The 700 Club

700, we keep hearing about this but what's the big deal? We know about 300, the number of Spartans who fought the Persians at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC and we know about 3.14, or Pi, the ratio of the diameter of a circle to it's circumference but nada about 700 unless you 1. look toward Pat Roberson's 700 Club for Christian inspiration or 2. use the Internet on a regular basis whereby one learns, in almost osmotic fashion, about the importance of unfettered Radio Spectrum Frequencies, and how it applies to wireless connects to the net.

The 700 MHZ spectrum, the last great block of available RFs, can be the wireless silver bullet able to connect America in ways that go far beyond the costly and limited confines of AT&T, Verizon and the Comcasts of the world as seen by the explosive growth of free WiFi in cities like Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston. When WiMax takes off, the importance of open RF will really take hold as WiMax has much greater range and speed than WiFi. By the same token, the promise of an open 700 threatens these same telcos and cable companies web existance because they know if 700 remains open, their hegemony over how we connect into the net becomes very tenuous indeed.

Why is this important? It's important because 1. the US is becoming a backwater in broadband speeds because of the lack of competition as seen by this excellent article called Moving in the Slow Lane 2. privatising the net and 3. warrant less wiretapping and AT&T's intent to become the DRM Sheriff of the Net thanks to its prior connections with the NSA (sniffing traffic packets/data mining techniques) on the aforementioned warrant less wiretapping scandal that is beginning to get very serious for the Bush Administration.

With 700 open, the web remains open source, something to think about when getting one of these...