Research: Wireless Base Station Bill Lands in Senate
Federal Wi-Net Act
Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME) and Mark R. Warner (D-VA)
December 3, 2010
Senators Snowe and Warner have introduced a bill to the Senate that will place Wi-Fi and femtocell access points in government buildings. The idea being that providing Wi-Fi and femtocell access in roughly 9,000 government buildings will free up the usage of valuable spectrum. Snowe and Warner believe moving government buildings to these technologies for employees and visitors will free up network capacity in the surrounding areas.
The announcement can be found here.
A copy of the bill text is below:
Actually, Wi-Fi access points would not free valuable spectrum (the cell phone frequencies would still be in use) but rather would congest the unlicensed bands, which are frequently used by wireless Internet providers. An ulterior motive in these rules is to elbow these providers out so that they cannot compete with the cellular carriers (the two largest of which are incumbent local exchange carriers).
@Brett Glass,
The bill is talking about installing Wi-Fi at government facilities. It’s not about installing Wi-Fi in rural areas.
And additionally the femtocells would just be pushing calls in these governments buildings onto whatever wired network they had. So it wouldn’t pull anyone away from a specific carrier. Though most agencies are already contracted with certain carriers anyway.
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